Trashcan from Kinkatopia / www.kinkatopia.org
Start buttons are all the rage right now in animal training circles. Everyone is talking about them and everyone is teaching them. Stop buttons, on the other hand, don’t get nearly as much attention as they deserve.
I’ve always felt that your animal indicating they’re ready for the next rep was just a matter of having a natural two way communication, so I was a little surprised when the start button concept took off. I didn’t realize that this communication doesn’t always come so naturally for a lot of people.
The idea is that if the animal uses their “start button”, it means they’re ready to continue with whatever you’re working on. To me, from what I’ve seen, this amounts to nothing more than a chained behavior, but it’s useful for people who need a clear indication that their animal is ready for the next repetition or to continue with a procedure.
Stop buttons are a little trickier, as they require the human to be willing to immediately stop what they’re doing, no matter how badly they wish to continue. This is not easy because, for most people, it’s much easier to wait for an animal to say, “OK, I’m ready” before starting a behavior than it is to stop a behavior they’re already doing, especially if stopping means something like getting off the horse or leaving an animal’s room.
A few years ago I did a virtual session with a kinkajou (not the one pictured) that constantly sucked his wrist to the point of the wrist being completely raw and losing all its hair. His person also said he was aggressive at times and would attack her seemingly unprovoked.
During the session I could see that this was a very stressed animal who was not OK with the attention or petting he was receiving. Though he was sitting still and “allowing” it to happen, making it seem like he was enjoying it, it was clear to me that he was not.
We decided to create a stop button that would mean his person had to immediately leave his room. A week later his person sent me an update with a short video of him sitting in her lap.
In the update she informed me that for the first 3 days or so, he asked her to leave all the time, once he figured out that the consequence of our chosen stop button was her leaving. After that, he asked her to leave less and less and started interacting with her more and more.
Ultimately, having given him choice and control over their interactions meant that he could now tolerate and even enjoy her attention, knowing that whenever he needed her to stop, he could just ask her to.
Of course this didn’t entirely resolve all of his problems but over the next couple of months the aggressive outbursts were gone and there was a reduction in the paw sucking. A win/win for all involved.