If you don't yet know what bespoke care plans are and why are they important, worry not! This article will help you to understand the relevance they have to the results you receive with your dog whether you are a dog carer or pet professional providing a service of care.
Table of Contents
Introduction
First of all, it's important that we acknowledge that each and every dog has very individual needs, preferences, likes and dislikes because all of this combined should be considered when deciding how best to care for them!
it takes an entire community working together to successfully raise a happy dog
We all have a responsibility to ensure that our dog receives a synchronised and consistent approach when caring for them that is based on their individual needs.
I only realised just how significant it is after one specific session involving a regular doggie client of mine around three years ago, who seemed to have taken ten steps back in his progress.
After a few minutes, both dog carer and I decided to cease any grooming attempts and just let the dog free roam while we spoke.
It was during this five minute conversation that I was told that the family had decided to hire a local dog trainer to help their dog with other issues in the home. The dog trainer they had chosen however, was well known for his outdated, 'alpha' approach, and suddenly it ALL made sense.
It was this experience that influenced my protocol to change - I now insist that all dog carers update me prior to a session of any changes to their circumstances, lifestyle, routine and everything in between because the more you know, the better prepared you are.
Isn't dog grooming a completely separate service to dog training?
Here's the thing, many dog care professionals still only concentrate on the service they are providing and spend little-to-no time at all considering what is happening elsewhere in the dog's life.
Many dog care professionals still don't understand that it is all connected - every isolated feeling, experience and/or event a dog has contributes to his overall physical, physiological, mental and emotional state.
To assume, for example, that each grooming session experience is an isolated event that only influences a dog's behaviour in that moment would be absolutely wrong.
Remembering that it takes a while for the Sympathetic Nervous System (fight/flight state) to return to a Parasympathetic State (calm state) - it is not uncommon for dogs to remain tense hours, days and sometimes even months after a particularly traumatic event, naturally making them more sensitive to other stressful events.
The results you get at, for example, a training session would be less productive if it came shortly after a stressful stay at a dog kennel and more productive if it came at a time when the dog was already in a calm and relaxed state.
There should be more consideration given to this fact before deciding when various activities are taking place in a dog's life so that events are spread out over a longer period of time to avoid over-stimulating a dog.
Basically, anything to cause a dog significant stress, pain and/or anxiety could negatively influence how other similar events and/or experiences are received in other areas of the dog's life if we aren't mindful.
What happens if a dog has a negative experience at the groomers or during another activity?
Studies show that dog's have epsodic memory much like humans which means they can remember past events clearly (Malkani et al., 2024) and have even been known to develop mental health disorders including PTSD as a result of prolonged exposure to stressful events and/or a significant traumatic event (Doddman, 2016).
What's more, dogs (and actually, all other animals including humans) tend to remember negative experiences more minutely than positive ones. Psychologists refer to this as our 'negative bias' - a primitive, survival mechanism that is autonomic reflex designed to help an animal evade any similar threats in the future.
This means that future sessions and/or a similar event may very well trigger the same emotional response as the original event, leading to a quicker escalation of survival responses unless dog care providers begin work to carefully and positively desensitise and counter-condition negative associations.
Note, this approach also relies on consistency and everyone being on the same wave length, hence the headline of this blog piece.
What are the risks in working with pet care providers with conflicting beliefs?
Let's look at an example:
Ted-the-Boxer has the most wonderful consent-based groomer who dedicates her time introducing various tasks in a low-stress and consensual way. Ted begins to enjoy his grooming sessions and has no significant issues with the process whatsoever.
But one day Ted's dog carer decides to take him to a local dog trainer for some additional "obedience" lessons twice a week - they want Ted to be "less bouncy" when guests come to the home or whenever they meet people at the local dog park.
The dog trainer decides that Ted requires a firm approach - he is a big boy and will "rule the house" if his behaviour isn't nipped in the bud while he's still an adolescent.
The first thing that the trainer implements is the use of a water pistol - the idea is to squirt Ted everytime he jumps onto a person in the home. The dog carer is reassured that this will soon stop Ted from behaving this way and is perfectly harmless.
The trainer also decides to introduce a 'figure of eight' lead when outdoors to help control and manage Ted's pulling behaviour during the first visit to the park. He prepares the dog carer's to expect some resistance while Ted learns to adjust to this new training device.
Both the water pistol and the figure of eight do their jobs well and successfully interrupt any bouncy/pulling behaviours in Ted before it escalates giving the dog carers a sense of relief and more control.
However, when Ted arrives later that week for his next scheduled grooming session, he already appears to be agitated. Very quickly, he becomes restless and is very reluctant to cooperate to basic grooming tasks as before.
But the most significant change to his behaviour presented itself during bath time, when suddenly he lunges at the dog groomer as she lifts the shower hose ready to wash him...
As you can probably already imagine, this scenario is a serious health & safety concern and all because poor Ted has been experiencing some significant negative events over a prolonged period of time.
First off, it is quite possible that this sudden fight response towards the groomer happened because he feels safer in that environment to express however, the consequences could have resulted in a dog bite putting both the groomer and Ted at risk of serious harm.
The risk of using pet care providers that are not synchronised in their approach is not only that it hinders health and safety, but also progress.
Absolutely everything is significant and synchronised care is crucial to progress and of course, safety.
How do I ensure that my dog is given the chance to make good, long-lasting progress in his training and general day-to-day living?
You carefully select the pet care providers you know can demonstrate an ethical and positive code of conduct.
It is ultimately the dog carer's responsibility to ensure they thoroughly research all pet care providers they are considering prior to entrusting them with their dog. What's more, it is also the dog carer's responsibility to ensure that their own approach is one that supports and is synchronised with their chosen pet care providers.
Failing to do so will not only hinder a dog's chances of living a happy and low-stress life, but it can also increase the likelihood of a dog developing serious health disorders that will in turn, reduce the very lifespan of the dog (Squair et al., 2023).
Once there are a handful of pet care providers that are synchronised in their approach working together to ensure a dog receives the best possible chance at thriving, a dog carer can ask about a bespoke care plan.
What is a 'bespoke care plan' and why is collaboration important?
Finally, a bespoke care plan is a document that will detail the specific methods and approach needed to ensure a dog receives a synchronised standard of care that caters to his very specific needs.
The bespoke care plan will include all of the important information required for dog care providers to ensure that they help rather than hinder a dog's progress, including information about a dog's prior experiences/traumas, health, lifestyle and likes/dislikes.
Furthermore, it will also include a series of activities/tasks that have been carefully selected and agreed upon by all pet care providers and dog carer, to ensure that training remains consistent.
The bespoke care plans that I provide to my clients also include diary inserts as well as, 'significant event' entry points to encourage dog carers to keep track of their own progress at home while keeping pet care providers up-to-date with any potential events that may result in a sudden change of behaviour and/or a disruption to the progress a dog is making.
Overall, a bespoke care plan can be a fantastic way to encourage both pet care providers and dog carers to collaborate and work together to safeguard the health and wellbeing of a dog.
To find out more about my own Bespoke Care Plans and/or to request to purchase one, please contact me directly on e-mail: stephanie@holisticgroomingacademy.com.
To learn more about how pet care providers can help support dog carers in choosing the right professionals for their dog, please consider reading this blog post here to get started.
Bibliography
Malkani, R., Paramasivam, S. and Wolfensohn, S. (2024) A multidimensional evaluation of the factors in the Animal Welfare Assessment Grid (AWAG) that are associated with, and predictive of, behaviour disorders in dogs, Animals : an open access journal from MDPI. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10886356/ (Accessed: 07 May 2024).
Doddman, N. (2016) Canine PTSD, Psychology Today. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/dog-days/201610/canine-ptsd (Accessed: 07 May 2024).
Fuggaza, C., Pogany, A. and Miklosi, A. (2016) Home: Cell press, Current Biology. Available at: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)30254-8 (Accessed: 07 May 2024).
Squair, C. et al. (2023) Effects of changing veterinary handling techniques on canine behaviour and physiology part 1: Physiological measurements, Animals : an open access journal from MDPI. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10093362/ (Accessed: 07 May 2024).
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