I recently listened to a conversation between a veterinarian and her clients regarding behavior modification. She was doing her best to describe a training technique called desensitization and counter conditioning or “DS/CC.” The basic principle is we take a trigger or stimulus that causes the animal distress, dilute it out into a small enough package that the dog doesn’t feel triggered by it, then expose them in a positive, constructive way. For those who are not familiar with learning theory and shaping behaviors, DS/CC is an extremely complicated technique. It requires a lot of observation, planning, and timing – something not even a lot of typical dog trainers possess. It is, however, an important protocol for helping fearful animals, so I wanted to take some time to explore it, what influences it, and where peoples’ hang ups might be.
To start us off, we need to go through a couple definitions:
Arousal
Arousal is a word describing emotional intensity. It doesn’t tell us what kind of emotion is present – it can be positive, negative, or mixed. It simply describes amplitude.
Stimulus
A stimulus is anything an animal can perceive. As humans, we often think of sights and sounds, but it could also be any type of touch, pressure, smell, taste, etc.
Trigger
The trigger is a stimulus that an animal perceives that increases their arousal levels. For positive emotional responses this could be the sight of a ball or the smell of hot dogs cooking. For negative emotional responses this could be a large truck or thunderstorm.
Baseline
The arousal level of an animal “at rest.” Arousal can never be completely zero. All animals need a certain amount to get up, eat, go to the bathroom, etc. This is a theoretic concept that provides insight to how chronically stressed an animal might be and how it influences their responses to triggers.
Threshold
This is the level of arousal needed for a specific behavior to manifest. In behavior therapy, it’s often the behavior we are trying to change such as barking, growling, biting, etc. Every behavior will have a different threshold at which it will manifest.
Let’s take a look at a couple examples.
This is what a typical veterinary visit looks like. They get to the office, come in, some other things happen, and then they go home. You can see that during certain parts of the visit, their arousal levels will increase. As they are given treats or time to relax, the arousal goes down. With normal animals, being at the vet might be stressful, but they are nowhere near the level of arousal needed for aggressive behaviors to manifest. You can see the dotted line representing their threshold towards the top of the chart.
If we have a pet that is predisposed to anxiety and has more emotional fluctuations, their visit might look more like this one. Because this animal has an underlying emotional problem, their arousal baseline is much higher. The threshold stays the same, but now there is far less room between the baseline and that threshold. Additionally, anxious animals tend to have exaggerated emotional responses to triggers. Rather than finding something mildly perturbing, now it is a crisis. In this example, our anxious pet is going through the same process as the neurotypical dog, but they reach that threshold much more easily.
Why is this important? Because the fundamental principle behind DS/CC is to always keep the animal UNDER threshold. This is where a lot of well-meaning trainers fail. They push their trainees too hard and too fast. As a result, the animal becomes more sensitized to the trigger, not less. It may force families or trainers to throw up their hands and say that DS/CC doesn’t work. It isn’t the technique itself that is failing, but the execution. DS/CC should be a boring process. There's no excitement, no reactions.
Step 1 – Identify the Threshold
It helps to write these details down. We want to know what it looks like when our animal reaches threshold and how quickly they reach that point. For some triggers, they only need a single exposure before they reach threshold. For others, that are less intense, they would need multiple within a certain time frame before reacting.
Let’s use leash reactivity as an example.
Immediate Triggers: large dog within 10 ft, any dog that barks first, human attempting to pet him.
Gradual Triggers: 3-4 humans walking within 6 ft within 5 minutes, 5-6 vehicles within 10 minutes.
There is rarely a single trigger that sets off our unwanted behavior, though not impossible. Try to objectively monitor your pet’s specific triggers.
Step 2 – Dilute the Trigger
Now that we have identified what triggers cause an immediate reaction and what cause more gradual changes, we need to find ways to prevent our animals from experiencing them. This is where “management” comes into play. Management can come in a lot of different forms, depending on the problem. Here are some examples we might use for reactivity:
Walk in novel neighborhoods
Walk during quiet times of day
Switch to a more comfortable walking mechanism
Take the entire family versus just one person
Carry a blind fold to use when triggers come by
Walk in areas with wide roads and sidewalks
Go for very short walks (<5 minutes)
Step 3 – Develop High Value Rewards
The term “counter conditioning” means changing the learning to the opposite. In DS/CC, we’re attempting to change a stimulus from a “negative” trigger to a “positive” trigger. We most often do this with food rewards. All animals need to eat and (at least compared to play) food doesn’t tend to “amp” animals when used. Before starting your training, cut up a large amount of high value treats. These will be stinky and moist: cheddar cheese, hot dogs, meatballs, rotisserie chicken, shrimp, etc. You might need to experiment a bit to find a good fit. Whatever your treat options, chop them up into extremely small pieces – no larger than a green pea. Make sure you take least 1 cup of treats on every single walk. Invest in a good treat pouch that is easy to get your hand in and out of while training.
Step 4 – Put it Together
We decided that we’re going to go for a short, 5 minute walk, at 6:00 in the morning, along a very broad boulevard with lots of bushes and parked cars to use as visual barriers during training. I have my treat pouch, 1 cup of treats, my dog, and we’re ready to go.
As we walk down the street, we see a little Shih Tzu out for his morning walk. Even though this dog is quiet and minding his own business, my dog starts watching it. At this point, we are below threshold, but showing minor signs of distress. Without asking for any behaviors, I’m going to take ONE treat out of my pouch and hand it to the dog. The dog eats it. I reach in my pouch and take out another one. I repeat this until the other dog is about 20 ft away and my dog starts staring at me instead of the dog. Success! We kept our learner under threshold and gave a steady stream of high value treats to help her realize that wonderful things happen when that other dog is around.
Step 5 – Damage Control
We continue on our morning walk and practice our DS/CC with a couple more dogs. We’re almost home, turn the corner, and come face to face with our nemesis – the giant black Labrador. My dog immediately gets tense, hackles go up, she leans into the leash. In response, I quickly turn around, yell her name, and start running away. I might need to pull her a bit to get her going. I make lots of silly noise, act all exciting, and run to the end of the block. Once we’re there, I reach in my pouch, pull out a handful of treats, and drop them on the ground.
What did my dog learn?
My human will help me successfully get out of this difficult situation.
I don’t need to use aggression to keep myself safe.
After we are safe, I get a huge pile of chicken to help me calm down.
My human might be a little crazy…
Even if your dog starts reacting, you walk to implement the same protocol. Up until this point, your dog will have felt that the only way to protect herself is by acting aggressive. They use reactivity to keep the other animal away. Now, however, we’re teaching her an alternative. We don’t need to be aggressive. The more we practice, our “Emergency U-Turn” the more likely she’ll be to choose that response in the future.
Troubleshooting
My dog won’t eat treats
Then your dog is already over threshold. Appetite fluctuates based on stress levels. Happy, relaxed, confident dogs are always up for junk food. As the stress increases, they may start getting more amped resulting in snatching and nipping while taking treats. Eventually, the stress gets high enough that their appetite goes away completely. I love using appetite as an indicator of stress. If my dog doesn’t eat, she’s too emotional to learn. If she’s too emotional to learn, it is my job to find ways to make it so that she can.
Something else to look at is what other treats is the dog getting? If we free feed and give cookies in the house all the time, the drive for treats while on walks will go down. Always feed measured meals, allow access for 15 minutes, then pick it up. Decrease the value of treats in other training situations so that the ones that we’ll use during DS/CC have meaning. You can think of it like this: If I throw $50 bills at my kid all day for just being cute, when I ask him to work and then try to offer him $100, he’s not going to care. Instead, I give him $1 for well completed tasks. He now sees value in that money and $100 will seem much more intriguing.
My dog immediately goes over threshold
You may need to find unique ways to manage their environment. Would it work better to practice inside the house first? You can then close the blinds if your dog goes over threshold. Can you increase the distance? Maybe sit in the parking lot of a pet store but be 100ft away. Finally, if you have implemented all these strategies and still can’t make a dent in their arousal levels, your pet likely has an underlying medical problem. Now we need to go explore physical ailments such as pain, hormone issues, gut health, and chemical imbalances.
I don’t have the time to work on this
Believe me, I get it. I’m a lazy trainer myself. If you can’t or don’t want to work on DS/CC, then you will need to make some lifestyle changes for your dog. Maybe we don’t go for walks anymore. If you live in an apartment, can we do indoor potty training? Does it make a difference if someone else walks your dog? Maybe you can hire a walker to come take him out instead of you. You also need to come to terms with this being a part of your relationship with the dog. If you can’t work on fixing it, then you need to accept the behavior as it is.
Conclusion
DS/CC is incredibly important and effective at helping animals (including humans) overcome their fears. It does take some planning and preparation, but given a little time and practice, anyone can learn how to use it. Remember: keep it short, keep it positive. We don't want any reactions if we can avoid it, so this type of training will often look very boring. If its boring, you're doing it right!
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