Mitigating Self-harm Behavior with a Service Dog

A common request that we receive from clients who hope a Service Dog will help mitigate a psychiatric disability is to interrupt the handler’s behavior.  That could be actions associated with a panic attack, a spiraling PTSD episode, a self-harming behavior or many other conditions.  For additional information on mitigating a “shift-from-normal” event, see HERE.

As described in that previous post; for seizures, PTSD episodes or panic attacks, we do not have the “cue” to present to a dog when training him to alert or respond to it.  I propose that this is also true for self-harming conditions.  But, not everyone agrees with me. 

Self-harming behaviors including skin picking, hair pulling, cutting one’s own skin, burning or punching oneself.

Unlike the onset of, say, an anxiety attack or a PTSD episode, self-harming behaviors are usually accompanied by very specific, easily observable behavior.  While a person spiraling into a panic attack may not present with highly significant changes in behavior, an individual who pulls her hair out, well, she pulls her hair out. It’s pretty obvious. 

For that reason, it’s fairly common that we are asked to train a dog to recognize those negative behaviors and interrupt them.  To most people who first contact us, the question is, “can you train a dog to see when my daughter reaches for a razor blade and have him do something to stop her?”  Essentially, they are defining the person’s observable behavior as the “cue.”  If we ask the dog to recognize the cue and perform a specific behavior when he experiences that cue, then he can interrupt the individuals and stop the self-harming conduct.

At first glance, that may seem like a highly reasonable position.  However, with further review it is not only unreasonable, bu tit’s impossible for a dog or even the most dedicated humans to be able to succeed in the mission.

A teen that cuts herself, may also use razors as they were intended; to shave her legs or under arms.  To ask a dog to be so highly vigilant as to be able to detect any time the girl picks up a razor and nudge her to stop is challenging enough.  But, if she wants to shave her legs her dog may attempt to interrupt her, she may become frustrated and corrects the dog. If that happens his ‘helpful’ behavior will most likely cease.

A person who burns himself may also enjoy using incents or lighting candles.  If the dog jumps on him when he chooses to light a candle and it is corrected, the ‘trained interrupting’ behavior will again, likely be extinguished.

Mostly, however, the idea of asking a dog to be so incredibly vigilant of a person’s behavior goes against its abilities.  Besides the obvious which is that a dog needs time to sleep, expecting the dog to distinguish normal versus abnormal activity is likely to create a serious disdain for the dog’s presence. Let’s use a human example. Sara is a person who pulls her hair out. Her mother chooses to refrain from interrupting her daughter for fear of creating more angst. One day, Sara asks her mother, “why don’t you tell me when you see I’m about to pull my hair? It would really help me.” So, the mother speaks up as she sees what she believes is the onset of hair pulling. In response, Sara whines, “Mom! I’m just adjusting my earring!”

From a more basic perspective, asking a dog to be visually vigilant (as in maintain a high level of attention for visual cues) would be challenging for any dog.  Why?  Because unlike humans, sight is not the primary sense for dogs.   Dogs use their sense of smell to gather critical information from the environment, and even from other pack members (that’s why they sniff butts!)  In the same way that we don’t have the “cue” for panic attacks in a jar that we can use during training, we don’t have a scent associated with self-harming behavior available to use to cue a dog’s behavior.

I can’t say whether it sits above or slightly below their sense of smell, but dogs also pay significant attention to another individual’s “energy.” As social pack animals, wolves rely on their ability to “read” the actions as well as the intentions of their pack mates both when planning for and then engaging in hunting process. As a subspecies of wolf, we can assume that dogs still retain that aptitude to read the intentions of the significant individuals in their lives. If you have ever lived with a dog, you may have experienced times when you were merely “thinking” about getting up to go to the kitchen, and your dog wakes from his nap at your feet, then stands up and looks right at you. It’s as if he’s saying, “are we doing something? gonna get a snack? go for a walk?”  

Finally, dogs do not follow frantic, frustrated, angry or disappointed energy.  Helping people control their energy when they handle a dog is more important than the actual behavior of timing a reward or delivering a correction.  I suspect that the reason that dogs can perceive the onset of a shift-from-normal event like a seizure, PTSD episode or a panic attack is because they are able to sense the energy shift in their handlers, even when there are no visual cues associated with the event.

For that reason, I think that the best way to train a dog to detect and interrupt a self-harming event is to employ the techniques we use for other shift-from-normal events rather than ask them to attempt to observe and interrupt a physical behavior that may or may not be related to the actual disability.  You can read about working with shift-from-normal events HERE.