Hi everybody! In this video I'm going to show you how you can teach your dog to be comfortable
wearing one of these cones as well as find the experience of putting it on and taking
it off a positive experience that means reinforcement is coming. So as you can see
when she puts her head in the cone and takes it out, she has an expectant look that something
good is going to happen like that. "Can you put it in good free" There are different types of cones
as well as inflatable devices to prevent your dog messing with some injury or surgery
so a cone like this, it can prevent the dog from chewing on stitches on the rest of the body
but it can also prevent the dog from kicking or pawing at an injury that's on their face. So if
the injury is on the face you want to make sure the cone is long enough that the legs can't get
into the cone if the dog turns their head to kick their face with their back legs which can happen
if the cone is too short and you want to make sure that the cone is not short enough if the
dog has an injury on their body that they can reach it with their mouth. So some dogs need
a really secure setup because it's an important really dangerous thing if the dog were to mess
with the site or you have a dog that just has an issue with stitches. I know there's some dogs
that they have this intense desire to want to rip the stitches out of their body, they find them,
you know that they're really drawn to wanting to do that where other dogs might leave the stitches
alone uh or an injury and not want to mess with it at all, like Halo, he just got neutered yesterday
and he's not bothering the sight that of the surgery at all so he's under the couch right now
relaxing while I have my eyes on him and then if he were to mess with his stitches I could put the
cone on and I put the cone on when I'm not able to monitor him and make sure he's not messing with it
so even though he's not messing with it at all I'm still going to use the cone
just to make sure nothing bad happens after his surgery. These kind of cones that you usually get
from the vet come with a string and then you put the cone onto your dog's head and tie the string
so that it's securely tight, that your dog can't just push the cone off with his paws. What I like
to do is put my dog's collar through the cone so that it's tight enough that if they tried
to push the cone off uh that it doesn't go over their head but it's loose enough that the dogs
that it's comfortable around the dog's neck, now my personal opinion is I don't like the way these
poke into the dog's neck if there's just a string on it the cone basically rests on your dog's
neck with these and they can be kind of sharp so you want to make sure that you don't scrape
your dog's eye as you're putting the cone on, so what you can do or what I like to do is put the
dog's collar through the cone like this and then you can use some bandage to wrap around
these so that they don't stick out and then when the collar is through all you have to
do is put it onto the dog's head and then buckle the collar and then unbuckle the collar and it's
going to make the same noise as the dog's normal collar going on and off you just want to make sure
it's tight enough that they can't push it off. Now if you had a escape artist type dog that's
really obsessed with trying to get to his injury you can have your dog in a harness
with the cone attached securely to the harness so the cone is attached to the harness and you want
to make sure that you're monitoring your dog with this type of setup because accidents can
happen. So you might have that set up on your dog while you're around the house but that can make it
helpful for the dog not just pushing the cone over their head say if you have a sight hound and their
head is smaller than their neck. I really like using these soft cones with my dogs and i use the
same process of putting their collar through the little holes here to secure it to my dog's neck.
I like this one that has a window and soft fabric so the dog can see through and it's not too dark
and then they can rest nicely with the cone on their head. "Can you put your head in there?
good and can you do head down?" So you can see she can rest comfortably also just a quick note
if your dog has long ears or they get stuck back there after you put the cone
on you can pull your dog's ears forward and give them a treat for doing that
when you start using a collar so that their ears are all nice and comfortable inside of the cone.
These cones are great for managing your dog around the house but keep in mind if you have
a dog intent on getting to whatever it is they're not supposed to touch,
they can easily learn to bend the cone in order to get where they want to go or invert the cone
like that so I've seen dogs invert the cone on furniture by mistake and then be able to reach
what they want and I'm sure a dog could learn to do it on purpose to get where they want. So
keep in mind you know it's not a hundred percent safe to wear one of these but my own dogs
are very good, these border collies are specifically really good at not messing with
injuries, so I like to use the soft cone for bedtime so that they can get comfortable at
night and if you're a light sleeper it's easy to hear if they're trying to get to their injury. So
if you're a heavy sleeper you might want to use the harder cone. This is a very small one that
i got for my chihuahuas that has the hard cone and then soft around the neck because
when Kiko had an eye ulcer, my little chihuahua, I tried conditioning her to like the hard cone
and she was really not liking the weight of the cone resting on her neck so using this
soft cone really improved the quality of life and and her night times of sleeping in the cone
because she wasn't at night wanting to mess with her eye ulcer, this really helped improve the
quality of her life but again what can happen with this cone is they can push it so that it's
a little bit shorter and then they can possibly reach their face. So you want to make sure that
if you put something on your dog that you know that they can't reach whatever it is if you're
going to be leaving them alone so when I had to leave my little chihuahua I left her in the hard
cone and then had her in this cone for when I was around the house and at night time when i was in
the same room as her to hear if she was trying to mess with her eye. Epic has never seen a cone like
this and I just want to do a tiny demonstration of what it looks like when you move the object
towards the dog that the dog's never seen before at first. So if I move this into her space you can
see she backs away. I'm not going to do any more than that because I want to teach her that this
is a wonderful thing. So instead of trying to put it on her, I'm going to make the object move away
from her and you can see that she's immediately following it after backing away from it. So
movement is extremely important when conditioning things that you want to use with your dog and you
want them to have a positive experience with them. So here you go. I'm just going to start
moving this cone away from her marking and reinforcing her for following it. "good job
good"
Now I can stick my hand through the cone and feed her like that. "good"
If you have a bigger dog you might need to stand up.
"good good
good good job get it
good girl" If your dog knows the cue to touch you can also ask for that behavior.
"touch good
touch good
touch good girl good" So I'm marking as he approaches the cone good and then
feeding him with his little mouth in the cone.
"good good
good" And then I can eventually pull his head through the cone so that he gets the
treat for sticking his head through and that's when you can mark. "good good good
good good
good" Now that he has the cone on I'm just going to keep feeding him treats
for moving with the cone on his head like that good job you can also sprinkle treats down on the
ground if the cone is big enough and comfortable enough for the dog to eat treats off the ground.
"good good" Most dogs will want to paw at the cone and try to remove it
when they start to move around so you want to make sure to use a high rate of reinforcement
and if the dog starts to paw at the cone you can either
increase your rate of reinforcement or take the cone off and give your dog a break.
If your dog doesn't particularly like having his ears touched or doesn't like the process of when
you pull the cone off over his head and it's a tight fit because you've made it the right size
for actual use you can feed the dog a treats like this and have the cone unhinged so that
you can take the cone off also if there's like an emergency that just happened and the treat
falls into the cone the dog doesn't panic trying to get out of the cone. "Are you ready?" So I'm
putting the treat in like that and then I'm letting go so that he's not having his ears
smooshed every time I practice putting the head in like that. And then we can work on the ears
having the cone rub his ears on the way back out on a different session so it's not too much
too quickly. So he's going to put his head in like that and then I'm going to hold it this
time so he feels a little bit of the pressure of what it's like to have the cone taken off.
"Oops I dropped another treat into his cone. He doesn't want to have it taken off. whoop there
you go" You can also open the cone up so that it's less intimidating for the dog to reach
over the neck of the cone to get the treat. It might be a little bit trickier if you have a big
large dog and a very floppy big cone but this cone is it's super easy to do this with a little dog.
Now I'm going to put the buttons together. I like to do this away from the dog
because it makes a loud noise. If you do it near the dog's head
you should practice making the buckle noise or the clip noise near the dog and then feeding a treat.
"good ready?
put it in. good
good" So I personally like to close the buckles and then teach the dog
to smoosh their head through when it's the right size like that. "good boy"
And now I'm going to feed him a treat as i pull the cone off. "good boy"
There's no need to not feed the dog a treat when you pull the cone off and put it on. You can
always give your dog a treat for having the cone put on and always give the dog a treat for having
the cone pulled off. There might be circumstances where you your dog can't have a treat or you just
don't have a treat but you can use some other sort of reinforcer. So for example when Halo goes to
the bathroom he really wants to go out the door so I take the cone off and the reinforcer is that
he gets to then go out the door and go around and mark and pee on things outside. "Put it in"
So at first when I add the cue I can have the treat right on the cone like that and lure her
head in so that it's a hundred percent successful when I'm adding the cue. "back up good" And then
when she gets successful with that I can hold the treat out further away and add time before I give
the next treat. "back up good" So I'm going to throw a treat together to go further away from me,
"go get it" see if she's still in the game, "put it in" and then hold the treat
further away like that. "back up" And I keep dropping the treats because she's very fast.
"ready? go get it, put it in good" If the dog goes around the cone you can simply lure them back
into the cone with a very obvious gesture that you want their head to go into the cone. When your dog
first starts using the cone you want to make sure that your dog is drinking water. So you can show
him how to drink the water on his own by putting the cone over the water bowl in order to drink,
you might have to change the bowl or the location of the water so it's further away from the wall so
he can get his head over to drink out of the bowl but you can also make sure to offer the dog water
frequently throughout the day to make sure he's staying hydrated especially if he has an injury.
So you can hold the water bowl and that can help the dog learn to drink out of the water bowl with
the cone. Hey pups? You can also take the cone off if your dog's not going to injure themselves and
monitor them drinking the water and then put the comb back on. Thank you so much for watching! If
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