08/19/2018
DOES YOUR DOG HATE NAIL TRIMS?
Please read this if they do and you want to help fix it. You can also use this method for any dog that shows fear of things or situations. Hope this helps ya’ll!
Xo Laura
WHY I ENCOURAGE THE USE OF CLASSICAL COUNTER CONDITIONING INSTEAD OF OPERANT CONDITIONING FOR NAIL TRIMS:
When I see the mention of clickers, marker words or a dog that gets a “reward” for nail trims, this tells me that these people are using Operant Conditioning. What that means is that the dog must perform a specific behavior in order to be given its reward. If it doesn’t do the behavior, it gets no reward. This works great for behaviors like sit, down, focus, etc, because it increases the frequency of those behaviors happening.
*For fear-based behaviours*, like fear of loud Dremels, clippers, handling or restraint, I do not recommend using the above technique. Can it work? If you are very, very educated on dog body language, threshold, treat delivery placement, reinforcement zones, reinforcement rates, etc, then yes, this could, in theory, work. However, what usually happens when people do OC instead of CC is the dog is asked to tolerate/be still for more exposure than he’s comfortable with. If he shows you his true feelings and pulls away, he gets no food. If he is able to swallow his feelings and stick it out, he gets the food, but his stress builds little by little and nail tools become a cue for conflicted, anxious feelings - because they are repeatedly asked to do a behavior that goes against what their natural inclinations are. This creates a dog that is fidgety, fast moving, jumps at the marker word, and seems overly food motivated as they try to cope with the stress in their bodies. This is the opposite of those calm, sleepy dogs we see when we use CC.
The reason is because when we use OC, we don’t change how the dog feels, we just change how much they are able to tolerate for the reward. They will still feel uncomfortable, but now instead of pulling away to indicate discomfort, they will suppress that and hold still for food. This creates conflict and conflict creates anxiety. Over time, your kibble bits aren’t good enough, and you need increasing values of food to keep the dog still, until you end up placating them/distracting with nearly constant food. Handlers that use OC tend to see their dogs plateau at some point, because their dog has reached the limit of what they will tolerate for food. At some point, safety and comfort wins out over food. Some dogs even start avoiding the entire process.
Operant works for behaviors like sit because the dog is not inherently fearful of sitting. Operant doesn’t work well for nail trims because there are many pieces about nail trims that are scary - restraint, loud buzzing objects, pressure on the nail, human face very close to their face, pain in the past. To combat fear, we have to first change how they FEEL with CC, and THEN, once that is done, we can switch to Operant.
Many people choose to never switch to OC, myself included. When you switch to Operant, you chance the dog losing its +CER, as you’ve changed the rules of the game. We recommend following the CC rules forever with your dog, because there will be no chance of regression like there is when you switch to OC.
Examples of Operant:
-dog must stay still for one nail to earn a treat
-dog must not growl to earn a treat
-dog must stay on mat, laying on side for one nail touch to earn a treat.
-your dog has to wait until he hears, “Yes” to get a treat
*If there’s a specific thing your dog has to do during nail trims, you are accidentally using Operant Conditioning.
Examples of Classical:
-you move your hand toward your dog, then give a treat
-you touch the Dremel to your dog’s shoulder, then give a treat
-you clip raw spaghetti in clippers behind your back and then give your dog a treat after the sound
-you hold paw for 5 seconds duration, and then give a treat
*If you give a treat regardless of your dog’s behavior, you’re doing a CC protocol. There is no criteria your dog must do to get food. Exposure = food. If the dog does a behavior we don’t like (ie growl, pull away), we still give a treat for exposure, but then lower the intensity of our repetitions (Desensitization).
Classical: exposure ➡️ food
Operant: exposure ➡️ behavior ➡️ possible reward based on dog’s behavior
Classical changes how a dog feels.
Operant changes how a dog behaves.
By doing classical conditioning and changing how a dog feels, we naturally change how a dog behaves without doing anything at all.
If we focus on operant conditioning, we change some of how a dog behaves, but only to a certain point, as how he feels becomes more and more of a roadblock.
The reason why I encourage CC over OC is because 95% of the dogs that dont like nail trims are frightened by nail trims. A frightened dog asked to do behaviors in front of their trigger is either not going to work at all, or end up with an anxious, conflicted, overaroused dog, that still struggles with nail trims long term.
Our first step for successful trims is to change how the dog feels about trims!!!
