One of the most useful things you can train for your animal?

Recall, crate training, tactile training, harness training, not pulling on a leash, calming down, vet check, open mouth, "manicure", ear drops, greeting new people, stay, target, stationing, giving paw, walking on a narrow plank, sit, lay down, step up (parrots mainly) and the list of important/useful behaviours goes on..

Obviously there isn´t only one right answer to this, because it all depends on the situation and of course about the individual and simply because there are so many things we should train for the animals in our care to make their lives better by making it easier for those other species to live in our society and in the environment mainly planned for us humans, starting with very basics.

But what could be one of those perhaps most useful to start with when considering vet checks and routine husbandry such as nail trimming, crate training, tactile training etc.?

Can you think of any? 

There are few that can help you to train many other things to your animals and simply make things a bit clearer for the animal, making the communication easier…These include target stick and stationing.

Stationing

Having a mat/towel or something similar, easy to move station and training the animal to stay there, making it well worth it. 

Right station depends on the individual and the species...A bigger animal's station can be an object, such as a cone for example, but many birds might find a perch more comfortable although some such as swans would not be too impressed with the perch, for obvious reasons.

I have a "vet station", where I train my cat cooperative care, so basically all the more invasive health care training is happening there. These include certain tactile training, manicure, ear drops, blood draw etc. plus everything else I can think of that Mimi might need to know in the future.

I could do all that also without stationing, but having that one place where she can expect that kind of training to happen and she can choose to come there and participate gives her more control over her life and this will benefit greatly her confidence and through this it improves her welfare.

The other plus side of this "vet" station is that if the animal has a negative history on these even routine procedures, such as nail trimming it might be hard to build trust if there is no clear communication, it is even hard to keep the trust going if there is no clarity and proper choice for the animal. If the individual don't know what to expect it can't choose to participate and we are on the risk of becoming the unexpected factor in our pet's life, which creates doubt in their mind. 

Some worst occasions this might even lead to a long term stress, because the individual can't be sure what to expect from the others, who they counter daily and they start showing fear reactions towards people they live with and this can cause even physical problems. 

Obviously training should always be done in the way that animal enjoys it, but sometimes we humans make mistakes and might accidentally push it too far or we might cut too much from the nail or what ever similar unintentional, but something that is not fun for the animal. 

And if this creates even slightest bit of fear reaction, the animal would most likely associate this for that station instead of just your presence, which then would not affect your daily lives negatively., because if the vet station is not around the animal don't have to worry about these procedures in our our presence

For a nervous animal

And how is this useful?

Let´s think about going to a vet. This includes many things to train for the animal in your care, starting from crate training and/or being ok in a car to all the things happening at the vets.

There are certain things that vet needs to do in order to make sure everything is ok and these include touching quite invasive way etc. and it all happens in a new environment by a new people, unless you´ve managed to work on making vet center as a nice, familiar place, which is the end goal obviously.

So without making this all as positive for your pet as possible with a good training, it is simply too much to ask for most animals.

Going to a doctor or dentist can be timitating for us humans as well, but think about you not understanding what is happening and why. Your family member just stuffing you in a box and into a car and taking you somewhere to be poked and groped by strangers...wouldn´t you be scared?

How would you react? Would you be defensive, protecting yourself by even attacing those strangers if they would not listen you telling them to back off? Or would you simply shut down by fear and allow them to do what ever? Or would you be ok with this all? How about your feelings towards your family member who took you there and would not help you but would perhaps even assist those strangers? What about if you would be prevented to protect yourself by strangers wraping you into a towel or holdling you down? Would you be relaxed with all this? Would you want to go back to this place ever again or would you rather avoid it?

Most of us would not be ok with all the above and same goes with the rest of the animals, but it does not need to be like this.

Vet centre does not need to be the place of horrors and torment for your pet or for yourself. Most things can be trained and even though some unexpected things does happen/ things won´t always go as planned, one can still minimize the fear towards vets with the training.

So let´s start from going to the vet, crate training. You can do crate training without the station as well of course, but station can help you with it. Simply placing the station close or even inside the crate, depending on the individual, you´ll let the animal know where you would like them to go and then start building it from there.

To make it a bit more familiar and also making it clearer for your pet to know what to expect, you can station train them on a mat (shown above), which you can then take with you to the vet. Station can be moved from scale to the table telling the animal clearly what you would like them to do, so another potentially stressfull situation is handled fear-free.

Before going to see a vet you can do vet-training on a station making this as familiar for your pet as possible, so you minimize new things at the vet, in  the real situation. Best is obviously if you can go to the vets without anything bad happening there, just to have few, fun training sessions there.

Station also helps you with the scale...You can simply move the station on a scale and ask your pet to go there and you have a weight. This works similar to target stick, but allows your hands to be free.