Intentional Body Handling: Conditioning to Touch

Now that we’ve taken time to get to know what parts of the body your pup accepts being touched or handled and what parts your pup does not readily accept being touched, we want to work on making sure our pups are completely “green” on their coloring outline that we did last month. Additionally, we want to prepare our pups to go from brief, quick touches to longer holds and manipulation of body parts. We can accomplish this through “counter conditioning.” This means that we will train (condition) the pup to change a bad association to body handling to a good association. “Counter conditioning” can be used to give a desirable response to any stimulus. Check out this clip from the TV show, “The Office,” where Jim conditions his coworker Dwight for a specific response!

Before we get started with “counter conditioning” body handling:

• Your pup will need to have a good understanding of the marker word “yes.” This will help you to reinforce when your dog is giving the correct response.
• Make sure to have treats, on hand. Sometimes its hard to work on body handling with a treat pouch attached to you if you are sitting on the floor, so you might want to put your treat pouch on a nearby table or couch and grab them from there.
• Allow the pup to be comfortable – it doesn’t matter if the pup is lying down or standing, as long as you can easily reach the body parts. It’s easiest to work on body handling if your puppy is in a fairly relaxed state, such as shortly before their bedtime or after a long walk.
• Remember to keep your sessions short. It’s easy to allow body handling sessions to extend for a long amount of time, especially if your puppy is fairly accepting of body handling and touch. However, always “quit while you’re ahead” with any training exercise! If you find that you are constantly allowing your sessions to go long, then only have about 15 treats with you and, once those are gone, stop the session.

Counter Conditioning for Body Handling

1. Choose the body part you will be working on. Make it very specific. For example, if you choose “leg,” make sure its JUST the leg and NOT also the paw.
2. Briefly touch the pup’s body part. Remember, VERY short duration.
3. React appropriately based on your pup’s reaction.  If pup does not pull or lean away, say “YES” and give a treat and praise. If pup does pull or lean away, say nothing and remove hand.
4. Advance your pup based on their initial reaction. If pup did not pull/lean away, gradually increase duration for this body part. If pup did pull/lean away, make your movement or touch smaller. You might just hover your hand above the body part. When you find the spot where your pup does not pull/lean away, mark with “YES,” treat, praise and advance from that point.
5. Move to other body parts. Its best to do “easy” touches, such as the back, neck, or tummy, in between more difficult touches for your pup. 

In this video, you can see Carrie working on body handling with her puppy, Walton. In the first clip, Walton dramatically leans away when Carrie tries to touch his ear. He recently had to have his ears cleaned quite a bit and is a little head shy about his ears. Carrie moves back to just having her hand hover near his ear, getting closer and closer over the two sessions that are in the video. Additionally, Carrie names the body part as she touches it, but this is to mainly allow the viewer to understand which body part will be touched next. As a raiser, you do not have to name the body parts as you touch them. However, even in the two short sessions, one can see that Walton almost anticipates his ear being touched as Carrie says the word “ear.”

(As a sidenote, Carrie sometimes delays saying the “yes” marker word as Walton is licking her hand. Its ideal to mark the exact moment you want, such as allowing his leg to be touched, but not while he is licking the handler’s hand. Also, Walton was not on a set command and chose to lie down, so when he stands at the end without being told “break,” this is okay.  This goes with the above pointer of allowing your puppy to be comfortable while doing body handling.)

CC Body Handling from Southeastern Guide Dogs on Vimeo.

By going in small steps and utilizing something your pup really enjoys, like treats, you will find that training your pup for body handling can be an enjoyable experience for both of you!

Intentional Body Handling: Understanding Your Pup’s Comfort with Touch

All dogs should be comfortable with all types of touch, but its especially important for working dogs to accept a variety of touch from their handlers and others. We use the term “body handling” to mean any sort of touch or manipulation of body parts. Some examples include petting, cutting nails, and body manipulation used in typical vet exams. Additionally, touch can be rewarding and therapeutic, so we want our pups to love it! When dogs enjoy handling and touch, it can release the hormone called oxytocin, which helps calm the dog. If a dog finds touch to be calming and enjoyable, it can be used to help diffuse a stressful situation, which we may encounter with the extra socialization that we give our Southeastern puppies.

Over the next few months, we will explore different body handling techniques and ways to build our pups’ tolerance and enjoyment of being handled.

Primarily, we want to use “counter conditioning” to teach our puppies that body handling is enjoyable. Counter conditioning is a part of classical conditioning (such as the Pavlov’s Dog experiment), which replaces an unpleasant emotional response (such as fear) to a stimulus with an enjoyable or desired emotional response (such as happiness). We will discuss more about the steps to counter conditioning our dogs to touch in an upcoming Blue Cape Journal entry. Most dogs have areas that they enjoy touched and areas they do not enjoy being touched. Your goal, as a raiser, should be to get your puppy to enjoy all parts of their body being touched and handled.

Initially, you want to assume that all areas on your pup are “no go” areas and take your body handling slow until you understand where your pup enjoys being touched and what areas need work. Use a gentle 2-3 second “quick touch” where you gently place your hand or just a few fingers on the body part. By using quick touch on our pups, we can start to build their tolerance and enjoyment of touch. If your pup pulls away or leans away, then you will need to break your quick touch down into smaller slices. For example, if you put your hand on top of your pup’s paw and they pull it away, then the next time you touch it, only put your hand right above the paw. You can then build up to being closer and closer to touching your pup’s paw, which will eventually build to holding, squeezing, clipping nails, etc. If your pup DOES pull away, do not make any sort of negative noise or say “no.” We want our pups to trust us and let us build up to conditioning the touch.

Print the outline below and color in the body parts with green, yellow, or red as you do quick touches on different parts of your pup. A green area will mean the dog enjoy this being touched and shows no adverse reaction. A yellow area will mean the dog might freeze or pull/lean away a little, but is okay with a second try or a slightly smaller sliced type of touch. A red area will mean the dog is very uncomfortable with this body part being touched and will drastically pull away, not let you touch the area, jump or growl. Keep your chart handy as we get ready for the next entry on Intentional Body Handling!

Reward Based Training: Intermittent Reinforcement at Work

Now that we understand the technical aspects of “Intermittent Reinforcement,” how do we effectively put it to use with our pups?

Initially, when teaching your puppy a behavior or command, we will be rewarding every single time, keeping the dog on a continuous reinforcement schedule. This helps the puppy learn the exact behavior to receive the reward. Because dogs have a difficult time to generalize a command, you will want to do the behavior in many environments and while working on the 3Ds (distance, distraction, duration), but maintaining the continuous reinforcement schedule. Once your pup has seemingly mastered a command in most variations of locations, etc., then you will want to move to a variable ratio reinforcement schedule. This means you will intermittently give rewards for correct responses, but not in a predictable manner.

So, these are the general steps for teaching a new behavior:

1. Use a LURE for a few days to one week. Make sure to practice frequently and in as many places as possible during that time to help your pup generalize.
2. Move to a REWARD every single time you ask pup for behavior. This will last an extended amount of time, approximately a couple of months for that specific behavior. Make sure you are building on the 3Ds during this time and working the behavior in many different locations and situations to help your pup build a solid generalization and foundation for the command.
3. Move to INTERMITTENT REINFORCEMENT once your dog has a solid understanding of the command. You have been rewarding every time you ask for the behavior for several months and now your pup is able to give you the behavior, no matter the distraction, distance, or duration! Great! Now start to move to rewarding intermittently and in a variable schedule.
4. Gradually decrease your rate of reinforcement. When first moving to intermittent reinforcement for a behavior, you will want to reward more often than not. As the pup builds an even more solid understanding of the behavior, you can lower the amount of times you give a food reward.
5. Raise your expectations for the intermittent rewards. So now your pup has an amazing and solid response for a behavior! Lower your rate of reinforcement even more by only rewarding with food when your dog gives a perfect response or does the behavior in a difficult situation (ie – another dog walks closely by your dog while he is correctly performing the command you gave him).

Tips!

• Always include praise and touch! No matter which stage you are in of teaching a behavior to your puppy, you should ALWAYS include praise and occasional touch (the type your pup likes best) to build meaning to praise/touch and so that you always have those as “rewards” when not giving food rewards.
• Do not go back to a LURE! Once your pup has learned a behavior and is on REWARDS, you should not be luring a pup to get them to perform a behavior. Instead, ask your pup for the command 2 times, then change something if pup hasn’t performed by the 3^rd time. What can you change? Run through the 3Ds and determine which of those you can adjust to make it easier for your pup to follow the command. Also, consider the “Box of Acceptable Behaviors” and if your expectations for the behavior are too high.
•  If you are teaching a new behavior, start at the beginning with a LURE, no matter your pup’s age or where they are for other behaviors! If your pup is 10 months old and learning “stand” for the first time, but has other behaviors like “sit” and “down” at the intermittent reinforcement stage, you will still start with a lure for “stand” and move through all 5 steps. Your puppy has not had a chance to generalize the behavior of “stand” to all the situations to which he has generalized “sit” and “down.”
• You can always increase your rate of reinforcement, when needed. Although you should not return to luring, you can return to more rewards in situations that require it, such as walking past a big distraction. Even if you are at the stage of very rare rewarding, increasing your rate of reinforcement temporarily can help remind your pup how great it is to work with you!

Combining your knowledge and skills with the “yes” marker word, luring vs. rewarding, and intermittent rewarding, you can give your pup a great foundation solid skills!