When you watch a video of cooperative care in action (aka a dog calmly opting in to getting their ears cleaned by sitting on a mat first), it can be easy to think, “That is amazing but my dog would never do that.” Maybe you aren’t practicing cooperative care as much as other members of our #TOCFam, but you can 100% incorporate some cooperative care and start buttons into your life and reduce a lot of stress for you and your dog!

Cooperative care is not just kind but also extremely effective. If you give your dog a choice to opt out of something (and reward them for it), they actually opt in more! Why? ✨Control is a primary reinforcer for behavior✨ just like food, water, shelter, etc. When we give our dogs choice, it actually helps us get the behavior we want faster (in addition to being humane). Keep scrolling for more ideas for starting to simplify your life with your dog through cooperative care.

Getting Started With Cooperative Care For Grooming

For a lot of dogs, grooming is a part of life. But it doesn’t have to be stressful -- for you or your dog! One of the best ways to make grooming easier is to use a start button behavior (or consent behavior), which is essentially a way for your dog to give consent.

Recently we shared the video above featuring Moose, a four month old puppy -- not some experienced adult dog! Cooperative care can look fancy, but don’t let that intimidate you. You can work to build this type of cooperation with any dog!    

Moose’s start button/consent behavior is a chin rest on the chair. Nobody cues him to do this behavior; instead, this is something he offers. He understands that if he puts his chin on the chair, it will lead to grooming and then treats because that is the association that was made for him. Perhaps most importantly, he doesn’t feel forced into doing a chin rest. He gets a treat for saying no too! How does he say no? By not giving a clear, enthusiastic yes! If you watch closely at the end of the video, you will spot how rewarding his pause (his “no”), leads to a very fast yes right after.    

Note: Moose may be young here, but he understands how start buttons work since they have been incorporated into his training since the moment he came home at nine weeks. He also already had a trained chin rest behavior (PS: You can train your dog to do a chin rest in the Tails of Connection Challenge), so this setup made chin rest a likely behavior for him to offer. Our hope is that this video gives you some ideas or gets you curious about incorporating start buttons!

The Magic of Giving Your Dog Control Through Start Buttons

Recently we shared a start button story on Instagram that got a lot of interest, so we put together the video in the post above as a fun way to show the magic of giving your dog control. This isn’t a demo or tutorial, but it shows some cool behavior naturally evolving! 

Here’s a play by play of what we featured in the various clips:   

• Clip One: A few weeks ago, we shared this same clip in our stories of a desensitization session Christie was doing with one of her dogs, Otis, and a suitcase. Otis is fine with suitcases in general, but she wanted to get him comfortable walking beside a rolling one (for future travel). She used a nose target as a start button to roll the suitcase (aka she only rolls the suitcase after he targets her hand). What happened was kind of fun to see: he naturally started offering a different behavior as a way to say “don’t roll the suitcase.” He would look away when he didn’t want the suitcase rolled (and then look back at Christie because he knows that “no’s” get rewarded too!) and boop her hand when he was ready for her to roll it. This session told Christie really quickly that he didn’t feel great about her moving the suitcase, so she stopped (and took a few steps back in our training). 

• Clip Two: Some of you asked how a start button might evolve naturally (as opposed to the “don’t start button” that Otis showed with the suitcase). This clip shows a start button naturally evolving while bringing clippers out with one of Christie’s dogs, Sully. Here the start button behavior is a paw raise. 

• Clip Three: This clip shows a start button for bringing nail clippers out naturally evolving with Otis. His behavior is super subtle -- sticking his tongue out!  

These clips show how quickly dogs learn the consequences of their behavior. With that understanding, they have the ability to opt in or out of things by simply offering or not offering a behavior. This rocks because it allows us to get a real glimpse into HOW THEY FEEL about something. Whether you are using a trained start button behavior or letting one naturally evolve, empowering your dog is a cool thing to do! We’re using pieces of a process from Emelie Johnson Vegh and Eva Bertilsson of Carpe Momentum on developing start buttons in clips two and three. 

Getting Started With Tooth Brushing Through Cooperative Care

Have you ever thought about the behaviors that your dog need stop be able to do in order for you to brush their teeth? Standing still is the main one (though you could certainly break this down more). What about the behaviors that you will need to do in order to brush their teeth? This depends on how you go about it, but here are a few: Bend over, reach towards their face, touch their face, lift their mouth, pick up toothbrush, put toothpaste on toothbrush, bring toothbrush towards their face, touch toothbrush to their teeth, move your arm back and forth to brush their teeth, etc.

We have to thank the incredible Laura Monaco Torelli for really helping us think more about all of human behavior (Christie was lucky enough to get mentored by her)! By thinking about human behavior, we know how to split criteria better (aka break “brushing my dog’s teeth” down into smaller component parts). 

 Here’s a breakdown of the play-by-play in the video featured above:

• Otis and Christie have a solid dialogue going that they built up over time. He has full control over whether or not he stations in front of her (and Christie will only begin my behavior if he stations), so his behavior in this framework gives her LOADS of info.  

• She’s only doing small components of the teeth brushing behavior. 

• Her reinforcement involves increasing distance from her (to relieve any pressure he may have felt and give him a choice to opt back in). 

• She threw in some fun, easy behaviors. 

• The entire session was five click points. Super short.

Some Takeaways (apply them to more than just teeth!): 

• We can usually break our training down MUCH more than we think. Try listing out every single tiny thing you (or whomever else) will do to train. That gives you ideas about how to split criteria in your training. 

• It’s okay for your training not to look perfectly linear. Is touching the toothbrush to Otis’s back an actual step Christie will take when she brushes his teeth for real? No. But it gives Otis information in a less intrusive way. (By the way, there are lots of other things Christie does, but she budgeted only five click points for this session.)

• Laura Monaco Torelli is next level good at this stuff (she makes this look so smooth when she does it with wild animals). She is a great person to learn from