Cooperative care dog training lets dogs feel less stressed about husbandry and grooming tasks for basic dog care. Cooperative care vet visits allow the dog to “consent” to care. This is basic tenet of positive reinforcement-based dog training.
Dogs can opt into everyday handling as well as grooming tasks and even vet visits. Cooperative care is a bit different than low-stress vet handling as low-stress vet handling aims to minimize the stress of necessary veterinary visits. Cooperative care teaches dogs they can opt in or not when the situation is not urgent.
Building Trust Through Cooperative Care
Dog cooperative care training generally starts with teaching dogs what we call a “start button,” meaning that they give consent for the interactions. They can opt out anytime. The start button can be a mat that they lay on to say yes to handling, or it can be a simple chin rest offering either on your own hand or on a piece of equipment that functions specifically for this protocol. (Chin rests are what you may see in videos posted by zookeeper staff as they draw blood on animals in their care.)
It is vital that you respect the opt-out request when you are training for this process. Otherwise, your dog will lose trust, and this work will be for nothing. Trust is an important part of training this protocol.
Reward the Dog for Saying Yes
It’s important to use food rewards for willing participation, but please be mindful of coercion with food as that can create conflict in a dog. I have used a LickiMat for increasing brushing duration as well as a tube filled with peanut butter for nail maintenance tasks. Food rewards should be just that, however, not bribes or coercion. When your dog starts offering up the body part that you wish to practice with, this is a good sign. Every dog’s version of the perfect food reward is different. The key to food rewards is to know your dog.
Keeping each practice session short and sweet and ending on a positive successful note, with the dog wanting more, is the key to a smoother transition for easier sessions moving forward.
Watch for a Dog’s Consent Signals
Learning to look for subtle body language signals that imply consent is important. Having your canine consent to handling and husbandry is the core tenet of cooperative care. For example, when I was training my dog Kenzo for ear-drop administration, I learned to look for a lack of an ear flick when my hand was approaching his ear with the bottle. This was his opt-in signal.
Teaching a dog to opt in to cooperative care grooming and husbandry tasks is not an overnight process. It takes time, but how long it may take depends on the individual dog. Every dog is different. Putting in the effort in the beginning, especially with cooperative care for puppies, will ensure that you need not make each grooming or handling task such a production in the future. This will bring a sense of relief to both you and your dog!
I adopted Joey from a shelter. He was terrified of cars and when I drove him home from the shelter, he tried to crawl up the back of my neck. So I made a plan: I parked the car in a fence-enclosed place and left both back doors open. I sat in the back seat with a carton of yogurt. I placed a bowl beside me and invited him to jump in. He wouldn’t do it. But he really, really wanted the yogurt. He ran around to the other side of the car as if maybe the treat would be easier to get to. No luck. He came back and after several minutes, he finally jumped in and scarfed up the yogurt and immediately jumped back out. I thought, OK, that’s good, I will let you think about this overnight and we’ll do the same thing tomorrow. Next day, he spent far fewer minutes looking longingly at the bowl and also stayed in the back seat a little bit longer. Third day, he jumped in as soon as I opened the car door. From then on I took it slow, turned the ignition, sat for a little while, then turned it off. Next day, I backed up a little and then moved forward a little, back doors still open so he could jump out if it got to be too much. It wasn’t. Now he gets in and rides happily. Choice is good.