Chief is Painting!!!

After many training sessions of shaping this behavior, we finally have Chief's first piece of artwork...and yes, it is going to be framed!! This whole process has had many small steps of learning specific skills, such as just holding a paintbrush. Who would have known that getting a retriever to hold something in their mouth would be so difficult, but actually it is.

When you have a dog, like Chief, who is very "mouthy" with toys, asking him to hold a paintbrush for a long period of time was very hard. We started with him taking it from my hand, and when he would hold for a second, he would chew the holder. So, that method didn't work. I decided to teach him just to hold objects, so many sessions focused on this behavior alone. Next, I had to decide what would be the best type of thing for him to hold in his mouth. The paintbrush alone was too small, so I tried a tennis ball (WRONG idea!!). After discussing this with professional trainers at Texas Hearing and Service Dogs, I learned my rookie mistake. We switched to a piece of foam that OTs typically issue to increase the diameter of handles for utensils, and that was the key!! This was something he could sink his teeth into but that wouldn't be something he would be interested in tearing up. It was perfect.




After many sessions of making the paintbrush "hot", I then began to add the cue "get your brush" for him to pick it up. I would toss the paintbrush across the room and have him retrieve it to encourage him to want to walk with the brush in his mouth. This then turned into "over here" cue for him to approach the canvas. The next chain of behavior was "get your brush/over here/touch" which translates to picking up the brush, walking to the canvas, and then touching the brush to the paper. The end product was a few strokes of paint on a piece of construction paper..Chief's very first piece of artwork.

Just "Nosing" Around the Therapy Room

When planning a therapy session with animals, remember that the toy you select to engage both the child and the dog can have therapeutic qualities. As I am purchasing toys for the program, I am constantly trying to assess what functional performance areas the toy could facilitate. Many of the toys can facilitate grasp, fine motor skills, visual motor coordination, and sensory integration.

One such toy is this, called "The Eog Fighter" by Nina Ottosson. This toy can be purchased directly on her website (but it is in Swedish) www.nina-ottoson.com or it can be found on Karen Pryor's Clicker Training website www.clickertraining.com. This toy is an educational toy for dogs. Snacks can be hidden under the wooden blocks and inserted into the puzzle. The dog must then figure out how to remove the blocks to retrieve the treat.

Therapeutically, this toy addresses many things. The blocks must be picked up using a 3 chuck jaw grasp pattern (thumb, index, and second hird digits) while the last 2 fingers lie against the palm of the hand. To insert a piece of treat, a pincer grasp (thumb and index finger) is used to pick up and drop the treat into the hole of the block. Visual motor skills of inserting the block into the slot addresses simple shapes for puzzles or motor control to insert a peg into a hole. Sliding the peg into position addresses visual motor control and for small children, imitates the pre-writing stroke of a horizontal or vertical line, depending on how it is positioned in front of the child.

Once the treats and pegs are in place, let the dog try to figure out how to remove them. It's fun for all!!

Here is Chief trying it for the first time.