behaviour Flashcards
how can you prepare horses for future veterinary visits
- Skin pinches
- Syringes
- Touching neck/head
- Raising jugular vein
- Training (eg clicker)
- Use tasty flavoured pastes in worming tubes (icing sugar with water, honey, yeast extract, molases, apple sauce)
- Experience novel tastes - add flavours to damp chaff/hay soaked in herbal tea
- Provide different forage types
how can you prepare dogs for future veterinary interactions
- touching body parts
- muzzle training
- lifting onto tables
- visits to the vet practice for fun
what are behavioural signs of stress/illness
- lethargy
- inappetance
- weightloss
- isolation
- abnormal vitals
- drooling
- trembling
- wide eyes
what should you look for before aproaching an animal to assess musculoskeletal normality/abnormality
- conformation
- behaviour
- body language
- BCS
- posture
- gait
- environment
- muscle tone
- symmetry
- coordination
- spinal curvature
what is stress
any situation whihc tends to disturb the equilibrium between a living organism and its environment
what are the 2 key components of the stress response
- fight ot flight response (rapid response = acute)
- hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) (slow response pathway=chronic)
how can you prevent behaviour problems
- breeding and good physical/mental health
- selecting an appropriate pet for lifestyle
- ensuring that sufficient and appropriate social and environmental experiences occur throughout the animals development to behavioural adulthood
- use of appropriate methods and experiences to train the animal how to behave and live in the environments we keep them in
- apppreciate the world from the animals perspective
- meet behavioural needs
- prepare animals to cope with the environments we put them in
- recognize communication efforts and body language
- considerate handling and methods of restrains
- avoid negative experiences or forming negative associatation
- work to strengthen human-animal bond
what is behaviour modification
changing the behaviour of an animal
what is habituation
the process whereby an animal is exposed to environmental stimuli and learns to ignore them (traffic, CDs help)
what is systematic desensitisation
repeated, gradual exposure to the stimulus that evokes a negative emotional response
what is counter conditioning
Counter-conditioning means changing the pet’s emotional response, feelings or attitude toward a stimulus. For example, the dog that lunges at the window when a delivery person walks by is displaying an emotional response of fear or anxiety. Classical counter-conditioning would be accomplished by pairing the sight, sounds and approach of the delivery person with one of the dog’s favored rewards to change the emotional state to one that is calm and positive.
what is flooding
exposing the person or animal to a stimulus that is likely to trigger the adrenaline release or initiate a fear response in a manner that there is no such physical consequence.
what is reinforcement
eitherpositive or negative where an animal learns to associate a desired behaviour with a command or stimuli over time
what is punishment
a negative response to an action that discourages repeat response (physical, verbal, withholding treat and attention)
what is associative learning
a style of learning that happens when two unrelated elements (for example, objects, sights, sounds, ideas, and/or behaviours) become connected in our brains through a process known as conditioning.
