Contact Obstacles: More Than the End Zone

Tags

agility, contact obstacles, Dog Training, positive reinforcement, progressive training

This spring I’m working with a number of agility teams specifically on contact obstacles.  Some of the teams are with young dogs that the handlers want to set a solid foundation for contacts on, some are dogs who are nervous, insecure or otherwise uncomfortable on contact obstacles, and some are dogs with inconsistent or non-existent behavior in the contact zone.  These dogs are all learning how to move and keep their body safely on the obstacle

Over the years I’ve found, dogs who have been taught how to move their bodies and save themselves on the contact obstacles, rather than simply how to go across the boards from start to end, have increased confidence and in the long run more reliable consistent performance of the obstacle.

Zora flying over the dog walk at a competition

 

So, we start with a board.  For these early exercises I like to use a 10″ wide 8′-10′ long board.

I do these below stages 1-5 with the board in various positions.  Part 1 we work through these stages with the board flat on the ground.  Part 2 with the board elevated on both sides so it is a flat elevated plank up on cinder blocks.  Part 3 with the board as a tippy board with a moving fulcrum (piece of 1.5-2″ diameter PVC) under it.  Part 4 with the board elevated on 1 end so it is a descending or ascending ramp (then vary the height starting with cinder block, working way up to various pause box heights and finally if available propping 1 end up on an a-frame ramp).  Depending on the dog we may spend ample time at each part, or so a few simultaneously.  Most dogs we do these exercises for a couple of weeks before moving on to competition style equipment, but we move forward at the pace of the dog.  The dogs comfort, confidence and attitude tell me when we are ready to move forward.

Yes, I do the tippy board work before I do the ramp work.  Why?  because I want a dog confident in understanding how to control movement.   When we start to eventually teach actual contact obstacles, I teach the teeter before the dog walk.  I do NADAC agility, we have no teeter in competition, yet still I teach my dogs and students dog’s how to safely understand and operate a teeter totter, as I feel it’s important in a dog’s understanding of how obstacles work and how to control their bodies.  Dog walks can flex, and shift, and make noise, teeters help a dog learn all about those variables.

Once the dog is comfortable with the exercise of each stage and each part, I then add in various speeds and obstacles into the board.  Practicing each piece coming into the board at speed, and from other obstacles such as tunnels, hoops, jumps, allowing the dog to further learn how to control and manage their bodies on a narrow board.

Stage 1: Mark and reinforce any contact dog’s feet make with the board as you move up and down the board.  Reinforcement is delivered while the dog is still on the board, and handler works to center the reinforcement over the board (either food reward or tugging is ideal in this situation over throwing a toy).  Build value for feet interacting with the board.

Stage 2:  Mark and reinforce when dog has contact with board with 2 or more feet, progressing criteria as dog is comfortable to all 4 on the board, as you move up and down the board.  Reinforcement still delivered while dog on the board and handler works to center the reinforcement over the board.  Build value for coordinating all 4 feet interacting with the board and maintaining interaction with the board (as opposed to tap and move off)

Stage 3:  dog is now comfortable and has built value for getting all 4 feet on the board.  Dog gets on board, and is cued to do a position change, sit, down, stand.  Criteria is dog to keep all 4 feet on the board during the position change, once in position and able to hold the position.  Handler adds in release cue (verbal) or another position change after reinforcement is delivered.  Vary where on the board the dog is cued to do various position changes.  At this stage also vary where the handler is in relation to the dog when they cue the position changes ie: ahead, behind, beside, a few feet away, etc

Stage 4:  Dog is all 4 feet on the board and learns to turn around 180′ to start then building up to a full 360′ on the board while keeping all 4 feet on the board.  Working on the dog being able to move their body in even more ways on the board.  This is an especially important exercise for larger dogs.

Stage 5: Dog learns to back up keeping all 4 feet on the board.

By learning progressively how to move their bodies, move forward, move back wards, change position, turn around with moving, stationary, level and angled boards once we finally move to actual agility contact obstacles the dogs have an understanding and confidence that makes teaching the full height equipment so much easier.

Regal liver flat coated retriever on an agility teeter totter, photo from around 1999

 

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Thank goodness for Premack

Tags

behavior change, cancer, Dog Behavior, Dog Training, Dogs, fetch, food, friends, games, good dog, play, positive reinforcement, progressive training, relationship

A favorite dog of mine, Rose, who belongs to a good friend has been ill for the past couple of months. Steadily going downhill. Thursday my friend learned Rose’s symptoms were due to cancer. It beyond sucks. Rose is a lovely dog and only 6.

Because Rose hasn’t been feeling well for a while, and hadn’t been eating well or absorbing nutrients, she’s lost a lot of weight. Over 10% of her body weight. Closer to 20% at this point. For a dog who was svelte to begin with this isn’t good.

Thankfully her owner is now working with a fantastic vet (we won’t go into the way her regular vet dropped the ball on this situation). In addition to prescribing some meds to help Rose feel better, the new specialist vet has given an ultra digestible food for her to eat. One that her body can at least get some nutrients from. Which is great. Except it tastes like crap. And she’d rather eat other things, which unfortunately right now her body can’t actually use.

So, how to get a dog who is essentially starving and anorexic to eat food that will help her but tastes like garbage?

This is where Rose’s years and years of training history are proving to be a huge asset. Rose loves to train. She loves puzzles and thinking and problem solving. She also loved toys, balls in particular. And she loves games that involve her figuring out what to do in order to get the ball to be thrown. My friend has developed an awesome relationship with Rose these past 6 years, with training games being a huge part of their daily fun.

My friend had to go out of town this weekend, I had Rose and the challenge of figuring out: how to get her to eat food that tastes like garbage and she would rather spit out?

Knowing Rose as well as I do, I figured let’s try rewarding eating it with ball play. And see if that ends up reinforcing eating. The good old Premack Principle.

Then build up how many kibbles she has to eat in order to get the ball thrown.

It worked! So far she’s up to a handful of kibble individually hand fed to her at a high rate per ball throw.

Because the goal is for calories in to well exceed calories out for her right now, the ball throws are short to minimize how much energy she spends with the ball part of the equation. But for about 4 short ball tosses per session she’s willing to eat usually 2.5-3 handfuls of kibble now 4-5 times a day. Which is awesome. She’s actually eating and getting in calories her body can do something with.

And it is clear she has grasped its an if then equation. Every so often she’ll try spitting a couple out. When that doesn’t get the ball to happen, she’ll make a clear point to eat the next one. And get very happy when that does make the ball occur.

Thank goodness for training histories and a smart dog. Sure is improving Rose’s quality of life, even with cancer. Fingers crossed she’s willing to play this particular game for a long time more.

Rose this past fall when she was feeling her usual bouncy happy poodle self on one of our walks.

Formula for Earning Qualifying Scores

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agility, competition, confidence, criteria, Dog Training, obedience, philosophical, positive reinforcement, relationship, teaching, thoughts, training humans, training plans, Zora

I talk with my agility students and students considering competition often about defining what success in the ring means for them, their dog and their team.  As I feel that definition can have a huge impact on not only your competition qualifying rates but more importantly on the relationship your dog builds with the competition environment and with you.

People at trials often comment on how relaxed, happy and easy going I seem.  And how I can be that relaxed in competition?!  For me, it’s all in how I define success in competition.

Zora sitting in my lap, us just hanging out sitting in a purple chair waiting for our turn in the ring to run agility

With my own dogs I define success in the trial ring as:  I was able to maintain commitment to criteria as I do in training for all aspects of the run.

That’s it.  Seriously.  Simple as that.  Yet often oh so hard to do.  When there is this idea of a greater ‘prize’ be it a qualifying score, title or ribbon and when there is this feeling of ‘everyone is watching’ it can be really hard to be true to your training.  It can be really easy to shift into ‘oh we can fix that really quick and still make time enough to Q!’ when in training if your dog say popped the weaves you would respond by restarting the sequence 2 obstacles into the weaves.  Or you cue a rear cross and your dog spins.  It can be really hard in a trial run not to throw up your hands, say “oh fine let’s keep going” rather than do what you would have done in practice of reworking the set up.  It can be really hard to be as genuinely in love with your dog, the way you are in practice, when in trial your dog takes the wrong course or knocks a bar in a sequence you thought you both knew well.

Have I struggled or failed to stay honest and true to my definition of competition success?  Of course.  I’m human.  I’ve failed.  But I work towards that as my standard.  I’ve found for me even the nicest ribbon or qualifying score doesn’t feel so great when it came at the expense of my training, my dog’s confidence and understanding, and our honesty in team work.  And some of the best feeling runs I’ve ever had came when I was true to my definition, NQ and all.

So here’s my basic formula for getting qualifying scores and runs I’m happy with:

1. Read the rules.  Know the rules, know the standard you are being judged against.  Know the challenges you will face.   Understand the set up.  Have a picture before you even begin of what the performance looks like and what skills your dog and you need to have mastered in practice.  Have a picture of what your ideal performance of a skill looks like and work towards that.

2. Train it until you trust it.  And don’t do it in competition until you trust it in training reliably.  If you learn in competition you made a mistake and something you thought was to the level trust really isn’t, stop putting it in the trial environment until you’ve found and worked through the challenges in training.

3. Trust your dog and be honest.  If you cue something and your dog does something you didn’t expect, trust that they believed you communicated what they actually did.  If you’ve followed #2 above, by the time you are in a trial run if your dog does something chances are you cued them to do that whether you meant to or not.  Honor it.  To not to erodes your dog’s confidence and will end with second guessing and decreased speed (ask me how I know this.  First hand experience. So sorry Zora, Niche, Regal, James, Monty…I’ve done it to all of them at one point or another, and then have to go back, fix my screw up and rebuild.  It’s much easier to believe and honor what you dog did as correct to begin with)

4. Trial like you train.  Maintain same criteria and responses for obstacle performance, handling, cues, attitude, focus, etc in all environments both training and trial.  To not creates confusion and can make it really hard to get the same performance you get in practice in competition.  Just look at how many people say, “He only does this in the ring!  At practice he’s a different dog!”  Often it happens because the dog realizes early on their handler isn’t the same person in a trial that they are in practice.  Their handler has different criteria and rules in a trial and responds differently.  (it can also happen for other reasons but rather often it’s at least in part the reason I just listed)  And going back to #1 if you don’t trust you’ve trained it to where you can trial like you train, don’t trial it yet.

and 5. Trial to find holes in your training.  When you trial to find your weak spots, it helps you push yourself to improve your practice and training, and find the challenge in the courses.  It helps you to try new things in practice and then on course.  It gives you information and data on where to hone your training and where to focus your practice for visible improvement.  It allows you to continue to work towards that ideal you established when you started off reading the rules.  

Zora with her 1st NATCH ribbon

Here’s what I don’t do.  I don’t walk into any competition run with the goal of qualifying.  When you walk onto the course with the goal of qualifying in mind you are more likely to accept a lesser criteria or micromanage things on course (ie see point # 4), and to change who you are toward your dog in the ring, and by doing that increase the odds over time your qualifying rate will actually decrease.

I’d say my formula has been rather successful for me over the years.  Looking at Zora in 2017 out of 175 competition agility runs we had an 81% Qualifying rate for the year, completed 2 NATCHes and a Versatility NATCH, qualified for NADAC Championships and then won our division there.  Our class with the lowest Q rate was tunnelers because 40% of our runs in tunnelers this past year I chose to work our extreme distances skills and attempt Bonus runs.  None were qualifying runs but all were super awesome and furthered our training practice.  And in Rally in 6 competition runs we earned our Rally Novice all 3 runs with perfect 100 scores, and Rally Advanced in the next 3 trial runs scores of 77 (serious handler errors that run), 98 and 100.

And with that, agility trial season 2018 begins next weekend!  With our complete lack of usable yard space for the past months, and therefore lack of agility specific training, I’ve only entered us a couple of runs one day.  We’ll be using those to get some rust off and I’m walking into it assuming we’ll be training a lot on the field.  Remaining true to my criteria means success.

Zora and I exiting the agility ring together after a run.  Happy and smiling cheering at each other

Circus Dogs!

Tags

Dog Training, fun, group class, happy, play, positive reinforcement, teaching, training humans, tricks

I think I need to consider renaming my Thursday night advanced class “Mechanics.” Or maybe “Laugh till you cry” as that seems to be what we do each week. Lol.

Last night, per the group’s request, we focused on teaching a number of tricks that built off of skills they already had in their tool box.

We laughed so hard. “Guys, stop a minute, MECHANICS!” As the humans contorted and twisted. We broke the movements down and wa-la the dogs got it.

By the end of the hour we had a group of circus dogs! Weaving through legs, circling canes, leaping over legs and through arms, crawling. It was a hoot and a blast. We all, humans and dogs alike, left smiling and happy.

Loopy Stays

Tags

chronic pain, competition, Dog Training, fibromyalgia, obedience, positive reinforcement, progressive training, Zora

Training formal competition obedience stays is not something I’ve, in the past, been great with.  Informal stays, good at teaching those.  Stay on your bed, stay at the start line, moving wait, wait for release at doors, stay while I clip your leash on, wait for release to eat your meal, stays based with some level of impulse control, know how to do that, do it rather well overall.

Zora lying on a dog bed

Tom lying on his blue mat

But formal sit your dog, leave your dog, walk away, stand facing your dog for 1-3 minutes, return to your dog, walk around your dog back to heel position, wait for ‘exercise finished.’  Yea, a weakness for sure.

In the past when I’ve competed with dogs the stays have always been stressful for me.  The most likely place we would NQ.  Ok sit and stand stays.  Down stays, never worried about those.  Its been hard for me in life to embrace the idea that the dog is to stay in whatever position I asked to begin with for an extended period of time.  Basically all of the dogs I’ve ever had in life after a while would rather lie down as they find it more comfortable and I’ve never really been able to justify in my head a fault in their logic. In part because of my own personal experience with trying to maintain positions (painful) and because I didn’t find training stays fun.

This time around, a goal of mine is confident stays.  In all 3 positions.  I want to walk into the ring for any of our stay based exercises: stand stay, sit stay, down stay going “We absolutely got this!”  Confident in our training and that we’re going to rock the stays.

So I went back to the drawing board on how to teach stays.  What I’d attempted in the past clearly wasn’t doing it for me, so I pretended I knew nothing and went back to my research, thinking, processing, planning stage.

And I found a few articles on Loopy Training.  The duration ends the behavior.  With clear, clean loops of behavior throughout.   And I went “duh” as that’s what I do for training anything else, why the mental road block for applying it to formal stay training?  So here we are, Zora and I going back to bare bones and doing Loopy Stays.

My criteria for our formal stay includes criteria for both me and for Zora.

• Me: feet and body position straight to start, hands at my side, clean silent pause after the set up, clean clear cue to position (for down and stand), clean silent pause after position change, clean clear verbal and signal cue to ‘stay’, step off with my right foot, cross my arms across my chest, turn and face my dog, weight on which ever leg hurts less with knee slightly bent (ie don’t try to stand solid, as I can’t sustain that!), breathe, watch Zora’s front feet.
• Zora: sit straight in heel position at set up, clean movement into cued position, feet solid (no shifting or dancing!), quiet body (no vocalizing, minimal tail wagging as that’s a sign she’s getting wound up) for the duration of the held position.
• We both build up for gradually increasing lengths of time, and distance, in a multitude of places, with increasing distractions.
• After I’ve got her and me solid up to 1 minute, I’ll go back and add in the walk around her back to heel on the return.  She has a training history of that already, the stay solid in position while I walk around.
• Build up each position to 2 minutes (as formal stays in obedience are sit and down 1 minute each, or at least will be come May 1st, and stand stay I doubt would ever be needed for a full 2 minutes but if I have that also solid again I’ll feel confident) with me both 6′ away (on and off-leash), 15′ and 40′ away (off leash).

What that looks like right now for us?

Zora and I set up, her at heel beside me, I cue ‘stay’ and take 1 step in front, then I watch her little adorable front feet as I count, “a, b, c.”  Click, return, treat.  Praise, and then reset.

At present for the first 2 reps if I go beyond ‘a,b,c’ she is likely to start shifting her feet.  So I stay at ‘a,b,c’ for the first 2 reps, then if she’s been solid for those we go to ‘a,b,c,d,e,f,g’ quite easily.  Those first 2 for her right now, if they aren’t clean, we go to ‘a,b’ or even ‘a’ until clean for a couple of reps.

Baby steps, take our time, build the confidence and clarity.  We got this!

 

Dog Training Math

Tags

Dog Training, Fenzi Team Titles, fun, happy, obedience, positive reinforcement, Tom, Zora

Dog training is my happy place.  Lately one of the few times I feel happy, so I’ve been doing it a lot.  Few minutes here and there throughout the day can add up quickly.  I just did a loose addition of the short (less than 10min, most more like 2-3min) sessions the dogs and I have had today and not including the time we were out on a walk, we’ve trained a total of closing in on 2 hours already today.

Waiting for the timer to tell me my lunch has cooked, we practice position changes.

Take the dogs out to toilet, and we end up practicing heeling games.

I need to use the restroom, I first to ask the dogs to hold a sit stay until I return.

Waiting for the plumber to arrive, we practice pivots.

Here and there I grab a handful of cookies and we play some training game.  Fronts, finishes, dumbbell holds, stays, sits, stands, downs, pivots, recalls, go outs, targets.

The dogs rarely tell me they’d rather not.  We’re all training junkies, the dogs and I.

2 minutes here.  10 cookies there.  5 minutes over there.

The moments add up.

Hmm, on further examination, maybe this explains my unplanned 3hr nap yesterday afternoon…

Zora sound asleep belly up in the red duvet cover

Power of Positive Reinforcement

Tags

Dog Training, philosophical, positive reinforcement, relationship, thoughts, training humans

This is a story about my husband, W.  He’s a quiet, introverted soul, with a wicked sense of humor and a tendency to perfectionism.

3 years ago he was laid off from a job with a company he’d been with for about 10 years.  In his previous job if you asked him if he liked his work he’d shrug and say, “It’s a job.”  In his previous job there was very little feedback from the higher ups.  Very little instruction.  No encouragement to learn new skills.  Very little interaction really.  As a result, my very intelligent spouse often felt like he didn’t know what he was doing.  That he had no marketable skills.  That he was employed not because of the fact that he was skilled, intelligent, good at his job but because at his very first interview 10 years prior he got the initial interview because another employee he happened to know recommended his resume.  None of which was true, but the set up and work environment was such that he received incredibly little reinforcement for what he did other than a regular pay check and a small gift card from his boss around the holidays.

His project ended, the company didn’t have any more in the works, he and loads of others were laid off.

He then 3 years ago got a job doing software quality assurance for another company.  He’d heard mixed reviews about the company on-line, mostly about their pay scale and that they had high turn over because of it, but he felt like he got the job on his own merits and it was an offer that worked for our life and budget so he took it.

In this job he’s encouraged to learn new things, and rewarded when he does.  The management isn’t overbearing but also not completely hands off.  And he randomly gets these nice ‘we appreciate this x,y,z thing that you did.  your input and work is appreciated’ letters, or other acknowledgements.  For example last year at a quarterly meeting of some kind he got this little star shaped trophy thing for acknowledgement from his boss for his work on some part of a project.  He laughs about it, yet there is a reason he didn’t throw it out or bury it in a drawer.

These things make a huge difference.  Seriously, my husband who in his old job never talked about work, talks about work.  Yesterday he was all sheepish smiles when I asked how his day was and he said he got one of those ‘we appreciated your valued input’ letters for some specific input he’d given on a proposed program feature a few weeks back.  He didn’t do anything major, and he wasn’t the only one who had been asked by this particular manager to give input on the proposed feature, and yet the manager (who was manager of a different group than his, so not even one of his direct supervisors) made a point to thank and acknowledge on an individual level those who had given input.

It was a letter.  No money.  No award.  Not even instantaneous.  A letter of acknowledgement and appreciation for his input.  A simple piece of paper (it might even have been an email, I have no idea).  A brief letter, yet one that said exactly what he had done and why it was appreciated.  Not a generic ‘thanks for what you did’ letter, but a pointed specific ‘you have been seen, heard, and we appreciate all that you do’ note.

This and other similar practices at this company, make such a huge difference in how he thinks and feels about this job.   Makes a huge difference about how he acts in this job, he doesn’t spend the day watching the clock, he doesn’t do the bare minimum, he doesn’t drag his feet getting out the door each morning.  Instead he seems to genuinely enjoy his job and what he does.  He’s at a job now where he doesn’t want to leave because he feels like he’s good at what he does.  He feels competent, that he knows how to do this and do it well.  He was good at what he did at his past job too, but because no one ever told him that, never acknowledged it, he always felt like an imposter, that he had no real skills, that anyone could have done what he did (not true at all).

When I think about this in terms of dog training, it simply reminds me of the importance and power of giving input.  Acknowledging hard work, effort, thought.  About the power of feedback and acknowledgement for encouraging people and dogs to enjoy their work, to want to improve, to take risks and try new things.  Showing value and appreciation for the things your dog does both large and small, can make a huge difference in your relationship and the work you both do together.

My wonderful hubby sitting with his favorite corgi dog snuggled on his lap

 

 

Waiting at the Vet’s Office

Tags

behavior change, Dog Training, empowering our dogs, positive reinforcement, Tom, training humans, veterinary, veterinary behaviors

Today Tom had a veterinary appointment.  Not routine but nothing major, likely a simple skin infection.  10 days of antibiotics will hopefully do the trick.  Thankfully.

Tom in harness and leash lying down in his safe place, positioned between my 2 feet.

I find waiting at the vet’s office hard.  Emotionally hard.  I’m not just talking about when seeing a person clearly upset having had to make a difficult decision there, though that is always heart wrenching.  I’m talking sitting waiting at the vet’s office observing, overhearing people interacting with their pets is hard.  Really emotionally hard.

The people who know their pets are stressed but have no idea how to really help their pet feel safer at the vet.

The dogs and cats feeling overwhelmed, scared.

The animals enduring a stressful procedure or event such as getting on the scale or getting a vaccine and no one valuing how hard that was for them.  No real praise, no real support.

Today the hardest for me was right before we were called into an exam room.  A dog was given an intranasal kennel cough vaccine in the waiting room while Tom and I waited.  It was clearly hard on the dog.  After it was administered, the owner ignored the dog.  No engagement, no acknowledgement, no praise, no offering of a pet or a treat.  Just ignored while the dog tried to make it clear that he really just wanted to leave right now please.

I wanted to cry.

It doesn’t take much for a pet owner to have some sympathy for their pet.  To think about how to make this experience easier on them.  To acknowledge all their animal is doing right and how hard they are trying to tolerate it all.

It takes a little more to actively practice low stress handling and husbandry practices with their dog or cat.

It takes a little more than that to practice vet visit prep exercises before hand at home.

It doesn’t take much for a veterinary practice to offer such information and resources to their clients as standard practice.  To empower and encourage each and every client to support, sympathize and help their pet feel safe.  To train their staff and organize their clinic in scientifically valid ways to increase comfort for the animals.  The late Dr Sophia Yin’s company has some of the most widely and well known resources for low stress handling techniques in the veterinary setting.

But all of those things help immensely in increasing a dog’s comfort at the vet and immensely in increase you dog’s feelings of trust and safety toward you.

There are little thing every dog owner consider to make the veterinary setting easier on their pet.  Some of my go tos are:

• Stop in for a weight only check so the vet doesn’t always mean unpleasantness to your dog.
• Always bring you dog’s favorite treats with you and give them to your dog generously during your time in the clinic.  Always bring more than you think you might need.   If your dog can’t have food due at that appointment to a procedure or medical reason, bring their favorite toy.
• Practice having your dog stand or sit still on a bathmat or towel at home.  Bring the same bathmat with you to the visit, place it on the scale then ask your dog to sit or stand on it as you’ve practiced.
• Train a nose to hand or chin to palm target behavior on cue.  This can be very helpful during exams giving your dog a focus point and place to keep their head.
• Praise your dog and stay mentally engaged with them throughout the time you are in the vet hospital.
• If your dog enjoys physical touch and massages, pet and massage them while you wait.
• If your dog thinks the waiting room is stressful, wait in the car or parking lot with your dog, asking the staff to come notify you when it’s time for the vet to actually see your animal.
• If your pet is stressed, singing to them can often have an amazingly positive effect I’ve found.  Hum a nice quiet melody while you talk in a relaxing tone to your dog or cat.
• If your vet has a history of needing to muzzle your dog for added safety, condition your dog to be comfortable wearing a muzzle at home.  You want your dog to see the muzzle and feel, “Yay!  Muzzle time!” not experience fear, anxiety or discomfort.
• Empathize and sympathize with your pet throughout the experience.  Acknowledge that you know it’s hard and you appreciate all that they are doing to get through the appointment.  And of course remind them you love them very much.
• Advocate for your dog.  Ask for little de-stress breaks during the exam.  Play little targeting or sit down games while you are talking to the vet.  Ask the vet to move things around in the exam room to increase your dog’s comfort.  For example today I asked the vet technician to grab a no-slip mat for Tom to sit on when we had to do his skin scraping so he’d feel secure sitting there during the procedure.  I knew the slippery linoleum floors would make it harder for him to sit upright and feel safe.  The technician was happy to get it for me and the procedure was done easily with as minimal stress on Tom as possible.
• Ask for help or further resources to aid in reducing your dog or cat’s stress.  There are many behavioral techniques and skills that can be practiced and conditioned to further help your pet feel safe, secure and cared for during medical events.

Knowledge and awareness are empowering.  Vet visits don’t have to be traumatic for our pets.  Each of us can do something positive about it.

via Daily Prompt: Sympathy