We all know how awesome dogs noses are.
They can find lost people, detect cancers, sniff out traces of a single ingredient within a whole meal, find bedbugs etc etc.
Their noses are simply incredible.
Because of this, I aim to always use shampoos with subtle or no scents in the salon and shampoos which have more natural ingredients. I also don't use any perfumes on your dogs because, to be honest, most of them are too strong for my own nose, let alone our dogs noses.
In this video you can watch Ty find a rock that I only had in my hand for a few seconds, which I then threw into all of the other rocks at the beach for him to find.
Yes, he brings back the same rock.
No, I did not teach him to do this.
We randomly noticed that he did this one day while we were throwing rocks for him to chase, so we tried it again. It's now one of his favourite games to play at the beach. He doesn't find the rock all the time, but it's a pretty tricky game so that's okay.
There are so many scent games you can play with your dogs to get their brains working as well as sports such as scent work and mantrailing. Try some and see how awesome their noses are. You may find yours and your dogs new favourite game 😊
A little clip of Ada after she learnt that getting in and out of the bath is actually quite a lot of fun 🥰
To start, she would only follow a trail of cheese in and out of the bath. Within 15 minutes she was getting in and out with a hand signal paired with a vocal cue and was quite speedy!
We also worked around the hairdryer and the buzzy clippers to give her a little confidence boost.
A short clip from a super successful session with Pica 🎉
This may not look like much to most, but for Pica, walking next to a stranger is a big deal.
We started off with a lot of distance, slowly got closer and closer, then did some wonderful parallel walking together around the field.
Today both myself and Picas guardian could talk to each other without Pica becoming worried and barking and she made it through the whole 30 minute session (last time Pica ended the session 10 minutes early by going back to the car).
These are just some extra steps we're doing to help Pica feel comfortable with me. We need to make sure she's confident that I'm not a scary person before trying to bring her into the salon (an enclosed space) in order for us to succeed 😊
She is doing amazingly 🥰
A really important thing for me is being able to adapt each session to a dogs' individual needs.
I saw Pica again for her first session after her Meet and Greet and we met at the local field.
Pica is quite fearful of people.
Making her session with me a positive one meant I needed to give her lots of space and we slowly worked on closing the gap between us. Pica worked beautifully with her person, there is such a strong bond there, and we managed to get so close to each other. In this clip you can see she even lets out a lovely loose wag as they walk to the half-way mark towards me which is amazing.
Our current aim before tackling the salon or any grooming is to slowly and positively introduce her to me.
Pica is a dog who is small enough to be forced into the salon with me with the door closed promptly behind. We could absolutely do that. But Pica would not feel safe and she would not be able to learn how to trust me if she was forced into that position.
Trust is a huge thing when it comes to holistic and force free grooming. This is something we need to get right. With Pica, this means slow introductions outside, where she has space to escape if she becomes too worried.
Sandy you beautiful brave girlie 😍
Several big things are happening here for Sandy:
• she's using the ramp (she finds this very scary)
• she's standing on a wet shower tray
• she's not flinching at the noise of the water
• she's not flinching at the noise of the bucket on the shower
• she's not overly worried about water rolling over her coat
• she's letting me get her wet
During her session she also let me:
• pour water onto her coat with a jug (just a small amount, but several times)
• dry her coat with the big scary dryer
• got into the shower with the shower turned on
• got her ear wet with the shower and didn't worry
Her confidence since being with me has soared and it's so lovely watching her become so brave.
(Ignore my hoodie, it's just a 'dog' hoodie. If you ever see me wearing this during your dogs appointment please know it's just because I had no other 'dog' hoodies/jumpers to wear, not because I think your dog needs a giant warning sign, because they absolutely don't ❤️)
Milo wasn't in the right mind to continue his progress in the shower yesterday, so we practised a few fun tricks that will benefit him in the grooming environment instead.
Here he is using a scratch board on cue!
This little smarty pants only took 5 minutes to learn how to do this.
Hopefully next time Milo will be feeling more like himself and we can continue building his confidence in the shower and with getting wet.
Setting dogs up for success means being able to adapt to how they are feeling on the day. If I stuck to my original plan for Milo it would have likely led to him not enjoying spending time with me or being in the salon, making future sessions a little more difficult.
Changing the plan to something easier, more fun and still equally as useful meant that Milo still had a good time and learnt something new too.
Bronte was in today for a comfort groom.
Today's focus was to take her short and do it as low-stress as possible.
This meant letting Bronte move about, giving her breaks when she needed them and giving her lots and lots of rewards.
She did an incredible job today getting through such a scary groom. Even though it was scary, she was so brave and was more cooperative than she could have been for such a scary appointment.
She is also learning that she is allowed to communicate her discomfort which was absolutely celebrated and listened to. When she first came to me, Bronte displayed something called 'learned helplessness', likely due to previous experiences at the groomers, where she just curled up on mum's lap and accepted what we did to her despite being clearly uncomfortable. Now she knows she can use her body language (and her voice) and be listened to which is amazing.
Here's a small clip of us tackling a more worrying spot.
Look at Ada doing a super job in her session today 😍
We had a lot of playing and tug games and when we figured cheese was much higher value than pate, she got stuck right into some training and brushing.
Tomorrow marks 6 months of being open! 🥳
To celebrate, here's a throwback to this time, last year.
Did you know that I built the majority of the salon myself? 🛠️
Top 3 things I enjoyed doing during the build:
1. Building and plumbing in the shower
2. Painting
3. Making finishing touches like the windowsills, shelves and putting photo frames on the wall
Top 3 things I hated doing during the build:
1. Wallpapering
2. Cutting the wall panels with weird angles
3. Mud. Mud was everywhere. All of the time. The garden was destroyed.
I couldn't have done it without Disney movies, the heater and help from Josh who took over cutting wood when the noise of the machinery made my brain hurt.
Hopefully by this time next year the garden will be just as pretty as the inside of the salon 😅
What a good boy Eddy was telling me to stop when he felt uncomfortable.
Eddy is a little worried about some parts of grooming and it turned out that brushing with the slicker brush was one of those parts. It was also Eddy's first full groom with me so he has yet to learn that I will not hurt him.
As I brushed over Eddy's side he swung his head around and very slightly bared his teeth. This was Eddy making it clear he didn't like what I did.
Exactly what he didn't like was what I had to find out:
• Was it the area?
• Was it the pressure of the brush?
• Was it just brushing in general?
• Did I catch a knot?
I think Eddy just has big feelings about being brushed. Towards the end of his groom I was able to brush almost his whole body with him feeling much more comfortable.
Stopping when he asks builds trust.
This is not behaviour that needs to be punished, it's behaviour that needs to be listened to.
I'm really looking forward to working with Eddy and building lots of positive emotions and experiences in the grooming environment.
In this clip we're working with both the mat protocol and the bucket game - 2 consent based techniques 😊
Clipping nails with Bombay:
Bombay has big feelings about his nails being cut.
He didn't even like the clippers being in his view when we started and I certainly couldn't put them close to his nails.
We got him from being worried about me touching his nails with my fingers to clipping a nail within 30 minutes.
30 minutes...
That's not a long time. Not only that, but there was minimal stress involved.
There was no holding tightly onto feet, no restraints used, no pinning him or holding him tightly and no struggle.
After this, Bombay came back to the mat, laid down and allowed me to stroke down his leg again. After the nail clippers we took a few steps back and left the nail clippers out of the picture to rebuild some confidence, but reintroduced them after a few minutes.
Handsome Ed came in to try on some muzzles 🥰
Many muzzles on the market are much too small for most dogs which can negatively affect their welfare.
The Muzzle Movement are looking to change that and have some amazing sizes available, but after getting one much too big, Eds humans decided to come visit to see if there was a size that's a better fit.
We decided on size Taz* but it will need a little bit of stretching to fit Eds cheeks properly, and possibly a chin strap to make it more secure and to help reduce movement on his face.
Ed was amazing and is used to putting his nose into a muzzle so trying on new sizes was super easy for him today.
