BH335 Dealing With Feelings: Applied Counterconditioning and Desensitization

Prework

• Ensure your pet is healthy. Always do a vet check before implementing a training plan!
• Choose a goal for your CC&DS plan. See the examples in the description above if you need inspiration.
• Planning on signing up for a Gold spot but not sure if the goal you are considering is suitable? Reach out to Irith by e-mail at Trainer@TheSophisticatedDog.com to ask!

*Note that most of the topics listed will be addressed more than once during the course. The emphasis will be slightly different each time. This will both help you internalize what you learn and deepen your understanding of each of the topics.

Theory (the geeky stuff)

• Understanding emotions
• Understanding stress
• Stress and cognition
• Classical conditioning
• Desensitization
• Counterconditioning

Application (the practical stuff)

• Canine body language* NOTE: If you’re planning to work with a different species of animal, grab a Gold spot so you can get your body language questions answered!
• Best practices for desensitization (DS) procedures
• Best practices counterconditioning (CC) procedures
• Using CC&DS together

Additional considerations (the finicky stuff)

• Management
• Preparation
• Planning
• Dealing with the unexpected
• Pacing
• Addressing problems

In Week One, Gold students will announce their CC&DS goal and begin creating a plan for reaching it. Other students are warmly invited to come up with goals to work on as they follow Gold students’ progress. The lectures in this first week will provide an overview of best practices for CC&DS, so students can get started on the right foot.

In Weeks Two through Five, we will delve more deeply into the theory behind CC&DS. We will also follow what the Gold students are doing, celebrate and support them, and discuss ways to enhance the progress they are making.

In Week Six, we will review everyone’s achievements from Weeks One through Five. We will also focus on next steps both for those who are still working towards their goals and those who have achieved their goals. (Spoiler alert: Successful CC&DS requires maintenance.)

Emotions

Video Transcript:

Hi everyone. Just a quick reminder that we are in the Dealing with Feelings applied counter Conditioning and desensitization course, and my name is Irith Bloom.

I'd like us to start out by focusing on what both counter conditioning and desensitization are really about, which is emotions. Counter conditioning and desensitization are classical conditioning techniques that are designed to change the way an animal feels about a situation among other things. What that means to us is that we need to be very aware of the emotional state of the animal as we are doing any kind of counterconditioning or desensitization.

Now, each of you probably has a target situation. You're working on a situation where the current response you're getting from the animal is not what you want, and you'd like to get a different response, probably a calmer response. So with that in mind, I want to make sure that each of you creates a clear, detailed goal for where you want your desensitization and counter conditioning work to take you:

What is the emotional response that you're actually trying to create, and why are you trying to create that particular emotional response? How will that emotional response help you in whatever that scenario is?

To help get us all in the right mindset, I have some videos for us to watch and then discuss in the forum. Let's get started.

For this first video, I'd like to just make a quick trigger warning. There will be barking that happens in this video. So if you have any animals in your household who will be distressed hearing barking, please either use headphones or turn the volume down or move those animals out of the area.

Now, with that said, as you watch these videos, I would like you to try very hard not to think so much about what you might do about this behavior, or what you think about the behavior, or how you would change the behavior of the dogs. What I want you to be focusing on is what emotion the dogs are experiencing.

What you're about to see is a couple of little terriers and what happens when there's a knock at the door. So let's watch.

That's the entire video. Feel free to go back and replay it if you'd like to. And again, think about what emotions are these dogs experiencing right now?

Now we have a different video with what I think are quite different emotions. Let's take a look at this one.

All right. Have something in mind? Always feel free to go back and replay this if you need to.

Here's another video that contains barking. So again, please take whatever precautions you need related to barking. Remember, we're not thinking about how to solve the problem, which I promise did happen for this dog. We're just thinking about what emotions the dog is experiencing.

I think that's enough of that video for us to watch. Again, remember, you're looking for what kind of emotion the dog is experiencing. Think about what you think it is, why you think that. And do feel free to go back and replay the video if you want to (although I have to admit, this is the video that I'd probably personally be least likely to rewatch).

Here's our final video. Remember, again, you're thinking about emotions the animal is experiencing. What are those emotions? Why do you think that?

Feel free to go back and re-watch that one as often as you'd like. And as a bonus, if you want to talk about what emotions the human animals in the video are experiencing, please feel free to write about that as well.

So with that, here are the next steps for everyone who's taking this course. I want you to think about the videos you saw: What emotions were those dogs experiencing? What leads you to think it was those particular emotions and not other emotions? And I realize, especially for the longer videos, there may be multiple emotions. Feel free to write about as many or as few as you'd like. But I do encourage especially gold and silver students to think about all of the different emotions they might have seen next.

Imagine you could take that emotion with you. You could just take the dog straight out of the video, ensure that their emotion stays in that range of emotions that you saw. Which of those dogs would you want to do an agility run with? Which of those dogs would you want to do obedience work with? Why did you choose that dog or some other dog?

For whichever task is mentioned above, agility or obedience, for the gold and silver students, please post your answers in the forum. I want us to have a nice, robust discussion about this. For the bronze students, please write down your answers somewhere. Jot them down, type them up, whatever it is you normally do, and then follow along in the forum to see where the discussion leads you.

Thanks so much. See you next time.