A surge in dog ownership and ongoing Pandemic effects on an entire generation of dogs, plus the changes experienced by older dogs, have impacted dog behaviour, and owner interactions, in the veterinary context (Brand et al, 2022).

These dogs have experienced changes to the world that have rocked them, and with two years of vet visits on their own without their humans behind them, may be impacting their comfort and stress related behaviour during vet visits (Williams 2022).
The absence of their human during veterinary examinations is associated with the dog demonstrating increased distress related behaviours (Csoltova et al, 2017) and repeated exposure to the veterinary context is associated with sensitisation of fear responses (increasing in response), rather than habituation (getting used to the context) (Doring et al, 2009).

You can see that it’s been a bit of a recipe for disaster…

Happy Visits are a foundation to counterconditioning to vet visits and setting dogs up to be more comfortable. A Happy Visit should consist of a visit for the dog as far into the process with which they are comfortable.

Can that dog remain somewhat comfortable as far as the car-park? That’s the starting point. Visit the car-park regularly, have a treat-party, hang out when all is calm & quiet, and go home.

Can the dog just about enter reception willingly? That’s the starting point. Have a treat-party in the car-park, scatter some treats to snuffle in reception and go home.

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Happy Visits don’t start with meeting staff or having cuddles. This doesn’t need to be a part of this process. We consider the function of the dog’s behaviour and stress related behaviour functions to escape the stressor.

Dogs likely experience fear in anticipation of going to the vet’s.

Counterconditioning is one approach to help improving their feelings and attitude. We take a version of the scary thing and associate that with pleasant things, such as yummy food and safety.
The scary thing predicts the availability of the yummy things!

But counterconditioning is just one part of the puzzle; by keeping exposure long-duration-&-low-intensity, we are also incorporating some desensitisation, habituation and social learning.

With increasing comfort, the dog can be taught to step up onto the weighing scales willingly, something that many dogs find daunting and associate with coercion.

Guiding dogs onto weighing scales can be done simply, with our hands-off approach as much as possible and is a great way to get them into playing the cooperative-game.

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Discuss Happy Visits for your dog, with their vet-team, and come up with a plan that increases everyone’s comfort.

Of course, we can help too!

Pill Poppin’

We’ve had a long weekend here and each day, I’ve shared some husbandry tips from recent practice with Decker.

Decker is the easiest dog to medicate because he views pretty much ALL ingestibles to be yummy food. We have also worked on teaching him to willingly take pills.

Here’s a fun way to teach pilling. To practice you can stick a little bit of kibble, or a hard treat, into the middle of the pocket and work up to adding empty pill capsules or appropriate supplements.

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Practice when your dog doesn’t have to take medication so that in this set-up your dog is happy and willing to accept whatever you give to them in that sausage.

Being ill and needing medication is bad enough, without pilling being distressing too!

Easy reinforcement for husbandry with K9 Connectables

K9 Connectables are an awesome Irish dog toy company who make innovative toys, with a wide range of applications.

Toys in their range work with our #100DaysOfEnrichment program and we, of course, use them ourselves. That’s why we are an affiliate and you can get 10% of your toys with our code: anied10

Here’s a great way to use a combination of their toys to set up easy reinforcement, keeping your hands free and it’s so helpful to establish a communication system: if the dog stops lapping, moves away, or moves away from the toy, we stop!

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Building that communication system is straight-forward and can be so beneficial in all sorts of ways and we’ve talked about it, with some examples, in our post on prepping for the vet: Vet Ready!

All Ears!

Decker has some ear inflammation likely in association with a superficial skin infection. Right now, there’s no infection in the ear but he has had a couple of infections in that ear, his left, about four or five years ago so this is not our first rodeo.

When he first developed infection in that ear, we started from scratch building toward cooperative treatment.

You can view the playlist of those sessions here:

Link to playlist here.

Some background…

While we certainly practice ear-work off and on, when his ears are not painful, I probably have not done that enough.

On top of that, Decker’s comfort with being handled in the vet’s has deteriorated. Pre-COVID we did cooperative care for almost everything but car-park consultations and him being brought in without me for two years has caused his tolerance of being handled there, by others, to seriously dwindle.

This is not at all to suggest his vets have been handling him inappropriately. It doesn’t require that, and they would never do that. They are excellent.

But during that period of going in without me, Decker also experienced some really serious illnesses & injuries requiring very invasive care and him feeling crappy.
Over these lockdown periods he has had a number of seriously injured pads/feet that were painful, a very serious GI upset as a result of contaminated canal water, TTA surgery (knee replacement surgery) after an accident and foreign body/intussusception gut surgery.

Since we’ve been going back in with the dog during treatments and consults, he’s experienced a mystery neuro condition (that spontaneously resolved) & neuro exams at two different vets, a senior check up, and rat poison ingestion. You can imagine that with or without me, Decker is going to associate being in that building and around those people with feeling pretty bad and probably scared too.

He’s pretty resilient and will eat from a food-fist throughout all exams with the vet, is happily muzzled for treatments, we plan and discuss with the vet-team ahead of time, and we manage vet visits with minimal stress for all. Like I said, they’re excellent.

Aside from that, I do plenty of treatment at home, for example, administering Cytopoint every couple of months and vaccinating him. Thankfully, we have a solid history of cooperative care at home for these procedures and all runs smoothly.

In the last week or so, he showed some pain in relation to his left ear. Decker is very stoic so if he’s showing pain, it’s definitely hurting. Off to the vet we went and he ate from a food fist throughout his exam, was muzzled and tube fed, through the ear exam, and then played ball while we chatted about his treatment.

We’ve talked about having a vet-visit plan before here and that really helps to minimise stress and discomfort; see Vet Ready!

At home, we started with some steroid drops for both ears to bring down the inflammation and provide pain relief.

All Ears! 2022

Here we go again!

We just started back with drops in sore ears on Friday, and here’s our first session:

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The procedures established here are quite important; they are put in place and taught over multiple sessions, rather than all in one go. The idea is to provide multiple steps with an out at every stage, so he can say PAUSE or STOP at any time.

The procedure is predictable so he always knows what’s coming and is built little by little:

1. the ear drops bottle
2. a hand touch behaviour
3. hand approaching the ear
4. drops bottle touching inside of ear
5. medication administered into ear canal

This gives the dog lots of opportunities to stop the procedure and he always knows what coming next.

The set up is also important:

• the food source is positioned to line the dog up – this makes everything more efficient and clearer for the learner
• we establish a strong ‘yippee response’ to the presence of, first, the closed ear drop bottle, and then the open ear drop bottle
• strong positive associations with holding a hand-touch behaviour and if he moves his face, we stop the procedure – long held communication as part of our relationship
• holding the hand touch makes something touch his ear – to countercondition you could add a range of sensations, building up to delivery of drops
• warm the drops to body temperature before we start – I usually carry them around in my pocket for a little while

We have worked on this a lot more with the left ear and he is more familiar with the procedure to that ear. We started with the right ear, took our time and then went to the left ear, and back to the right ear. We are moving toward familiarity and comfort throughout.

Practicing the individual skills, strengthening the association between each part of the procedure with yummies separately, as well as making sure administering drops is filled with yummie foods to catch and chase, and always the opportunity to take a break.
Treatment is less scary and startling when we know that we can make it stop, if we feel the need.

Thank you for booking onto our first Online Canine First Aid Workshop! The June dates are well overbooked and I can’t squeeze anyone else in. So we’re going to do another one…

Join us for a fun, interaction and very informative remote-workshop that might just help you to save a life!

This is designed for pet owners and non-veterinary dog pros, and is absolutely perfect if you have no background in medicine, veterinary or first aid.

This workshop will take place via MS Teams but you don’t need to download anything; just follow a link!

You can choose how much you would like to participate live on the evening, but you are encouraged to practice lots.

Our workshop and Canine First Aid & Emergency Care resources are evidence based to the most up to date information, based in valid research and best practice. Your instructor has worked in veterinary nursing here and abroad, we have participated in specific training for the delivery of canine first aid information, and regularly update our skills with veterinary professionals to stay on point.

Not only will you have access to quick reference guides, that you are advised to save to your phone, but you will also have access to online resources to continue your learning.

Book today by emailing info@anied.ie or messaging us via social media, such as Facebook or Instagram (@aniedireland).