Vascular dementia (VD) is caused by cerebrovascular diseases, either hemorrhage or ischemic damage in the brain, with ischemia being the most common. In recent years, increasing efforts have been made to study the etiology, pathogenesis, and prevention of VD. The establishment of appropriate animal models to study the mechanism of VD and explore the efficacy of VD treatments has become an important issue in this research field. On the basis of conventional method, such as bilateral occlusion of common carotid arteries (2VO) and four-vessel occlusion, researchers have modified these method to improve stability with better reflection of the clinical manifestations of VD. This review summarizes these modified method and discusses possible cellular and molecular mechanisms and their advantages and disadvantages.