The Dreaded Tick Check
By Stephanie Keesey-Phelan, Ph.D., BCBA-D, LABA
If you are someone who lives in an area where there are ticks at certain (read: all but frozen) times of the year, you know the importance of checking your dog for ticks after coming in from time spent outside. Tick-borne illnesses can be devastating for humans and dogs alike, so this is really a critical part of the care and wellbeing of your dog. And, if you’re a dog-loving human and you’re really into dog training, you probably already have lots of things both fun and important to work on with your dog. Tick checking may be something that you fumble your way through - I know I did. At least until Kerby.
I’ve written a lot about Kerby on this blog, as he is the first herding breed I’ve shared my home with. He has been teaching me HEAPS! Besides his speed and enthusiasm in all things, and his propensity for herding, the other thing to know about Kerby is that he is incredibly fluffy, and mostly black. This is not a great combination when it comes to checking for ticks. These little black bug monsters burrow right in and so a good thorough check is a necessity, especially after we moved to a more rural wooded area.
So what to do? When I started out checking for ticks, I would give Kerby a squeeze tube full of wet dog food for him to lick while I searched him over. This was difficult for a number of reasons:
Food elicits/evokes lots of movement from Kerby which made it hard to check him while he was eating.
Because of said movement, I ended up holding the squeeze tube in one hand and trying to check Kerby with combination of my hands and a comb in the other.
As I’ve written about previously, I have Rheumatoid Arthritis and so this kind of maneuvering with my hands was really becoming a problem.
Here is my “before” version of the tick check (this is a long video, but you’ll get the idea in just a few seconds of watching):
Step 1: Our perfect tick check
Around the time I was mulling over what to do about this, I had the good fortune to get some insight from my friend and colleague, Maia Huff-Owen. Maia is completing her Master’s degree from University of North Texas and has been helping me learn more about a Constructional Approach to behavior change (more on that later!) and about some alternative procedures to typical desensitization and counter conditioning. Maia encouraged me to consider what a perfect tick check would look like for Kerby.
To my mind, a perfect tick check would involve Kerby laying down comfortably while I searched him for ticks. I wouldn’t include food at all, and he would be comfortable with me touching him in various spots (i.e., ears, head, legs, tail, belly) for about 3-5 minutes.
If this was the goal, how would I get from where we were now, me holding food for Kerby with one hand while checking with the other, to this version of the perfect tick check. The next question that Maia asked was a critical one: Does Kerby’s version of a perfect tick check (lying still while I touch him, not necessarily searching for ticks but perhaps petting him) already happen at any point in his life?
The answer - yes! Every morning after I eat my breakfast, Kerby enjoys snuggles and petting on the couch with me. He might sit in my lap so I can give him scritches on his back, or lie over on his side so I can pat his belly or sides. You can see what this looks like in this video:**
**If you watch the whole video, you’ll note some whale eye, lip licks, and other responses that can be associated with stress in dogs in this video. This is why we encourage petting consent tests, which include lots of breaks for the dog to indicate they are still interested in continuing the interaction. When I stop petting Kerby he often looks to me to reinitiate the interaction or will bop my hand with his nose or change positions so his body is more accessible for me to pet him again.
When I looked more closely at Kerby’s morning snuggle routine, I saw exactly the behaviors I was hoping to see in tick check. Relaxed positioning, with the main reinforcer being my touch and attention.
Step 2: Adding a cue
Now that I had identified a time and location where the behavior I wanted to see was already happening, the next step was to pair a cue with that context. This would be some stimulus change that would ultimately signal that if Kerby engaged in the behavior (i.e., lying down near me), I would provide attention and petting. With a little help from Maia, I landed on a short song: “Ticks (The Tick Song) - sung to the tune of “Route 66” - because why not have a little fun with our tick check training?
Given that we had morning snuggles consistently, it was very easy for me to pull up YouTube and play the song just as I was sitting down every morning. Some of the easiest training I think I’ve ever done! I didn’t keep great records for how long I did this, but I would estimate it was for at least a week or two (7-14 days or sessions). You can take a look at this below. Note that it’s pretty similar to our baseline video, just morning snuggles but now to the tune of a tick song.
Step 3: Variations
Okay so here’s the thing - as cute and furry though Kerby is, I don’t want to check him for ticks on my couch when we come back from the woods. But if not the couch, then where? I had to think back to my perfect tick check: Kerby would be on the floor next to the door so there was less opportunity for ticks to move around the house. This meant that our next goal would be to try out our cue in different locations and at different times of day.
I didn’t want to change too much at once, so I tried putting on The Tick Song upstairs in my office where Kerby has a nice cushy bed. To be frank - he wasn't into it. His bed in my office is not one we’ve ever used for training, it’s for lounging. And sitting on the floor in my office was, though I didn’t realize at the time, a cue for play. I tried this two or three times but each time Kerby was disinterested in petting in this location. Honestly this wasn’t where I wanted to do tick check anyway, so I abandoned that plan and focused instead of pairing the cue with the couch and living room floor at different times of day instead of trying a completely new location.
Step 4: Actually “checking”
When Kerby was consistently presenting his body for petting when he heard The Tick Song, I began to incorporate not just petting him, but actually checking for ticks. You can see a short clip of what that looked like here. I tried to incorporate this slowly. Kerby always let me know when I was getting a little too greedy - in these cases if I didn’t intersperse enough petting or I tried to “check” for too many ticks, I would see him lift up his head if lying down or turn to look at me, often paired with a lick of my hand. This was a signal to me to take a break or resume petting instead of checking. As I saw more relaxed behavior, I was able to incorporate more checks throughout the song.
On occasion, Kerby would approach me for petting when I turned on the song but he wouldn’t stay - he might go get a drink of water or a toy to play with. In these cases, I continued to follow his lead. I’d pause the song to do something else (i.e., play) and then try again shortly after. If he still wasn’t into it, we moved on.
Winter is coming
As this process continued, fall set in and was followed shortly by winter’s cooler temperatures. I wasn’t on any particular timeline for this training and so I took a fairly slow and winding approach to it. I tried to run a session 2-3 times per week but if I forgot or got sidelined with other commitments, it might be 2-3 weeks between sessions. When winter came and there were no ticks to look for, we practiced much less frequently. It was around this time that I moved our practice sessions to the space by the door. When I did this, I went back to mostly petting for a few sessions and was easily able to integrate “checks” again when Kerby was used to the new location.
By the time spring arrived this year, we were ready! See below for our progress (and sorry about the camera angle, it's a little harder to see Kerby here.
Kerby reliably comes running over to the door when I turn on the Tick Song and sits or lies down for petting. I can check almost every part of his body (he’s not terribly comfortable with me checking his ears, so I’ll work on that separately and add it back in later). I have been able to integrate a comb into the process to catch ticks that I miss with my hands, and Kerby doesn’t seem to mind our “helper” - Fozzie, our orange tabby who supervises and sometimes requests his own tick check as well (see below).
Conclusions
I am really proud of this training. Even though I spread this training out across many months, it was some of the easiest training I’ve ever done. It was fun for Kerby and I, and it was effective. Are there still things to work on? Of course! Always. As I mentioned above, Kerby avoids having me inspect his ears closely. We’ll ask some questions about why that is and tackle it separately. Some days he’s not really into the tick check and would rather play. But 95% of the time, I turn on the Tick Song and Kerby trots right over, his tail wagging loosely and his ears perked. He gets into position and we’re off on the age-old quest of vanquishing ticks.
This was such a lovely alternative to a desensitization / counter-conditioning protocol and a sneaky/amazing way for Maia Huff-Owen to teach me about applying Constructional Approach. The Constructional Approach is a way to tackle behavioral goals that focuses primarily on where you want to go and what skills you already have to get there*, and it is a framework I’m finding more and more use for in my work with Kerby and Foz and with clients. I am ever grateful for Maia’s generosity of guidance and time, and excited to see what other applications of the Constructional Approach we can pursue.
**Note this is a gross oversimplification of the Constructional Approach. I’ll write more about it at some point but you can also read a bit about it on Mary Hunter’s great blog: Stale Cheerios.