Medical Behaviours

 How do you know a medical behavior is ready to go? When do you tell the Vet team “yes, we can do this, lets book it in?”

First things first, we need to have the behavior established. So, what does it mean to be established?

Established means you can reliably predict that the animal will complete the requested behavior when asked, exactly as you defined it. This includes when new variables are introduced. And that’s what we’ll be looking at this month. If you can confidently complete all the variables, then your behavior is ready for a procedure.

This variable is: can another trainer complete it? Once you have established a behaviour, you should be able to give another trainer your training plan. They should then, provided they have a good pre-existing relationship, be able to give the animal the same cue you do, have the behaviour performed, and reward the animal. If that can happen, then they can begin adding that behaviour to their repertoire of things they can do with that animal in their own training sessions and you are one step closer to having an established behaviour!

This variable is: can you test it? How do you test a medical behaviour? If it’s something the Vet team will be doing themselves now is the time to get them down. If they need to wear anything specific/use any special equipment, the more they can bring with them for a ‘dry run’ the better. This lets you know how nervous your animal has the potential to be and what you need to work on.

If you’re doing an injection, ask the Vet Team how big the likely injection is and if you can use something such as sterile water to simulate it.

What time of day is the procedure most likely to happen? And following that, how does your animal respond to a training session at that particular time of day?

The more of these questions you can answer and practice, the more established you know your behaviour truly is.

The next variable is: can you complete the behaviour before the reward is given? Often times, we hold the reward out/have it visible so the animal knows its coming. Sometimes, for longer behaviours, we will also continuously reward. However, if you are set to give your animal a pre-anesthetic injection they likely shouldn’t have food. So, can you complete the full behaviour without giving the animal any food at all? Because on the day you can’t.