Kara's K9s

11/02/2025

Tuesdays fun 🥰🐾🥰🐾

10/02/2025

Monday’s fun with Cain 🐾🥰🐾🥰

10/02/2025

Monday’s fun 🥰🐾🥰🐾

23/01/2025

WHOSE WALK IS IT ANYWAY?

Imagine going on a long-anticipated walk, through new scenery and exciting smells after being cooped up in the same place all day, but you have been fitted with a blind fold and are being dragged or yanked along at a fast pace.

I imagine that this is how dogs feel when we don’t allow them time to stop, sniff and explore the environment.

Dogs largely perceive their world through scent and it’s how they collect and process information to help the world make sense.

Taking away an opportunity for sniffing on a walk really isn’t being fair.. As much as physical exercise is important, the mental stimulation that sniffing provides is equally, if not more important.

Allowing dogs to choose when to stop and sniff provides so many benefits – increases self-confidence, promotes calmness, lowers stress and anxiety levels, lowers pulse rates, reduces cognitive decline in older dogs and provides important mental and environmental enrichment.

Make time for a slow sniffing walk when you can, where your dog is allowed to choose which direction to go and allowed time to just investigate, interpret, process the environment and follow wherever their nose leads them.

It may take far more time and patience as we wait for them to finish smelling that particular blade of grass, but the benefits are well worth it – after all, whose walk is it anyway?

23/01/2025

There will be no walks tomorrow (Friday) due to the Red Alert issued by the Met. Office. 💨💨💨💨💨

Stay safe everyone! X

23/01/2025

Thursday’s fun with Rudi and Wilbur 🐾🥰🐾🥰

23/01/2025

Wednesday’s fun with Rudi, Roxie and Holly 🐾🥰🐾🥰

22/01/2025

⚠️❗️🛑 ✋❗️✋ 🛑 ❗️⚠️

Before a dog bites, there are plenty of potential warning signs telling you to STOP.

Don’t ignore them.



Edit: these are just examples of how things can escalate, each dog is individual.

It’s also important to note these escalations can happen very quickly. Especially if warning signs have been previously missed and the dog has had to escalate their behaviour, for example when a growl hasn’t worked previously so the dog skips the growl and goes straight for the biting.

21/01/2025

Pain and Behaviour ⚠️

Let’s talk about why there is such a strong correlation between dogs in pain and behavioural problems 🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐

As I have talked about before, many of our dogs suffer from “Silent pain” - their natural instinct is to hide pain, to carry on, to pretend all is ok (bless).

When it gets to the stage where a dog is showing physical signs of chronic pain, this pain is usually well established and has been ramping up for a long time.

Chronic pain will often initially manifest as changes to behaviour before any clinical signs appear as the dog tries to cope with what he/she is feeling.

I see many dogs in my clinic that have been referred to a behaviourist for problem behaviour involving a wide range of issues including reactivity, anxiety, resource guarding, repetitive or obsessive behaviours, sensitivity to new things like noise or traffic or hyper-vigilance.

Before working to address their behaviour the first thing to do with these dogs is to be sure that pain is not the cause or at least a contributing factor.

We know that up to around 80% of behaviour cases can be pain related - that’s massive 😱

However, chronic pain is notoriously difficult to assess and issues causing such pain often won’t show on up on an X-ray.

To add to the complexities, studies have shown that when owners are asked if they think their dog is in pain they will generally focus on changes to movement and have difficulty associating behavioural changes with pain in their dogs.

A common phrase I hear from owners is that …if it hurt, their dog wouldn’t do it……….this is simply not true‼️

Dogs will often still be performing activities they are highly motivated to do such as play, run, chase, jump etc. despite having underlying pain.

The only changes that may happen might be to their general behaviour or demeanour. This may include subtle things like restlessness, excessive sniffing, licking, yawning, air licking, scratching or frequent body stretching or shaking or it could be the more obvious changes like aggression or reactivity.

So why do these dogs have these behavioural changes ❓❓❓

At a very basic level- dogs do not have the ability to distinguish between acute pain that may kill them and chronic pain that won’t. They therefore assume that the pain they feel is dangerous and as a result can feel constantly under threat.

They live in this heightened state of stress until we take that pain away .

We know that heightened stress levels results in reduced serotonin and increased levels of cortisol.

Cortisol is the primary stress hormone and increased levels can be linked to such as hyperactivity, reactivity, compulsive behaviors, and increased aggression. Serotonin is the hormone that helps regulate emotional responses. A reduction of serotonin has been linked to aggressive behaviour in dogs. These stressed dogs have increased levels of fear and anxiety which in turn makes them more nervous and reactive 😣

Sadly, we can’t teach our dogs to not see pain as a constant threat like we can with people.
As a human physiotherapist when patients come to see me with chronic pain, I can reassure them and I can tell them their pain won’t kill them.

We don’t have this ability with dogs so the only option we have is to take their pain away .

The right medication and treatment can do this.

Adressing the pain can then lead to improvements in problem behaviours as the dog starts to relax, the cortisol levels drop and the serotonin levels increase 😃

We can then work on what caused the pain in the first place .

📣 So please please always consider pain as a potential cause for your dogs behaviour and seek the advice of your vet or physiotherapist 📣📣

Thanks for reading - please share to spread awareness and just to finish- a picture of my beautiful arthritic girl living her best life 💕💕

21/01/2025

Tuesday’s fun with Rudi, Holly, Wilbur and Rufus 🐾🥰🐾🥰

20/01/2025

https://chng.it/XLqmYSWbfL

Let mo, the co-op cat, roam free

20/01/2025

Solo walk fun with Cain 🐾🥰🐾🥰

Good luck for your op. tomorrow, Cain! 💕🐾💕🐾

20/01/2025

First day back out with the puppers since before Christmas and we all had the best of times together 🐾🥰🐾🥰

24/12/2024

Christmas Eve brought the last walk of the year but we all had a great time! 🥰🐾🥰🐾

A big thank you to all my wonderful clients - wishing you all a wonderful Christmas! 🎄

23/12/2024

Monday’s solo walk fun with Cain 🥰🐾🥰🐾

23/12/2024

Monday’s fun with Rudi, Milo, Roxie and Holly 🥰🐾🥰🐾

21/12/2024

‼️SO IMPORTANT ‼️

Please I beg you do NOT let your child sit on or lie on your dog , or grab them by the face and kiss them, or climb into their bed or crate , or disturb them when eating or chewing, or chase after the dog to grab their toys.

I’ve lost count of the numbers of distraught parents who have contacted me during the festive holiday when stressed anxious dogs have bitten children.
Usually due to lack of parental supervision, lack of understanding of the dogs needs and poor dog management.

Dogs never bite out of the blue . They are usually giving subtle warnings repeatedly before they snap
Always supervise child to dog interactions
Teach children to respect dogs
Sit on the ground - not the hound
Pet pet pause - 3 second contact
Let sleeping dogs lie
Give them space
Create a safe space for your dog that’s a NO GO area for children
Don’t become that statistic .

Photo author unknown

20/12/2024

Friday fun with Cain, who was super cuddly today! 🥰🐾🥰🐾