Ali Foundation Behavior

Being off sick has been a great opportunity to get into our first Lisa Mullinax webinar and start some application, and my, Ali has been a fast study!

The webinar we have just completed was focused around cooperation training particularly with regards to husbandry and medical care--so teaching behaviors and approaches to doing things like nail trims, ear cleaning, eye treatments, and even injections.  Greyhounds are such tolerant and docile dogs, most of the procedures are relatively easy to accomplish with them which makes them delightful patients for us vets.  However, Cooperation Training has so much to offer in terms of moving us beyond tolerance and into the world of patients and pets who are willing participants in their care.  The skills and trust they learn in the process has great potential to augment our relationships with our dogs, and for those dogs that do have concerns about care procedures it offers a positive way of building their confidence and provides us with a framework for them to communicate when they have reached their tolerance and need a break.

One of the core components that the webinar dealt with was training a Foundation Behavior.  This can be something new, or a modification of something the dog already knows or offers.  Things like sustained nose targets, lateral recumbency on cue, chin rests, or even offering feet (shake) or placing their feet on your leg were all presented as examples--really the options are only limited by your imagination.  Once you develop duration in the foundation behavior, you can start adding in "distractions", remembering to break things down into simple components and build up gradually.  If they stop the behavior or move away, it means they have had enough and need a break.

Ali has a remarkably soft mouth and loves to rest her head in my hands and have me play with her face. So it was pretty easy to get her to start chin resting to my hand on the training mat.  She also does a lot of "face" game where I have her put her face in openings like her collar and halti or her muzzle.  Once I started shaping to "Start" (the cue I've picked for this behavior) without my hand, she decided to offer placing her face through the space at the back of the chair.  I was stoked as such flexible thinking is a great sign of her growing confidence in general!  Plus it gives her more precision in her placement.  Once she was offering good duration, I started adding in distractions--fingers in ears, touching around the eyes, some foot and tail touching and gentle skin lifts such as you would do for injections--and she's holding throughout!  I can't wait to start doing tooth brushing this way!

My kudos to Ricky for keeping up some good boundary behavior on his red disc during our video!  It's such a good way to keep his nose out of the treat cup while I'm working with Ali, plus works on some turn taking and boundary duration for him.