Course Details
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that influences pleasure, motivation, attention, mood and learning. It is part of the brain’s reward system that motivates an individual to seek out pleasurable experiences repeatedly.
We can use increased dopamine levels in our dogs to help with the counter conditioning process in a variety of environments and situations. Dopamine can influence emotional balance and help to reduce stress and anxiety.
So, how can we easily create more dopamine in the dog’s brain? EATING!
When we put eating into a structured process, we can harness the influence of dopamine to help your dog make a positive association to novel environments and situations. The “dopamine box” or box feeding is popular in the bite sport community and is used to build confidence, desensitize to sounds, develop duration as a concept, for scent work, tracking, and to develop working under pressure.
As with many concepts coming from the competition world, I find this is another one that has applications in the behavior world as well.
For starters, box feeding can create a visual cue that carries a positive conditioned emotional response. Not only is there classical counter conditioning going on, but it can also move into the operant realm and be used to create a ‘start button’ to empower the dog by giving them agency to start the process of desensitization and counter conditioning.
By modifying the box to accommodate for visual awareness, we can use this concept for various types of fear and reactivity issues, including environment, dog, people, and handling, not just for sound sensitivities!
In this class we will go through the process of creating a positive emotional response to the box so that we can use it for counter conditioning. Using various levels of commitment to the box, we can help modify behavior or we can go the extent of creating incompatible behavior that we can use to replace any inappropriate or unwanted behavior. This process can be used to help dogs acclimate to a novel environment, to curb their enthusiasm for over greeting people or jumping on them, for creating a positive emotional response to the presence of people or dogs they may be worried about or reactive towards and can be a tool to help with a variety of other situations.
Teaching Approach:
The items outlined in the syllabus will be detailed in a lecture and when appropriate, a video example. Each student will eventually receive a customized approach after the foundation skills are in place. There are different levels of how to use the Dopamine Box and some students may choose train to a higher level than others to utilize it.
Forums will be checked twice daily, and all posts will be responded to by me in detail with or without video support before you post again.
Instructor: Karen Deeds, CDBC Karen Deeds, is a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant through the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants (IAABC). She is the co-owner of Canine Connection in Ft. Worth, TX with her husband, Bob Deeds, a retired Federal K9 Handler on Texas Task Force I....(Click here for full bio and to view Karen's upcoming courses)
