Name:
Voluntary head dunk: cooperative care for irrigating canine noses and eyes and rapid cooling
Description:
Voluntary head dunk: cooperative care for irrigating canine noses and eyes and rapid cooling
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Duration:
T00H04M44S
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Upload Date:
2025-01-02T16:15:23.5746251Z
Transcript:
Language: EN.
Segment:0 .
Voluntary head dunk cooperative care for irrigating canine noses, eyes, and rapid cooling. Presented by Cynthia Otto, Alena Heyer and Vicki Berkowitz. Acknowledgments to the Penn Vet Working Dog Center and the funding support AKC Canine Health Foundation and Wise K9 Photography. As a veterinarian, I have seen firsthand the importance of cooperative care in our practice. When animals are stressed or anxious, it not only makes my job more difficult, but also puts the animal's health at risk.
That's why I believe in using methods like positive reinforcement to encourage voluntary participation in veterinary procedures. Absolutely. From a trainer's perspective, positive reinforcement is essential for building trust and cooperation with dogs. They learn to associate good behavior with rewards, which makes them participants in their own care. Cooperative care not only benefits the animals, but also makes my job easier and safer.
Positive reinforcement training is not just about teaching tricks. It's about creating a positive relationship between the dog and their caregiver. Cooperative care and positive reinforcement go hand in hand. By working together, veterinarians and trainers can ensure that animals receive the care they need in a way that is safe, effective and compassionate. It's all about building trust and cooperation with their animals.
For a dog, nothing is more fun than bounding across a field. But playing in the grass, hunting in the woods, or working in a dusty environment can result in dust and debris in their eyes and up their nose, leading to local inflammation, nasal discharge, or ocular injury. In addition to having a runny nose, sneezing may be an indication of nasal irritation or a foreign body, something that would make us want to blow our nose.
It is a challenge to get a dog to blow its nose. Teaching your dog to blow its nose. Using positive reinforcement, the dog learns to immerse its nose in a container of clean room temperature water. We start by placing a treat in the empty container and letting the dog retrieve it. Next, we add enough water to the container so it covers the entire bottom, but no deeper than the fleshy part of your dog's nose.
As we add double the initial amount of water, we can now observe how the dog is starting to blow bubbles into the water as the dog picks up the treat. As we move on, we increase the water depth. If your treats float, and/or your dog is not blowing bubbles into the water, you can hold the treat underwater with your hand to encourage the dog to breathe and reach under the water for the treat.
As the dog breathes into the water, mark and reward for the desired behavior. Good good. Voluntary head dunk irrigating eyes, noses and rapid cooling. Similar to teaching a dog to clear their nostrils, we can teach our dog to learn to immerse it's head in a container of clean, room temperature water using positive reinforcement. When starting to teach this behavior, we want to ensure we have a treat or toy that ideally does not float and a deep enough container for the dog to be able to immerse their head.
We start by placing the toy in the empty container and allowing the dog to retrieve it. Step wise, water is gradually added until the toy or treat is covered with water. Eventually, more water is added until it is deep enough to require the dog to immerse it's head past it's eyes to retrieve the toy or treat. An additional application of the voluntary head dunk is to provide cooling for dogs after exercise.
We know that dogs rely on panting to cool, but they also increase the blood flow to their heads, tongues, and nasal passages. In our research, we have shown that when a dog dunks its head in cool water after exercise, the blood flowing to their head is rapidly cooled, thus cooling the whole dog. This home first aid approach should only be used with dogs as a voluntary cooling method and not for dogs that are so hot that they can't stop panting or dogs that have collapsed.
Those dogs require cool water immersion and veterinary care. Similarly, if using the voluntary head dunk to flush the eyes or nose, persistent irritation or discharge warrants veterinary attention.
