When it comes to bathing your puppy or dog, now is a great time to teach your puppy to enjoy bath time, and have control or agency over the grooming activity. As a Fear Free certified dog training professional, we call this teaching cooperative care. It greatly reduces an animal’s stress by giving that animal agency (choice and control) over what happens. This video and post shares puppy training tips for doing this.
Peaches is a puppy cavalier king Charles spaniel and she DOES NOT like baths. Here is the problem with that. In her life, she is going to need a lot of baths. Bathing your dog or puppy comes with sharing your life with one. So, we wanted to start early teaching her cooperative care for grooming. This game began the process of teaching Peaches that bath time in the sink is a good thing – at least a neutral thing but even better, a good thing! Positive experiences happen as a result of being in the sink.
And we wanted to build her confidence further by teaching Peaches that she has a voice. She has the control to tell us YES, she is ready to be put into the sink, or NO, she does not want to go into the sink in that moment.
That is what cooperative care in dog grooming and handling (and other animals) is all about when we talk about Fear Free.
This is how we planned our first lesson of the Rub a Dub Sink Game. Note that our first lesson was as far as we have gotten so far on this.
RUB a DUB Sink Game to teach cooperative care for bathing your puppy or dog
First: I put a surface on the bottom of the sink so that it would not be slippery for Peaches. I didn’t want to take any chance on her slipping and having a negative experience. We also DID NOT include any water. This was all about initially teaching her the sink is a safe place where good things happen to her.
Second: We put a non-slip mat on the floor near the sink. Ultimately Peaches owner may get a different mat – one that is different and distinct that only comes out when it is Rub a Dub Sink Time.
This mat is Peaches GREEN LIGHT place to sit. Initially she got treats for just coming and sitting on the mat (I sent her off the mat so that she would practice coming back to it). Then when she sat on the mat, I shaped the behavior of totally picking her up by first putting my arm around her, then marking that and sending her off to get a treat. This transitioned to my picking her up a little and putting her back down, etc. until I held her all the way to my chest, marking at each step and sending her off with a treat.
We got to the point where I picked her up and then put her in the sink, then took her out and gave her treats. She was still very relaxed with the game so I knew I could progress.
At that point, once she was in the sink, I gave her treats while she was in the sink. Her body continued to be relaxed so I kept giving her treats and talking to her. Then picked her up and put her down to start the game again.
Each step along the way, I am watching Peaches body language for relaxation or any sign of stress. If I saw stress signals, I would know we needed to back up and make smaller steps or approximations.
This is where we left off.
Third: We did not get to this point in that lesson. With this game, introducing water would be gradual the same way – watching Peaches body language and going at a pace that she tells us she is continuing to be comfortable.
