04/26/2025
Cooperative care is incredible and should be used whenever possible! Making sure our dogs can be an active part of their own care and can opt in to cares is important in giving them autonomy, decreasing fear and anxiety, and improving long-term outcomes.
It’s also NOT necessary or right for every single thing.
Rig has a painful injury right now. We don’t know what’s wrong, but she hurts enough that she’s getting injectable pain meds over the weekend to keep her comfy until she can get x-rays on Monday.
The injection stings. It has to happen three times a day.
She’s trained to opt in to injections by resting her chin on an open hand when she’s ready.
I can’t think of a better way to ruin our start button behavior.
So for this particular care, we’re making it look NOTHING LIKE her monthly Adequan injections or yearly vaccines. My spouse picks her up and holds her in his arms. I inject her. We feed her a large, high-value treat and tell her how proud we are of her. No choice, no opt in, but also no poisoning of an important cooperative behavior. The goal is to be efficient and kind without a lot of fuss. It’s over before she can psych herself up about it, and then there’s an immediate distraction of something extra tasty.
For non-emergent and non-time-sensitive cares (think nail trims, ear cleans, tooth brushing, or yes, even Rig’s monthly Adequan injections), “no” from her is an acceptable answer. “No” means that we need to do more training and help her feel more confident, comfortable, and in control of the process. “No” isn’t her being stubborn or disobedient or “dominant,” it’s her telling us that she needs additional support to feel ok with that care - support we can provide by splitting down the training steps further and encouraging her to participate through easy, fun, highly-reinforced training sessions. But for controlling pain when she’s already feeling icky, that’s not something we can just put off until later.
Kindness is important in all things. Choice is also important for our pets, who have so few opportunities to make choices for themselves in their daily lives. For some situations, though, the former means that we can’t provide the latter, and that’s ok.
As our pets’ parents, we should always strive to provide the best life for them, free of pain and uncertainty. Training is an important piece of that, and we can help you develop robust communication to empower your dog be an active participant in their own cares and lives! We also advocate for responsible stewardship in making informed decisions about when NOT to use trained skills. For Rig this weekend, that includes avoiding her usual injection protocols.
Do you want to develop a cooperative care routine for your dog? From starting with solid foundations in Puppy Camp to tackling extreme aggression at the vet or groomers, we can help! Check out the comments section for links to solutions!
Picture: Rig, enjoying her pain meds.
