Cooperative Care: How to Desensitize a Dog to Wearing a Hat

‘Tis the season for putting a Santa hat on your dog! Before you force that hat on their head, have you considered getting your dog to opt into wearing a hat? Did you know it’s possible to desensitize them to wearing a hat through cooperative care? Actually in the Camp TOC scavenger hunt, we have a bingo square as a little mock cooperative care activity: desensitize your dog to a hat or sunglasses! While it’s just a silly hat, the basic idea of this exercise sets you up for things that matter a lot more (cooperative care for grooming, eye drops, ear cleaning etc. 🙌)! Our co-founder, Christie Catan, filmed this tutorial for someone in our #TOCFam who wanted help, and she figured, “why not just share it with everyone!?” While this is NOT a fancy video (in fact, in her words “it’s poorly lit and framed” 😂), we hope that it will give you some ideas that will be useful! Keep reading to see the written steps she followed to get her dog, Otis, to consent to wearing a hat.

Step by Step: How to Desensitize a Dog to Wearing a Hat

Christie Catan puts a hat on her dog, Otis's, head as part of the training session for how to desensitize your dog to wearing a hat.

Step One: Shape a behavior that will become your start button. I am going to use eye contact as Otis’s start button behavior, so I simply sit in front of him and mark and reward him (by saying yes and giving him a treat) when he looks at me. I do this a few times to make eye contact a behavior he wants to offer.

Step Two: Introduce the hat. You’ll notice that first I flash the hat in front of Otis and mark and reward each time that happens. This is so he starts to understand that the hat predicts a treat, and he feels good about the hat showing up. Now technically, what is happening here is that Otis looks at me and then I flash the hat and give him a treat (eye contact is already becoming a start button). It is not the end of the world if you just do some basic desensitization of the hat without thinking about start buttons for a few reps as long as you don’t reach the hat too close to your dog.

Step Three: Be intentional about eye contact as a start button for moving the hat toward your dog. Since we already shaped eye contact, that is a behavior Otis is likely to offer. I will only move the hat when he is looking at me. If Otis looks away from me and stops making eye contact, I stop moving the hat towards him and don’t move it any closer (you can still give a treat for this; just don’t mark). Make sure to go slowly! You will notice that I mark a lot even though I have only moved the hat a few inches. The trick here is not to push your dog too hard and to get them to consent to having the hat near them by continuing to look at you (or by doing another consent behavior that you select).

Step Four: Put the Hat on Your Dog. Since Otis continues to look at me the whole time, I can finally put the hat on him. If your dog continues to give consent through eye contact (or whatever start button behavior you chose), go ahead and try it! Remember if your dog looks away, pull that hat back (and give them a treat). They are allowed to say no. By letting them say no, they will say yes far more often (yay science!).

The Power of Choice Based Dog Training

One of the coolest parts about this is what happens when you give your dog the power of choice and control in dog training. By giving Otis the ability to opt in or out, I actually increase the frequency with which he opts in (COOL, right!?). Anyway, take this video or leave it (but know the actual camp videos are much much better than this 😂).

By the way, please don’t fret if you didn’t put a hat on your dog in this cooperative way in the past. Feel free to loop back if you’re interested. Also, your session may look different than mine. I chose a very simple behavior as my consent behavior (eye contact), but do what works for you (some other ideas include chin rest or when your dog looks at food in a bowl). The idea is to give your dog control over their environment, so they aren’t freaked out by a strange object coming toward them. The fun part of trying cooperative care with a hat is that it is low pressure. You don’t have to stress if your dog opts out or it takes many sessions to get the hat on since getting the hat on is not critical. Often times we think about cooperative care in moments when we don’t actually have the ability to give our dogs choice, and that isn’t the moment to try to work through this since “no” may not be something you can actually honor if it is medically necessary.

Have you tried putting a hat on your dog through cooperative care? If you try this, let us know how it goes! Don’t forget to tag @tailsofconnection on Facebook or Instagram and use the hashtag #tailsofconnection.

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