My dog uses a talking button to tell me she wants to share a cookie with a friend -Voluntary Sharing

If you’re familiar with my approach to teaching, especially behavior modification, you know I’m a big fan of choice and consent. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with AAC buttons as literal start buttons in the contexts of cooperative care and dog-directed counter conditioning.

Here my Beauceron Gemma is pushing the “I’ll share!” button to let me know she’s ok with me handing a cookie to her friend. Of course you could just as well use another specific behavior to teach your dog to communicate the same thing (we started with a chin rest on a prop).

The nice thing about the recordable speech button in this context is that it verbalizes the idea for us humans. It makes the concept of a start button really obvious. If she says “I’ll share,” I will feed her friend. If she doesn’t push the button, I don’t do anything. She’s in charge of when and if her friend gets a cookie. In this process of Voluntary Sharing, a concept introduced by Leslie McDevitt in her book “Control Unleashed: Reactive to Relaxed", the dog in control of the speech button is directing her own counter-conditioning to voluntarily share a resource.

By allowing the dog to be in control of the counter-conditioning process, you take away the stressful elements of surprise and uncertainty. She knows exactly what will happen when she pushes the button.

Gemma is the fun police and keeps strict tabs on who gets what when. (In hindsight, maybe I should have thought twice about teaching her to count. 😁) She is also very sensitive to another dog running after a cookie, looking for a cookie, or snuffling up crumbs off the floor.

At this stage, I am using mats as visual targets to help both dogs know where they are going to be and where the other is going to be. No surprises of one dog all of a sudden showing up in the other dog’s face. As you can see, movement is a potential trigger and needs to be introduced gradually. Having both dogs loose with cookies flying in different directions on the floor might be the final goal, but we want to make sure they are successful at each step of the way to get there.

Watch closely. Because I don’t want to look at her to unintentionally prompt the behavior, I missed a head turn at 00:46 (Look At That, a taught behavior from the Control Unleashed program by Leslie McDevitt) that - in this context - should have told me Gemma wasn’t quite ready to push the buzzer button under these conditions (her friend is standing and off the mat.) She then puts her head down next to the button at 00:47. A clear NO. We’re over threshold for this rep. Adding movement and decreasing distance was too much. I ask her friend to go back on his mat. At 1:08 she decides it’s ok and says “I’ll share.”

Interestingly, Gemma is also teaching her friend to go to a station even when I don’t ask him to. He learns that she won’t push the button unless he sits on the mat. Consequences drive behavior 🙃

The idea of start button behaviors already existed before using AAC devices to teach dogs to talk with buttons became a thing. First coined several years ago by Swedish trainers Emelie Johnson Vegh and Eva Bertilsson, the term “start button" refers to an intentional behavior your dog can initiate to give consent to a known (specific) consequence. The specific start-button behavior needs to be taught first, away from the situation and context you will eventually be using it in.

DISCLAIMER: This is not a how-to training video. I know both dogs well. They are friends. Other dogs might need to start with much more space, a barrier between them, or a program of foundational exercises before you can get to this stage. I'm also a dog trainer and Certified Control Unleashed™ Instructor.
To find out more about the Control Unleashed program, check out Leslie McDevitt's official YouTube channel here    / @lesliemcdevittcu  

If your dog shows any signs of resource guarding from humans or dogs, get PERSONALIZED advice from a professional, certified dog trainer or behaviorist. Cooperative counter-conditioning is not a one-size-fits-all protocol.

Have fun playing!
❤️❤️❤️ 👣🐾 ❤️❤️❤️
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