Achieving cooperative care: The role of preference & assent tests in promoting canine choice
Promoting opportunities for choice in animal's lives is well-established as a way to promote animal well-being and is becoming a recognized best practice as well as an ethical requirement for professional certifications. In this aim, animal professionals often claim to use "consent" tests when implementing various training, enrichment, or husbandry activities. In this talk, we will dive deeper into the operational definitions of "consent" and "assent" as they are used in psychological science and practice, review the criteria for what is needed to establish this type of cooperation, and offer ways that animals professionals can integrate evidence-based choice procedures into their practices while being scientifically accurate. This talk will also provide attendees with video demonstrations, examples, and task analyses with dogs in clinical and in-home cooperative care and enrichment programs.