Relationship Centered Training

Other temperament assessment systems lump together different traits into broad categories -“big buckets” – such as confidence/fear, dominance, distraction, aggression, excitability, anxious, attachment/separation anxiety, etc. These “big bucket” assessments are relatively crude measurements. While they are useful in generalized patterns and statistics for populations or trends, they are not good at providing nuanced or detailed information about an individual animal.

CARAT takes a more detailed view with a deliberate focus on the individual animal. The focus is on adaptive behavior, which is the typical performance of individuals without disabilities in meeting environmental expectations.

The scoring of observed behaviors creates profiles that demonstrate how one individual dog may be different from another dog.

Other scoring systems describe overall behavior and oversimplify canine behavior. CARAT identifies the traits/elements that are contributing to the overall behavior. CARAT does not lump together many different traits. Instead, CARAT differentiates at a fine level.

For example, CARAT can delineate the differences between a dog who is stressed and demonstrating avoidance sniffing from a dog who is confident but visually distracted by birds. In another rating system, they may have the same distraction score.

CARAT reflects the behavioral reality that a response to any given stimulus can either inhibit or activate the animal, attract the animal or create avoidant behavior, and that the distinction between the two is critical in understanding the individual.

CARAT identifies individual components of overall behavior patterns. This prevents the common problem of two dogs receiving the same score when the details of their behavior are quite different.

For instance, in one rating system commonly used, dogs may be rated as highly distractible. Highly distractible dogs can be vastly different. For one dog, the “distraction” might have been olfactory, while another dog might have been “distracted” by visual stimuli.

When the same score is given, it tells us nothing about the type of distraction that provoked the dog’s response, how persistent the dog is in pursuing the distraction, the arousal level and resilience of the dog when in the presence of the distraction, the dog’s level of awareness of the stimuli, and many other factors. CARAT does take all that – and more – into account, and reflects it in the profile.

Unlike other scoring systems that set a defined “desirable” score, CARAT is focused on profiling the individual in terms of functional, adaptive behavior. The mid-range score of 0 is behavior that is considered highly functional and adaptive across a broad range of contexts. The further any one given score moves toward the extremes of the range, the less adaptive that behavior is except in more narrowly defined contexts or niches.

CARAT says, “This is who this individual dog is.” What constitutes a desirable profile is dependent upon how closely the individual’s profile fits the intended purpose, use or goal for the dog.

CARAT helps to delineate what makes one individual dog suitable for a task while another dog is not. For example:

A competitive tracking dog ideally has a productive, heightened olfactory awareness with a higher level of olfactory persistence.

A successful guide dog is visually aware, and does not have any notable olfactory persistence.

There are great differences in the CARAT profiles for a successful French ring sport dog and a suitable companion for an elderly person with mobility issues.