The Case Against P3 Amputation
While pain management is a vital part of Fear Free, it is even more important for cats who have been declawed. Join us and Robin Downing, DVM, MS, DAAPM, DACVSMR, CVPP, CCRP, founder of The Downing Center for Animal Pain Management, to learn about the trauma of feline toe amputation from the pain, biomechanical, and bioethical perspectives. This will energize your commitment to “just say no”!
Then they acquire their new family member and find there is quite a bit to know about living with and caring for them, especially when it comes to dealing with common behaviors that are normal for psittacines but problematic for humans. They frequently turn to the internet for advice on how to “fix” these problems, which can include aggression to humans, vocalizing for attention, and self-mutilation such as feather picking.
As veterinary professionals, it is important that we understand how this species learns so we can educate owners accordingly at their first appointment. Living with a psittacine can be financially, emotionally, and mentally draining. Building a strong human-animal bond from the start is the best means to help create long-term homes for pet birds.
Learning is defined as a permanent change in the behavior of an animal after being exposed to a stimulus. Although changes may not be immediately apparent, they are real changes that will affect long-term behavior. It is important to communicate to clients that every interaction they have with their bird is a training session, whether they intend it that way or not. Any time a bird interacts with the environment, behaviors either increase, decrease, or become suppressed. Understanding this is crucial to communicating the best training and behavior recommendations based on science to clients with avian companions.
Operant conditioning is learning in which a behavior is affected by consequences. When a behavior is associated with something the bird wants, the behavior will strengthen. When a behavior is associated with something the bird finds aversive or dislikes, the behavior will weaken. There are four quadrants of learning common to all animals: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment.
These terms are unfortunately misused by clients and even some veterinary professionals. They are defined as follows:
The terms reinforcement and punishment are defined as follows:
Below is a table reviewing each definition with an example of each quadrant:
| Quadrant | Definition | Example |
| Positive Reinforcement | Addition of a stimulus to increase likelihood of a behavior or to strengthen a behavior | Presenting a finger and when the parrot steps up to station giving a treat. Adding a treat increases likelihood of the “step up” behavior. |
| Negative Reinforcement | Eliminating a stimulus to increase likelihood of a behavior or strengthen a behavior | An example of this is forcing a bird to step up by pushing a hand into the chest or prying toes off a perch. Eliminating pressure or discontinuing handling reinforces the behavior of stepping up to a perch. |
| Positive Punishment | Adding a stimulus to decrease likelihood of a behavior | A client’s cockatiel bites when a person reaches out to touch them. The client smacks them on the beak, adding an aversive situation to decrease the likelihood of the biting behavior. |
| Negative Punishment | Eliminating a stimulus to decrease likelihood of a behavior | A client’s macaw squawks for attention. The client turns their back to ignore the behavior. Taking away attention decreases likelihood of vocalization behavior. |
Positive reinforcement and negative punishment are the most humane ways to train most animals. However, negative punishment can induce frustration, increasing FAS, so it’s important to use it with caution. Force or aversive methods are not recommended and can damage the human-animal bond between clients and birds. These methods can also increase fear, anxiety, and stress and can create more aggression concerns. They should be avoided.
Dividing each behavior and problem is crucial in creating a plan to alter unwanted behaviors. There is no single way to handle any particular behavior. Using the problem-solving model, we can break down the Antecedent, Behavior, and the Consequence to evaluate the trigger and the true problem. The ABCs in the problem-solving model are defined as follows:
For example: A client comes in and mentions that when their dog barks, the macaw (when out) will fly from her perch and chase the dog.
Breaking down this situation can be done as follows:
Now that the behavior is broken down, we can determine motivation for the unwanted response. With animals in general we can simplify things and say that behavior is either self-rewarding (i.e., would happen regardless of the owner’s presence) or human-reinforced. In the example above, this behavior is likely self-reinforced, as the macaw’s behavior results in the dog discontinuing the barking. After this, we can figure out how to solve the problem. Some things to consider:
Breaking down one behavior takes time, expertise, and patience. No behavior can be fixed easily as each behavior has many layers. Encourage clients with birds to seek help from a skilled positive-reinforcement trainer, veterinary behaviorist, or veterinary behavior technician experienced with birds if any behavior problem is mentioned.
References:
Luescher, Andrew. Manual of Parrot Behavior. Blackwell Publishing. 2006
Shaw, Julie K. and Martin, Debbie. Canine and Feline Behavior for Veterinary Technicians and Nurses. Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2015.
Yeates, James. Companion Animal Care and Welfare: The UFAW Companion Animal Handbook. Wiley-Blackwell. 2019.
This article was reviewed/edited by board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Kenneth Martin and/or veterinary technician specialist in behavior Debbie Martin, LVT.
Fear Free and Airvet: A Pawsitive Pairing for Your Practice
Keeping pets (and their vets) stress-free is good for everyone! Fear Free and Airvet have teamed up to help pets live healthier and happier lives. This fireside chat will cover how using Airvet’s connected care platform and Fear Free training can alleviate fear, anxiety & stress in pets while allowing you to easily deliver an outstanding client experience.
Please join Marty Becker, DVM, founder and CEO of Fear Free; Russ Brewer, DVM, CVMA, CVSMT, CCRT of Care Animal Hospital of Pleasant Prairie; and Jeff Werber, DVM, Chief Veterinary Officer of Airvet, as they share their experiences and best practices that will set you and your team apart from the pack.
Speak the Right Words
Debra Vey Voda-Hamilton, principal at Hamilton Law and Mediation, PLLC (HLM), helps vets and their staff learn how to appropriately address disagreements and foster mindful reactions to difficult discussions. As the first conflict consultation practice in the U.S. dedicated to helping people resolve conflicts that arise in business and life over animals, HLM uses empathy, compassion, and methods of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) to assist people in understanding the “why” of a conflict that arises when dealing with animals. These conflicts are relational, not transactional, and can be nipped in the bud—before they nip the veterinarian in the butt—if skills to address the conflict are learned and applied.
Gain the knowledge on how to peacefully and proactively:
Brought to you by our friends at Vetoquinol.
Blood draws are an essential part of practicing veterinary medicine, but they can be stressful for the professional, let alone the patient. Veterinary nurse/animal trainer Laura Ryder, CPDT-KA, KPA-CTP, shows you how you can get a canine blood draw done the Fear Free way.
Understanding Declaw Salvage Procedures
Until declaws are eliminated in the United States, you will most likely encounter declawed patients in your practice. With recent advancements in surgery, salvage procedures can help manage pain and improve limb function. Join one of the leading figures in declaw salvage surgery Nicole Martell-Moran, DVM, MPH, DABVP (Feline Practice), to learn about the procedures involved, how to find training, and how you can incorporate it into your practice.
Helping New Pet Owners Create a Fear-Free & Happy Life for Their Pet
New pet owners can be overwhelmed with all the information we want to provide them regarding the health and wellbeing of their pet. However, if a strong human-animal relationship built on trust and empathy is not established, the pet very well may not remain in the home. In this webinar, Kenneth M. Martin, DVM, DACVB, and Debbie Martin, CPDT-KA, KPA CTP, LVT, VTS (Behavior), will provide you with 5 tips to give new pet owners so they can start the relationship off on the right paw, facilitate a strong bond, and keep pets in the home and coming back to your veterinary clinic.
Brought to you by Vetoquinol
If birds love seeds and are engineered to eat them, doesn’t it follow that the bulk of a pet bird’s diet should be seeds? Absolutely not.
The nutritional needs of our birds’ counterparts in the wild may well be quite different from those of our pet birds, living in luxury in our homes. Also, the nutritional makeup of what they eat in the wild may be quite different from what we feed them in our homes. They’re living very different lives!
All-seed diets make most pet birds sick over time, because seeds deny them the nutrients they need for longer-term survival, add nutritional components that are excessive and unhealthy, and ultimately weaken them to the point where other diseases find it easy to take hold. The fact that pet birds can survive at all on such diets is a testament to the toughness of birds.
An all-seed diet contributes both directly (through malnutrition) and indirectly (by weakening the bird, making it easier for infectious disease to take hold) to a serious reduction in the possible life span of any pet bird – by half or more in many cases.
But birds know what’s good for themselves, right? After all, parrots are very intelligent. Well, so are you, but we bet that fact hasn’t stopped you from enjoying tasty treats that you know aren’t good for you. For birds, seeds are the equivalent of a greasy burger: junk food. And it’s that high-fat component that tends to get them in trouble. Too many pet birds (and people) are junk-food junkies.
Pelleted foods are a solid basis for a bird’s diet, but even pellets, wonderful as they are, probably need to be supplemented with vegetables, fruits, and other such “people food” as bread and pasta. Giving different foods in addition to pellets is a way to replicate the way most psittacines eat in the wild, consuming a wide variety of foods that vary seasonally.
This article was reviewed/edited by board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Kenneth Martin and/or veterinary technician specialist in behavior Debbie Martin, LVT.
Excerpted from Birds For Dummies, 2nd ed., by Brian L. Speer, DVM, Kim Campbell Thornton and Gina Spadafori, Wiley, 2021.
The “fear center” and the “pain center” occupy adjacent areas of the brain. The thalamus is the area of the brain that registers pain, and on either side of the thalamus is the limbic system, which is responsible for emotions including fear, anxiety, and the sequelae of stress (FAS).
These two areas of the brain “talk” to each other and send signals back and forth. The thalamus sending signals to the limbic system is what causes your reaction to hitting your finger with a hammer. When this thalamic-limbic crosstalk happens in an animal in acute pain, the animal may lash out at the owner or veterinary staff.
So now consider an animal who is in pain and has been presented to you. If experiencing acute pain, the animal may lash out due to a combination of pain and FAS. If experiencing chronic pain, many of these pets act dull and disinterested. The owner may even comment that the pet just doesn’t socialize and lacks the energy and mobility that she used to demonstrate. Even worse is the animal who has chronic pain, say from osteoarthritis, and now has an acute injury on top of it. The distress in some of these animals is almost too much to bear.
It is easy for us to recognize and treat acute pain, but the diagnosis of chronic pain states can be difficult for a variety of reasons. It takes time to take a thorough history and perform a complete pain exam on dogs and cats. However, there are many resources available to make that task easier, including pet owner-friendly screening checklists for osteoarthritis (Cat, Dog) and expert tips for the OA exam (feline OA exam).
Even with successful diagnosis, the treatment of chronic pain can sometimes be difficult especially if your treatment is narrow in focus. But it is essential to make a timely diagnosis of chronic pain and provide effective analgesia to be successful in therapy. And it is also important that the owner understands your diagnosis, whether through education alone or with the help of radiographs and teaching tools (feline and canine chronic pain). The owner is an essential member of the pain treatment team, both in the evaluation of treatments over time but also in enlisting them in the day to day therapies that might be required.
My approach to the treatment of chronic pain in dogs, for example, is to build a pyramid of treatments, and on the base layer I start with an NSAID. The NSAID I use most commonly is Rimadyl® (carprofen), which I really like for its effects on both pain and inflammation. For many chronic OA cases, there are other factors that can influence the ability to manage both pain and disease progression, and they should all be looked at.
For example, consider the animal next. Is he overweight? One study showed that in an obese dog, losing only about 10 percent of body weight can significantly improve lameness1. In other words, weight loss for an overweight dog can amplify the pain relief achieved with an NSAID alone
What about exercise? Again, one human study showed that one-half hour of exercise 5 days a week for people with knee OA was the equivalent of – you guessed it: an NSAID! So now you have tripled your pain-relieving efforts by building a solid foundation of multi-modal therapies, upon which you can add other therapies as needed.
It is beyond the scope of this writing to discuss all possible treatments: medications, physical therapy, acupuncture, and so forth, but I encourage everyone to read or re-read the 2015 AAHA Pain Management Guidelines for a thorough review of all of the pain management options we have for both acute and chronic pain.
What does the future hold for us? The most exciting thing I have seen on the horizon is the introduction of anti-NGF monoclonal antibodies. NGF, or Nerve Growth Factor, is one of several major “players” in the transmission of pain via the nociceptors. The use of these monoclonal antibodies holds great promise to reduce the sensation of pain in our patients with osteoarthritis. More information about the action of anti-NGF monoclonal antibodies can be found at the New Science of OA Pain website.
IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION FOR RIMADYL: As a class, NSAIDs may be associated with gastrointestinal, kidney and liver side effects. These are usually mild but may be serious. Pet owners should discontinue therapy and contact their veterinarian immediately if side effects occur. Evaluation for pre-existing conditions and regular monitoring are recommended for pets on any medication, including Rimadyl. Use with other NSAIDs or corticosteroids should be avoided.
See full Prescribing Information at:
https://www2.zoetisus.com/content/_assets/docs/Petcare/rimadyl-prescribing-information.pdf
Reference:
This article was reviewed/edited by board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Kenneth Martin and/or veterinary technician specialist in behavior Debbie Martin, LVT.
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