The Perfectly Imperfect Speech Therapy Dog: Knowing When to Train and When to Manage
Do you work with a perfectly imperfect therapy dog?
I happen to have partnered with four of them as speech therapy dogs at my pediatric Speech-Language Pathology private practice. Each one is amazing, entertaining, loving….and sometimes maddening!
When I’m faced with a challenging behavior, I take some comfort in knowing that I have options for how to handle it. I can:
· throw my hands up in defeat
· train a more useful response, or
· manage the behavior
Ok, so maybe the first option isn’t very productive, but let’s be honest, sometimes it’s the knee-jerk response we all have when our fight or flight response kicks in.
Therapy dog Delta anxiously awaits the arrival of her next friend for animal-assisted speech therapy. Barking in excitement is one behavior I am always working to manage with her.
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I should pause here to note that I am NOT a professional dog trainer.
What follows are my experiences based on many years of taking different types of training classes with my therapy dogs, seeking out support from behavior specialists, and going down many a rabbit-hole researching dog psychology and training.
I cannot stress strongly enough how important it is to find a dog trainer that you resonate with and is available to consult as needed.
Training Your Speech Therapy Dog to Give a More Useful Response
When training a therapy dog we use this technique more than we probably realize.
Dog jumping up to greet people? Train a sit or lie down instead.
Dog getting pushy for attention? Train the therapy dog to stay on his or her bed until invited to participate.
Dog pulls it’s paws away when touched? Train to shake hands and associate a positive outcome (treats, praise) with paw handling.
The overall idea is for the dog to habituate to doing something that is incompatible with the behavior you don’t want to see. Whole books are written about this topic. To see my favorite click here.
(See my other favorite dog training and behavior resources on the Animal-Assisted Speech Therapy Books and DVDs page.)
Managing an unwanted behavior in a speech therapy dog.
I have personally not seen as much press given the benefits of management practices.
It is not just “giving up”, but being proactive to ensure the best possible outcome in a challenging situation when:
specific training may be difficult to implement (e.g., with behaviors that occur rarely or only in very specific contexts), or
for very hard-wired behaviors that traditional training has not been sufficiently effective to change.
As I type this, I am prepared to manage one of Delta’s challenging behaviors.
At home, I actually appreciate that she barks to let me know someone has entered our property, but here in the office it is not welcome. Barks can startle clients and upset neighboring business owners.
While Delta greets most families quietly, I have observed there are three contexts in which she tends to bark:
if a man enters through the door,
if children come running loudly down the hallway to my door, and
if someone knocks on the door.
I spent weeks trying to train an alternate response with the hope she would run to my side when someone approached the door instead of vocalizing.
I finally realized, however, that this behavior is so ingrained I needed a different approach. So now I keep higher value treats in my pocket or in a treat pouch . The second I see her start to move toward the door I call her to me and treat her for staying quiet.
(For my favorite treats and toys to include at work, check out the Therapy Dog Supplies page.)
Unfortunately this takes more vigilance on my part, so if someone comes through the door unexpectedly (e.g., a salesperson or a family arriving extra early) I don’t always catch her in time. It also makes it harder to stay focused on my to-do list during those little moments of down-time between clients.
Speech therapy dog Delta enjoys belly rubs in the down-time between animal-assisted therapy sessions.
Another behavior I manage with Delta that is extra important for a speech therapy dog is resource guarding her bed.
Resource guarding can be a scary term and bring to mind vicious dogs, but it is completely natural dog behavior and occurs on a wide spectrum. It simply means a dog is worried about a tangible item (bed, toy, treat, human) being removed so they are acting to maintain access to that item.
Delta handles the vast majority of intrusions into her space with composure, but early on in our journey (before I knew what I do now about dog behavior) we had a couple incidents where she growled when kids wanted to sit on her bed with her.
One time a child impulsively grabbed and yanked her bed while Delta was resting and she air snapped, fortunately without causing harm. I have a fantastic couple of dog training professionals I can consult who both advised me I shouldn’t ever punish a growl because it is a dog’s best way to communicate they need space and that if she snapped the air it was just a warning as she could have easily made contact if she had truly wanted to.
Through our chats I realized that:
1) I needed to have firmer boundaries of what is Delta’s personal space and teach each child to call her off the bed if they want to interact,
2) make sure Delta had more dedicated rest time within and between sessions to be able to handle the occasional unintentionally “rude” child behavior, and
3) keep her separated from highly impulsive clients unless under my direct control.
I also always heap praise and treats upon her any time a child does inadvertently step on her bed while she is resting to reinforce her tolerance.
Lastly, one more behavior I manage as needed is separating her from my extra little speech therapy clients when they are feeling energetic.
I am so thankful that Delta loves toddlers and preschoolers, especially since she is a rescue and I don’t know about her early experience with kids. But sometimes when doing child-led speech therapy we get to running around and Delta will enthusiastically want to join in.
If the child shows interest in her movements I can work this into our therapeutic interactions, but not all my little kids are motivated by a therapy dog.
I would never want to punish her for such affiliative behavior, but given her size it is just too easy for her to knock a child down, potentially hurting them and likely interrupting an important moment of engagement.
Instead, I have special, longer-lasting snacks and sunflower-butter filled kong toys ready to go when I need to close her in my inner office. I then always incorporate letting her back out to say goodbye and love on her as part of the session’s end.
I hope through these examples you can see the benefits of not just direct training, but also managing behaviors in our “perfectly imperfect” speech therapy dogs.
If you’re interested in learning more about how I partner with speech therapy dogs, get your copy of Paws for Progress: Integrating Animal-Assisted Interventions into Your Speech-Language Pathology Practice available now from ASHA Press and Amazon.
And check out the new online course, Talk to the Paw: Foundations for Therapy Animal Inclusion in a Professional Setting. Over 7 hours of content with more than 70 vide clips from actual animal-assisted therapy sessions to illustrate the the what, why, and how of therapy animal partnership!
May your days be filled with puppy wiggles and children’s giggles,
Sharlet
