An exciting new campaign has launched to help you and your clients! The 'Just in Case' campaign from our HGA Approved Organisation, The Muzzle Movement, promotes muzzle training as a normal, preventative skill that can support calmer handling during grooming and other stressful experiences. Grooming professionals can sign up for a free pack of posters, handouts, and social media content to share with clients. To find out more and to access the resources, visit this link: https://themuzzlemovement.com/pages/just-in-case-sign-up NEW LIVE EVENT: You can also join me and The Muzzle Movement for a discussion on muzzle use in the grooming environment this March 25th from 7.30pm. Check it out via our calendar for the link and to save to your calendar. Do you use muzzles in your salon? Let me know!👇

Welldone to Vanessa on the Muzzle movement chat tonight as always she show cased HGA and her Brillant work.. PERFECTLY - very proud :-)

For those who joined The Muzzle Movement interview with our tutor, @Vanessa Barber last night! Let us know in the comments what you thought? Have your feelings around muzzles changed in any way? If so, how? 👇

So one of the things I often see being wrongly advised is “never groom a dog on the floor” 😢 When someone tries to convince you that a dog will never associate calm behaviours on the floor, it only shows their lack of knowledge in behaviour and emotional safety. There are MANY circumstances where floor grooming can be a good way to de-escalate stress, specifically when it comes to: 👉🏻 dogs who have had traumatic grooming experiences involving grooming tables and/or restraints. 👉🏻 or where a dog feels emotionally and physically more stable being away from heights, and where they have the ability to move away. In the case study I’ve attached below, Harry felt most comfortable in the comfort of his OWN home, in the PRESENCE OF his caregivers, while ON THE FLOOR. To give you a little bit of context, Harry was a geriatric, blind, and partially deaf, Westie with diabetes. He couldn’t cope with a conventional grooming process. Instead, his grooming plan went a little like this: 🛁 He was bathed and dried the night before I visited by his main caregiver, to significantly reduce groom time. 🕰️ We built up his confidence gradually over weekly, 20-minute sessions until he knew and was familiar with my smell, voice, and all of the tools I intended to use. ✂️ And after around 2 months of introducing the process using positive reinforcements and lots of patience, we got to this point right here! Harry would relax so much so that he would often dose throughout his comfort groom — he would occasionally move away for a rest, but he would return when ready. My sessions were never longer than 30-minutes, but in that time, all of the necessary trimming, clipping and nail dremeling took place without stress 🐾 To his carers, this was worth the world and more - they paid me more than my hourly rate because they SAW my value 🩷 But the money was a secondary benefit to me, because to be able to make welfare grooming a respectful and dignified experience for the last months of a dog’s life, is one of the most gratifying feelings you can ever have.

Big thanks to @Stephanie Zikmann for inviting me in for a chat tonight. For anyone wanting to get started with ACE Free Work please download my free guide - https://go.puptalk.co.uk/how-to-get-started-with-ace-free-work-landing-page/ For anything else, you can find it via www.puptalk.co.uk