Cooperative Care

Cooperative care is the idea that animals can be taught to voluntarily engage in their own healthcare and related handling. It has been successfully implemented at many zoos worldwide, among massive and dangerous species, such as lions and elephants.

By properly socialising your puppy, you have already laid a strong foundation for cooperative care training. Now it's time to systematically develop a cooperative care behavioural repertoire that will make healthcare and routine hygiene a breeze!

Passive Associations

The essence of cooperative care training lies in forming strong positive associations with caretaker handling by touching the puppy, then presenting a treat. The touches must always be done at a level the puppy already deems acceptable, then systematically altered within the puppy's comfort bubble, gently expanding this bubble to include what would initially have been considered invasive procedures, such as blood draws or ear cleanings.

Work on specific parts of the body one at a time. For instance, teach your puppy to enjoy paw and nail care by starting at the shoulder and pairing with treats, systematically moving toward the paw.

1. Touch your puppy's shoulder, then feed a treat.

2. Simultaneously retract both hands: the touching hand and the treat hand.

3. Repeat several times until your puppy is showing signs of expecting a treat after each shoulder touch.

4. Slightly extend your touch in the same location before feeding a treat. You can count to 1 second in your head. If your puppy moves away, then retract both hands and try again with less duration - try half a second.

5. Once your puppy is deliberately waiting, touch slightly lower on the shoulder.

6. Repeat the process of building a sustained touch over several repetitions before systematically moving lower.

7. Once you reach the paw, it is especially important to progress in tiny puppy steps:

   • touching

   • adding duration

   • picking up the paw with no duration

   • picking up the paw with duration, building up to 10 seconds

   • gently handling the paw

   • gently handling the nails

   • touching nails with clippers

   • air-clipping

   • barely trimming the tip of a single nail

Training passive associations can be tedious, but it's important to touch on each step even if only for 1-2 repetitions, which many puppies will happily do.

Active Cooperative Care Behaviours

• remaining still

• muzzle conditioning

• chin rest

• nose targets

• paw targets

• examination positions

Most of these behaviours are beyond the scope of a six-week puppy class, but in the passive associations section, you've already begun working on the first behaviour every good patient must learn: being still! You will also learn how to introduce a comfortable basket muzzle in such a way that your puppy will actively choose to place her nose in it and prance about with her strap-on treat dispenser!

Muzzle conditioning

Like a chin rest, a hold can facilitate everything from basic husbandry to veterinary handling.