Less than 18 months in practice and already nominated for the Petplan award!

It’s been an amazing year setting up my Canine Massage Therapy Clinic, with some scary moment too!

My confidence builders have been two of my canine massage guild colleagues, namely Natalie Lenton, course director of the Canine Massage Therapy Centre and Chairman of the canine massage guild and Emma Overend, instructor in Canine Touch and McTimoney Animal therapist.

And of course Scott Rigg from Aberdeen Veterinary Referrals who is kindly mentoring me in my next project: becoming an small animal physiotherapist. Scott has also authorised me to use sometimes one of the room at the practice when some of our common clients may not be able to drive up to Huntly for their Canine Massage Therapy treatments.  But just to clarify I am not technically a member of staff of the practice!

I can’t even explain how nice if feel to be nominated for such an award especially after just under 18 months of practice in Canine Massage it means a lot to realise how appreciated I am by the people and owners of dogs that I am trying to help. I guess this nomination set the standard high for my few coming years of practice! Thank you so much for your support Jeri!

Canine Sport Medicine course: conditioning and rehabilitation of the canine athlete

Today is a good day: I just found out the I passed the exam for the canine sport medecin course with a 99% Mark, hurray!

As some of you already know I went to Zurich at Bessy’s Kleintierklinik last month for a 3 day intensive course about Canine Sport Medicine taught by Chris Zink.

This was an amazing opportunity for me as the course, developed by the Canine Rehabilitation Institute (USA), is mainly held in the USA and is only opened to veterinarians, veterinary technicians and physical therapists. It was definitely a steep learning curve!

The group included 83% of veterinarian surgeons with 4 orthopaedic specialists and some veterinarian specialised in animal rehabilitation, most of the last 15% were physical therapists who specialised in animal therapy. It was a truly European course with people from Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark, England and Scotland.

The course, aimed to provide us with a fundamental understanding of anatomical structure and locomotion and how they relate to performance and potential injuries was quite intensive. We covered in depth the main sport injuries of the canine athletes in all disciplines, including their causes, the main diagnostic procedures, their prevention via conditioning program and post injury targeted rehabilitation. The course also included the safe introduction to canine sport for young dogs.

The role that psychology can play in the rehabilitation was also discussed as well as the nutrition and supplements.

We had some very interesting discussion on the subject of diagnostic and rehabilitation with the participation of all the experts in the room describing their own approach during the practical sessions.

Chris Zink was definitely a brilliant instructor, extremely knowledgeable with a thorough science based approach that I really appreciated and she is very entertaining too!

Finally it was a very good opportunity for me to network with some like-minded professional with whom I am hoping to keep contact and maybe meet again in the future.

I would like to finish by thanking Chris for the course and Rico Vannini, Owner of Bessy’s Kleintierklinik for the organisation and welcoming us all to his clinic.

There is always so much to learn in canine massage therapy

As a member of the Canine Massage Guild I am required to follow a certain number of days of continuous development program. This is an easy commitment for me as I love learning and I believe that however good or skilled someone is in a subjet, there is always more to learn and share with others. Someone lately described me as a “sponge” (!)…I still wonder if this was actually a compliment or not!

So two weeks ago I was back “down South” to Worcester for my second week of CPD for this year were I followed 4 days of advanced massage techniques and I loved the whole of it!

The two first days was all about release techniques for the ventral aspect of the dogs. To clarify, the ventral aspect means the area of the throat, pectoral, abdominal and ventral side of the hind legs of the dogs. These areas can easily be overlooked and some can be difficult to access, but when massaged with the right techniques by a knowledgeable person, it can bring tremendous relief to some dogs. The course was instructed by Natalie Lenton from the canine massage therapy centre who again blew me away, she can definitely make anatomy and massage come to life!

Mehwi acting as super model for Natalie

The second Course was two days of Canine Touch, with Emma Overend as instructor, from PawDimensions. The Canine Touch technique is a gentle bodywork designed to address the dog’s soft tissue with series of small moves set into specific procedures. There are so many way these moves can be incorporated into a massage therapy session.

Mehwi acting as super model for Emma

And I am not the only one who benefited from the week: Manouk and Mehwi were with me, acting as practice dogs and they loved it too! Look at them waiting eagerly for their turn! In fact, and I suspect you have already noticed with my two first photos, Mehwi ended up becoming the superstar model for both Natalie and Emma. This was a fabulous opportunity for him as he was just 3 week post operation for his elbow.

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These techniques are of huge benefits for any dogs I will be treating in the future, in fact I started applying some as soon as I came back from my trip. I already wonder how I managed to live without them before!

These four days are just a small subset of my development program, I am currently studying to become an animal physiotherapist, I followed a 3 days classes on canine sport medicine in Zurich earlier this year and there are more to come before the next year, but this will be some another blog posts!

Just a few more photos for you to enjoy, I know I am no way as good as Iain to take photos, sorry!

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Orthopeadic conditions in agility dogs

The talk from Scott Rigg about the most common orthopeadic conditions found in the agility dog finally took place on Friday 25/09 at Aberdeen Veterinary Referrals in front of a full house: it was apparently the highest attendance the clinic ever had for a talk and it was definitly a very motivated crowd.

On behalf of everyone who attended the presentation, I would like to take the opportunity to thank Scott and his team for their warm welcome at the clinic and for Scott’s willingness to spend time educating us about the subject. So many people mentioned how positively suprised they were by the high quality of the talk and how instructive the presentation was.

I would also like to thank AVR team for accepting to use the event for fund raising for the Oldies club, which is the charity the Canine Massage Guild is currently supporting, and for all the participants for their generous donation. I currently do not know how much we raised as the collecting tin will stay at AVR for a couple of more weeks.

Finally I would like to invite those who were present at the talk and would be interested by a follow up talk or / and workshop on a canine athlete conditionning to get in touch with me via CANINE Pawsibilties website.

 

 

The walk I never want to forget

After 3 major operations, after being around 10 times under anesthesia (I stopped counting after a while) and endless hours…weeks…months… of cage rest, Mehwi has finally been allowed his first walk on Tuesday 7th of July. A day I don’t think I will ever forget!

Mehwi was diagnosed with severe hip dysplasia at 14 months and had had both hips replaced a 4 months procedure which took 6 months due to some complication after the first surgery.

For those who take for granted a game of tug, a walk in the wood or just having your dog free in the house: remember that you are lucky!  It was so nice yesterday having him lying at my feet, going to be fed with the rest of the pack, watching him trying to play with Midge or just sitting his chin on my knee…I missed it so much!

The difficult part now is to take it easy and develop a rehabilitation program to get him back to what every young dog should be doing. It is going to be a new challenge, a new learning curve. I am looking forward to our first dog show and our first sheep herding day! Watch this space!

 

 

 

Orthopedic conditions and agility dogs: presentation by Scott Rigg

As many of you know, being an agility competitor and a canine massage therapist, I have a special interest in canine conditioning for sport dogs and rehabilitation after injuries.

I also believe that all of us, agility addicts, should be more informed about the risks associated with our passion so we can help our 4 legged athletes, who week after week take our breath away,  have the better (long) life they deserve.

I am therefore really happy that Scott Rigg, who is the advanced practitioner in small animal surgery from Aberdeen Veterinary Referrals  has accepted to do a presentation for us, the agility crowd, about the common orthopedic conditions that we may encounter with our agility dogs.  Scott is taking care of Manouk and Mehwi as well as some other abedonian agility dogs.

Date: The presentation will take place on the 25th of September at 19:00

Location: Aberdeen Veterinary Referrals in Foveran.

The presentation is limited to 40 people! Get in touch with me to reserve your space (choose Others as subject)- I will send a confirmation email to everybody who have a space reserved.

Cost: Free of Charge. Knowing how much time it takes to prepare such a talk it is an amazing gesture from Scott that I am sure all of you will appreciate!

Aberdeen Veterinary Referrals and CANINE Pawsibilities would be grateful if all the participants to this event were willing to show their appreciation for Scott’s effort by donating on the day to the oldies club. A collection tin will be available.

The oldies club is a registered charity that rehomes eldery dogs (number: 1118246).

 

 

Manouk in Bridge Vets news

I thought you may be interested by this very nice article from Scott Rigg, Manouk’s orthopedist surgeon from Bridge Vets, who managed the rehabilitation program of Manouk prior to Crufts: Click here to read Scott’s article – Manouk in the news.

For those of you who were not aware, in Octobre, Manouk fell from height and came lame. After 6 weeks of trying to help Manouk recover on my own, I realised that if I wanted to have the slightest chance to compete at Crufts I needed to involve Scott as soon as possible.

At the time I went to see Scott I was actually convinced Manouk’s agility career was definitely over this time.

What I really liked by working with Scott  was that he was totally opened and supportive to complementary therapy, I made sure that myself, as the canine massage therapist, and Manouk’s physiotherapist were communicating actively with Scott and that the 3 of us were working as a team under his advices.

This short article is the summary of a success story highlighting that collaborative work from multiple disciplines is beneficial for a faster recovery and rehabilitation after injury. We worked on a extremely tight deadline, the chance to make it Crufts were slim and I really needed to keep my focus on the objective.

It is also an acknowledgement that sometimes we are waiting too long before getting a specialist involved with our agility dog. I wished I had taken Manouk to Scott much earlier in the process. Also, the reeducation program that we sometimes try to put in place ourselves using our personal knowledge and understanding does not always suit the dog’s condition. I must admit I have learnt a lot over the few last months!

Well that was just some paws for thoughts that I hope may help some of you too. This “adventure! made my participation to Crufts very special as even just one week before the show I was still unsure if we would really be able to go!

Crufts, here we go!

After battling with an injury for the past 5 months, today is a special day. We have been given the go ahead from Manouk’s orthopaedist, Scott Rigg from Bridge Vets in Aberdeen, to compete in the agility championship at Crufts on Sunday!

This has been a long but interesting journey and I have learnt a lot, especially in how patient we have to be to rehabilitate an injured sport dog. The rehabilitation included a cross discipline program, with lead walks, canine massage therapy, core stability exercises, physiotherapy and hydrotherapy, with Scott regularly assessing the progress. In fact we have done barely any agility.

So that’s it then, I now have 4 days to remind myself how to run an agility course. This is definitely a scary thought! And unless something unexpected happens, in 5 days we should be heading to the arena. A dream come true, an even more special dream after having to fight so many odds this past few months.

Scott, thank you for your patience and support in getting Manouk back on track, I realise the journey with Manouk’s rehabilitation is not over but we would not have been where we are today without you. I really appreciate how available you have been for us (in addition to your expertise of course!) despite the busy schedule of your clinic.

Finally, good luck to all my friends participating to Crufts, especially my Scottish fellow competitors. Even if I have a weird accent, I am a Scottish agilitist after all and proud to be!

 

PS: Some of you asked if it was possible to watch Crufts online. There is an official YouTube Crufts channel and in the past year there have been a good coverage of the main arena. If you have time, I would advise you to watch the international agility which is held on the Saturday and support our Scottish Agility Dog of the year (2014) team Alan Short & Bruce. There will be 3 rounds, 2 qualifying rounds and one final round, running respectively at: 11:30: qualifying jumping round; 14:00: qualifying agility round; 17:10: final

The championship agility is held on the Sunday: 09:00: qualifying jumping round; 11:00: qualifying agility round; 16:55: final

The Canine Massage Therapy Centre is now up and running!

Well, I think it is all in the title! I am really excited to now be able to work professionally and the Canine Massage Front!

I am looking forward to help more dogs, it is always so rewarding!

Canine Pawsibilities’ first Christmas party

On Monday 29th of December, we had the first ever Christmas party and I would like to thank everybody who participated (and brought their sense of humour) to make it such a success!

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