CANINE
Empowerment for a Better Quality of Life
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Miki Saito outlines the many things we can do to help enrich the lives of visually-impaired and blind dogs
hen looking after a blind dog, it is vital to know his abilities as well as his challenges so we do not limit his world any more than necessary. Blind dogs still need to explore and achieve things on their own. All we have to do is set up their environment differently and approach training in a new way to ensure their safety. We need to consider the potential frustration, confusion and fear caused by the loss of vision. With this in mind we need to help of blind dogs these dogs use their sense Owners should make sure they of smell, hearing and touch do not limit their dog’s world any more than is to shape new ways of strictly necessary achieving goals and interacting with the world. We can increase what a blind dog can comfortably do by creating a good environment for the dog, one that enables him to safely use his other senses and abilities to get desired outcomes without fear or pressure.
A Safe Environment
If a dog is in the process of going blind or has just lost his eyesight, first and foremost give him sufficient time to adapt to his new condition. Likewise, if he was recently adopted, moved to a new place, or put in an unfamiliar situation, give him time to study that situation. Do not rush him. Focus instead on ensuring his safety and helping him to feel safe. Let him decide when he is ready to learn new things. Creating an aid station will help the blind dog adapt to his loss of sight. This is an area which has all of the dog’s essentials: a water bowl, a crate and an absorbent pad. These items must always be arranged in exactly the same way. For more details on how to implement the aid station strategy, see Blind Dog Training. Other basic safety strategies include installing baby gates at the top and bottom of each stairway and covering the corners and legs of furniture with cushioning material such as a yoga mat. This helps the dog move around the house safely. Once he learns where everything is, a blind dog will retain that information and create a map in his head of the house layout and the location of furniture. 32
BARKS from the Guild/May 2015
Teach Tricks
The ability to see provides us with an immediate understanding of the safety of various situations and helps us to avoid and escape danger. Loss of vision can make a dog anxious and put her on maximum alert and may make her extra sensitive to sounds and touch. We can teach a blind dog not to fear sound or being touched by having those stimuli predict good events. The emotion a stimulus elicits is known as a conditioned emotional response (CER). If a dog is experiencing a negative emotional response to a stimulus, systematic desensitization and counterconditioning are commonly used to change it to a positive emotional response. Counterconditioning is only effective if the dog feels safe while still detecting the stimulus. In The Many Faces of Behavior Myopia: Recognizing the Subtle Signs (BARKS from the Guild, October 2014, pp. 14-19), Anderson and Steinker refer to this emotional state as the zone of safety/joy. Keeping a blind dog in this zone is challenging because she detects the stimulus and situation differently than dogs with normal vision. This makes it difficult to adjust the level of stimulus appropriately. I find that teaching a trick using shaping keeps the dog in the safe zone as she learns to associate sound and touch with positive outcomes. I teach two major categories of tricks. The first category simply reinforces the dog for voluntarily making a sound or touching something. The second category of tricks uses a sound or touch as a prompt or cue. If a blind dog has already overreacted to the stimulus or is very fearful before starting training, I start by teaching a trick in the first category. If she is not afraid, I can use a trick from the second category. Typically this will be teaching hand targeting, snapping the fingers as a cue. If you are interested in these tricks and the way to teach them, visit my YouTube channel. The purpose of teaching tricks is not only to change the CER of the stimulus. Through these training sessions and nose games,