As puppies grow and develop, we want to ensure that we stimulate their minds and bodies at the appropriate times, and in the appropriate amounts, to ensure optimal development and adult performance. We also want to minimise the risk of injury and the development of degenerative orthopaedic conditions in the growing or adult dog.
Being both a dog trainer and a canine physiotherapist I always keep an eye of how puppies and young dogs move so I can highlight and correct potential weaknesses at an early age. I also balance my training programs to minimise the risk of injury of the puppy and optimise their physical development.
Thank you onlinepethealth for this great poster, I am so glad to be part of the vetrehabber community!
There may be some of you who are still sceptical about the benefits of Online Learning.
Happily Ollie has grasped the new technology with all four paws!
Our online Puppy Schools were a big help for many during the Covid lock downs of the last couple of years and are now still proving to be a popular way train remotely or follow our live training classes!
We offer a number of varied online courses from Puppy & Junior dog training, Trick training and even Scent work. Head on over to our Learning Hub to take a look
We all love looking at photographs of Puppies. This Sunday we managed to squeeze in an impromptu photo shoot during one of my Puppy Class – Live sessions.
A typical Canine Hoopers training session at CANINE Pawsibilities in Inverurie
I am so proud and amazed of how the teams are progressing and also how everybody has been (and still is) helping each other. A big thank you Euan Duff for the amazing photos!
Canine Pawsibilities and Agility Team Scotland feature this week in the Canine massage guild blog!
If you are interested to understand how warm up and cool down massages can benefit your agility dogs or any canine athlete, this blog is for you! Check it out on the Canine Massage Guild blog page:
And to set the atmosphere, I also have summarised the experience in in a slightly more lively manner:
With the nice weather we had a couple of weeks ago, Iain decided to take his camera out to witness another training day at CANINE Pawsibilities.
There was a mix of junior classes, agility foundation for young dogs and one to one agility training sessions.
Although I am a border collie addict, I love training a wide breed of dogs, I love seeing the young dogs evolve, I love seeing small dogs like Cyril playing with the big boys like Harley. I love witnessing Sprout and Maddie or Buzz who have been rescued recently, building their confidence. I feel so lucky to be doing what I love: training dogs or should I say enrich some dogs’ life.
Just like with human, training is not one system fits all, each dog has its own personality, its own strength and its own weakness and this is without taking in account the owner / dog relationship which is also another level of challenge. When training, I need to take all these parameters into account.
Each team challenges me in their own way, they push my creativity to find what might work better for them. I feel that each dog and owner I meet push me to improve my skills and knowledge. Also, I try to give a little bit (and even a lot) of what I have learnt over the years with my own dogs to all of them, hoping that I can help them all live a happier, fuller life: I see this is as my own dogs’ legacy.
And the most important aspect of it is a simple advice: don’t waste any time, enjoy every single minute you have with your four legged friends, have fun, laugh, don’t be frustrated if training does not take you (easily) where you would like to be, instead embrace the challenge and adapt to your dog’s need and never ever worry about what others might think of you and your dog – One day, which is not further away than a blink of your eye your friend will have aged and it will be too late.
All the photos of the video below (and much more) can also be admired on Iain’s website (at a much better resolution than the video). If one of the star of the video is yours and you would like some of the photos, use the “contact us” option on his website and just ask him, I am pretty sure he will be more than happy to email you the photos. Or you can also simply let him know you liked his photos…. this is another thing my dogs taught me: positive reinforcement works also on human!
Enjoy,
