Teaching Cooperative Care to Puppies & Kittens

I had another long conversation with a veterinarian friend this week.  She was having a few problems with one of her own pets, a senior cat, needing weekly fluid therapy and meds. This cat is fairly easy to handle at home, but becomes very fractious in the hospital setting.  She knows that stressing him out at the office won't help him, but she can't do what needs to be done for him at home; it's got to be done at the clinic.  This started a conversation about the importance of cooperative care and teaching our pets when they are young to accept the kind of handling necessary to give them pills or vaccines, but also to administer ear and eye medications, and even take x-rays. We both agreed that it is frustrating, even for us, when you know giving your pets medication stresses them out.  We both know that our clients experience similar frustration as well. Plus, there are animals who behave aggressively toward their owners, as well as their veterinarians, whenever any medical procedures need to be accomplished.  I know that your veterinarian has the option to muzzle or sedate your pet for what needs to be done in a veterinary hospital, but do you really want those added stressors for your pet?  And how will you do the post operative care and/or medications at home?

Cooperative care allows an animal to take an active role in the process of their grooming or medical needs.  It gives them the opportunity to make choices before, during, and after their care and see the consequences of their choices.  I'm going to tell you right off the bat: this is a tedious process.  You can't work on cooperative care with your pet 10 minutes before you need to medicate them; it's something that you want to be teaching them everyday and incorporating into your daily training and handling exercises. As with anything new you want to teach your pet, it's a lot easier to teach them when they are younger and haven't had many negative experiences to color their perceptions of handling.  Consequently, I think teaching exercises in cooperative care should be part of every puppy class, kitten kindergarten, and new puppy or kitten appointment at a veterinarian's office. If we start when our pets are young and eager to please, our grooming sessions and necessary veterinary care will be so much easier (and less stressful!) when they are mature.

So, what basic behaviors do you want to teach? First off, teaching your pet to stand for examination is important.  Hold a treat in front of their nose if they are sitting and move the treat toward you as you say "stand."  Hold the treat for them to chew on as you move your hands lightly over their bodies. If they back away, sit, etc., no more treats.  

Your next step will be to teach your puppy or kitten to place their head/chin in your hand.  This is fairly easy, as most kittens and puppies enjoy a nice face rub.  Put your hand out and wiggle your fingers to get them to approach, use a treat in your other hand to get them to hold that position for a few seconds to begin with, then give them the treat. Work up to longer periods of holding steady in your hand before giving the treat.  Add in touching the ears and eyes to the process ONLY AFTER YOU'VE GOTTEN THE CHIN REST BEHAVIOR SOLIDLY IN PLACE.  If your pet removes their head from your hand, nothing bad happens, but the treats go away.  If you have a dog, you will want to move past this to teaching your dog to put their head on a lap or on a raised pillow on the floor or a chair.  Do it the same way; lure them into position and build up to longer periods of holding their head/chin on the lap, chair, or pillow.  Always use high value treats and no treats if they can't remain still in place. If you want to take this a step further, you can place a cloth on the chair, pillow, or lap you are practicing this behavior on.  Look at or point at the cloth and reward your dog for approaching, sniffing, touching, and then ultimately resting their head on the cloth.  That way, you can take this cloth to the veterinary hospital, if needed, to help your dog execute the same behavior in that setting; the cloth becomes the place cue for the behavior you are looking for.  You will want to assign a verbal marker for this behavior as well.  It can be as simple as the word "rest, relax, or chill" or be specific to the body part "chin please." In order to make this work across situations, you will want to add in distractions and practice in different locations.  For puppies and kittens learning the chin rest, you can ultimately use this behavior to provide routine ear or eye cleaning, even if they don't require medication, to continue to reinforce the behavior. 

The next behavior you will teach your puppy or kitten is to offer a paw.  This is valuable for nail trimming as well as for blood draws.  Start with simply holding the paw and work up to squeezing the paw, pinching the foreleg (desensitizing them to needle pokes),  touching individual nails, etc. The key factor here again is giving the animal the option to say "No, I'm not comfortable with that." Since you are basically teaching your pet to target (i.e. target your hand, the cloth on your lap, the pillow, etc.), they learn that all they need to do to signal their discomfort is move away from the target; they don't have to growl, snap, bite, or flee. Of course, the high value rewards go away too, but that's how they learn that their behavior has direct consequences.

To me, cooperative care is nothing more than a fancy term for shaping, that is rewarding an animal for successive approximations to your desired goal.  In this case, you are rewarding your pet for relaxing and submitting to routine care; they can stop the process at any time, so they don't need to panic.  This is critical because if they are ill or injured, panicking may be their first choice, but if they've been taught to rest calmly, you may be able to get them the care that they need without provoking additional distress. 

There are resources online that include videos you can watch to help demonstrate what I've described above, adding in specific training for things like administering liquid medication, cleaning and medicating ears,  brushing and nail trims.  I'd recommend starting here: 

https://karenpryoracademy.com/tag/cooperative-care/

I'll be meeting with a client next week to help her teach her dog to allow ear cleaning and medicating.  You see, he isn't aggressive when she tries to work with his ears, he actually gets profoundly anxious and then depressed, and will hide in a closet following any ear treatments.  Since he gets routine ear infections, he needs his ears cleaned daily, at a minimum.  It's gotten to the point where he sees her gathering the ear cleaning products, and he's already high tailing it to hide in the closet!  It will take more than one session to help this dog, but my hope is that we can, at a minimum, teach him the chin rest behavior so that the owner can continue to work on her own, at her dog's pace, to get him to the point where his ears can be cleaned routinely. 

As always, if you have questions about your pet's behavior, you know where to find me.

Ozzie is very good about cooperative care.  He understands that he can say no at any time, but that going along with ear cleaning, eye wiping, teeth brushing, body grooming, and nail trims will earn him special treats.  Plus, he likes to put his long nose in my hand or on my lap even without treats!