Session #2 – Taking the Next Step
When you start up again with your next session, back up a little. If you ended with five-second gentle touches on your dog’s head, start with three-second touches. You’ll be able to progress more quickly back up to five seconds, but be sure to start within his comfort level and warm up to the place where you ended.
When he has a positive association with gentle touching up to perhaps 10 seconds, you can increase the intensity of a different stimulus – the amount of pressure. Each time you raise the bar for a new stimulus, lower it for the others – in this case you might go back to two or three seconds, with a slightly stronger pressure when you touch. Work to get that positive “Where’s My Chicken?” response with the new amount of pressure at each length of time before you increase the time again.
When he’s responding happily to a moderate amount of touch pressure at 10-15 seconds, you can increase the intensity of the third stimulus in the touch package – the position of your hand. Up until now you’ve been touching him in his most accepting spot – the top of his head. Now you’re going to begin to move your hand to more sensitive places – again reducing the intensity of the other two stimuli – time and pressure.
Perhaps you’ll try ears first. Returning to a very gentle touch, stroke one ear for one to two seconds, then feed some chicken. Repeat this until you’re getting his WMC? response to the ear-stroking, then do the same with the other ear. Gradually increase the length of time you stroke each ear gently, and when you’re getting positive responses to 10-second ear stroking, it’s time to increase the pressure. Shorten your ear strokes back to one to three seconds, but stroke the ear a bit more firmly.
Remember to be very generous with your chicken bits, feeding a morsel or two every time you stroke the ear, and several morsels as the touches get longer. When he’s happy to have you stroke both ears firmly for 10-15 seconds or longer, you can move to a new spot.
Don’t forget to reduce the other stimuli each time you move to a new touching place. After the ears, you might run your hand down the back of his neck, gently and briefly. Treat! You should find that as you work toward various new spots around your dog’s legs and body, he’ll accept new touches more quickly in many places. Adjust your pace to his behavior. If he’s giving you WMC? responses very quickly, you can progress more rapidly in your program. If he seems slower to respond, you’re probably working on or near a very sensitive place, and you need to slow the program down. He’ll tell you how slowly or quickly you can progress. Listen to him. Attempts to force him to accept your touching will backfire, big-time.
Many dogs, even those who are comfortable being touched elsewhere, are tense about having their feet handled. Take extra care as you begin to move down his legs. A few extra days – or weeks – now will pay you jackpots in the long run, when you can finally clip his nails without a violent struggle. Spend lots of time massaging the areas where your dog has come to enjoy being touched, and occasionally work on the more sensitive spots. In addition to the chicken, soothing massage sends a very positive association to the message that you are reprogramming in his brain.
It’s critically important to avoid triggering the negative associations outside your CC&D sessions. If you forget about his sensitivities and grab him during a “real-life” moment you may set your program back. It won’t hurt to skip one or two nail-trimming sessions while you work to get him to accept foot-handling without a fight.
Make sure that others are aware of the importance of respecting your CC&D program too. There’s nothing like having a friend or family member think it’s funny to see your dog’s negative reaction when they play “grab your paws” – thereby undoing all the good work you’ve done. Grrrr! I’ve been known to banish human acquaintances from my household for less!
Classical Operant Conditioning in Dog Training
A negative reaction to being touched is usually a classically conditioned response. With classical conditioning, the environment acts on the dog. That is, the dog’s brain contains a pre-programmed message that says, “Touch is BAD!” – and when the dog feels your touch he reacts, without stopping to think. The negative message could be a result of harsh handling and punishment, pain from a prior injury, or simply a lack of adequate handling and socialization when he was a pup.
This is very different from operant conditioning, where the dog acts on the environment. For example, if you say, “Sit!” the dog thinks, “Ah, I know what that means – if I put my bottom on the ground I might get a cookie!” and so he chooses to sit in order to make a good thing happen. When your dog reacts to your touch with distaste, perhaps even aggression, he’s not choosing to react that way, it just happens, thanks to that pre-programmed message in his brain.
The most effective and successful way to change your dog’s response to your touch is through counter-conditioning, which reprograms the message at a low level of stimulus that he can at least tolerate – perhaps briefly and softly touching his head. Then we use desensitization to help him accept the touching at gradually increasing levels of intensity – touching more of his body, or touching with more pressure, or for longer periods of time.
It’s almost magical to watch an effective CC&D program in progress. Some behavior changes I’ve seen as a result of this kind of behavior modification have been nothing short of miraculous, such as one family’s Chow mix and newly adopted Chow who wanted to tear each other to shreds, but became fast friends within three weeks when the owners implemented a CC&D program.
Perhaps your dog will tolerate a light touch on the top of his head, and a gentle scratch under his chin, but he becomes very tense if you do more than that, and any efforts to touch his legs and feet or his hindquarters and tail elicit serious warnings about forthcoming aggression. You believe him, and wisely don’t press the issue, but that means even simple but necessary procedures such as nail trimmings and baths are stressful and potentially dangerous.
The first step in your program is to have a complete and thorough veterinary exam, and an adjunct visit to a chiropractor if indicated. Pain is a huge contributor to aggression – if he’s hurting, all the CC&D in the world won’t change his opinion of being touched – it hurts!
Of course, if the whole point is that your dog doesn’t tolerate being touched, how do make him submit to a vet exam before you work on the problem?
Unfortuntely, it’s a necessary evil, so spend a week (or a few weeks) acclimating your dog to a comfortable cloth muzzle. Lend muzzle-wearing a very positive association by pairing its presence and application with wonderful treats. Then muzzle him before the vet or vet tech begins to examine him, in order to keep everyone safe.
Ask your whether using a sedative would help make the experience less traumatic. You might also consider products such as herbal calming agents, Rescue Remedy, and DAP (Dog Appeasing Pheremones, sold as “Comfort Zone“).
With a clean bill of health, you’re ready to begin. You’ll need a large supply of absolutely scrumptious treats – canned chicken, rinsed and drained, is my favorite for CC&D purposes; most dogs totally love it. Pick a comfortable spot on a bed that your dog loves, or lay down a cushion or a soft thick blanket for the two of you to sit on. Attach a leash to your dog’s collar so you don’t have to grab to keep him with you.
The sequence of the next part is very important. You will touch your dog’s head first, very briefly – say for one second – then feed him a tiny bit of chicken. The touch must come first because you want him to understand that the touch makes the chicken happen. If you feed chicken first, then touch, he won’t make that connection.
Keep repeating this step until your touch causes him to look at you with a smiling face as if he’s saying, “Alright – you touched me. Yay! Where’s My Chicken?” You want the “Where’s My Chicken?” (WMC?) response to happen reliably several times in a row before you proceed to the next step.
Good job! You’ve accomplished the first tiny step on a long road; he thinks being touched softly and briefly on the head is a wonderful thing. Now you must decide whether to stop the session – ending on a high note – or continue on because you both are having a wonderful time and don’t want the session to end. If you’re unsure how much longer he will work with you, it’s better to stop sooner, while you’re ahead, than to push it too far and suffer a setback.
If you proceed, the next step might be to touch him on the head, still very gently, but for two seconds. You may lose the WMC? response at first as he adjusts to the increased time, but it will probably return quickly. Continue to increase the time, very gradually, so you don’t lose the progress you’ve made. As your touches get longer, feed him several treats in rapid succession while you are touching. Remember to stop the treats when the touch stops.
Be sure to end the session before one or both of you gets bored, tired, stressed, or frustrated. You can always do another session later that day or the next. If you sense that he’s getting restless, stop the session, feed him a few extra tidbits for being a wonderful boy, and release him with an “All done!” cue. Next time, stop a little sooner – you don’t even want him to think about getting restless.
Clubs Offering:
Many dogs dislike being touched or patted on the top of the head. All it takes is a quick search on the internet to see countless photos of dogs showing stressed body language while being patted on the head. Body language signals your dog might exhibit are ducking away, lowering of the head, stepping away, putting the ears back, licking lips, or whale eye (whites of eyes visible).
Humans seem to be disposed to want to pat a dog on the head; this is likely for several reasons. A dog’s head is usually the closest part of the dog we can reach. For some dogs, we don’t even have to bend down to reach our dog’s head. Humans seem to mimic this behavior from other humans. Think of a parent lovingly stroking their child’s hair. Children may enjoy this, but most dogs do not.
Humans can also be quite rough when patting a dog on the head, and it may not be an enjoyable experience for your dog. Coupled with the fact that dogs inherently dislike something reaching down from above toward them, most dogs quickly learn to associate a hand reaching toward their head with discomfort or stress. This leads many dogs to become head shy, and they learn to duck out of the way of a hand reaching toward them. 
This can be an annoyance when you have to follow your dog across the room to put on his leash, or even downright dangerous if you need to grab your dog in an emergency and he ducks away from you.
But the good news is there are many things that you can do to prevent head shyness and even give your dog a positive association with someone reaching toward his head.
Why Won’t My Dog Let Me Touch Their Paws?
Why do dogs become fearful of things? There are a number of reasons that cause a fear response to specific triggers in dogs. The list includes, but is not limited to, genetic factors, neonatal experiences, adult experiences, etc.
The most successful way to address these fears is through a process called desensitization and counter-conditioning.
Desensitization is the process of exposing a dog to a trigger beginning at a very low intensity and gradually building. Think of a human child that is afraid of the deep end of the pool. Desensitization starts this child on the steps of the pool and over a period of time slowly moves him or her toward the deep end of the pool as he or she is comfortable with doing so. The same concept is used with fearful dogs.
Counter-conditioning is different from desensitization and is an additional technique for changing a dog’s feelings or emotional response to something that it considers scary. In dogs, counter-conditioning is most commonly done by presenting a food treat when the dog experiences the trigger while simultaneously calm. A training clicker can be used to make this process even more effective.
Counter conditioning and desensitization are normally done together. An example of a desensitization and counter-conditioning program for a dog that is fearful of being touched and petted (i.e., fear of human handling) is provided below. While this is a specific example, the principles apply to virtually anything a dog might fear.
Everyone loved Max, but he got grumpy whenever anyone tried to pet him or touch him anywhere on his body. He especially hated having his head touched; he wasn’t real fond of having his paws touched either! Max’s pet parents implemented the following plan to help Max feel better about being touched. They knew he would never be completely comfortable with being touched, but they wanted him to hopefully be able to tolerate it when it was necessary (e.g., teeth brushing, nail clipping, veterinarian checkups, grooming, etc.)
1) Max’s pet parents (the Swansons) first had to determine at what point Max became bothered when someone touched him. How close could they get to him? Where did he dislike being touched the most and the least? They determined they could touch him gently on the side of his body and he was okay with that. Any more than that and he stiffened and started to growl a little (some dogs may respond by just attempting to move away instead of getting grumpy).
2) The Swanson’s next step was to determine what food treat Max really liked. They already knew that Max loved the small training treats they had been giving him so they decided to use those. They knew that these treats needed to be very small, as Max would be getting a lot of them.
3) They decided to use a training clicker when working with Max to help these exercises be as effective as possible. Some dogs are fearful of the clicker and it shouldn’t be used in those cases*, but Max was okay with it. They were going to systematically and repeatedly touch Max, click the clicker and then give him one of his training treats. The process always looked like this: touch -> click -> treat. And they were careful to always give Max a treat every single time they clicked the clicker.
4) The technique was to start at a place on his body where he was completely comfortable and over time very slowly move to a place on his body where he was less comfortable.
5) The Swanson family also knew that it was important to have multiple adults in the family do these exercises with Max in order for him to learn that it’s okay to be touched by all types of people – not just Mrs. Swanson. It also provided a way for all adult family members to share in the training. They also knew that it is helpful to do these exercises in different locations in the house so that Max doesn’t think it’s only okay to be touched by humans in certain locations.
6) Before any of this training started, the Swanson family had a family meeting where they discussed the importance of learning the basics of dog body language so they could look at Max and know if he was uncomfortable with the pace of his treatment plan. If he was uncomfortable, they knew to back up a little. They also knew that if Max started to show aggression (e.g., barking, biting, lunging, growling, etc.) or a panicky need to escape during these exercises they would immediately abandon the training and get the help of an independently certified dog behavior professional.
7) The Swansons wondered how many of these 3-5 minute sessions it would take for Max to better tolerate being touched – they knew he would never be 100% okay with human handling, but they wondered when they would see improvement. They talked with a canine behavior specialist and he told them it could be as few as 15 sessions or as many as a 100 – or even more! He told them Max would let them know how many sessions it would take through his body language. The specialist also reminded them that Max probably would need occasional reminder or refresher sessions throughout his life.
* If a dog appears to be afraid of the sound of a clicker, then the reinforcement can change from [touch -> click -> treat] to simply [touch -> treat]. The clicker is removed, but the process remains identical. As an alternative, a verbal marker (e.g., “yes”, “good”, etc.) can take the place of the clicker [touch -> “yes” -> treat].