Speaker 1: 0:09

Welcome to the Absolute Dog Sex in a Squirrel podcast. I'm Lauren Langman. I'm one of the world's leading dog trainers and it's my mission to help owners become their dog's top priority. In each episode, you'll discover how to gain trust and communicate with your dog like never before, creating unbreakable bonds that make you the most exciting part of their world. Okay, rehab. We're talking rehab now. Alice, you have got a particularly interesting take on rehab, I think, because you had a pretty well unusual experience with your rehomed dog. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about it?

Speaker 2: 0:43

yeah, when we got bonnie about two or three months in, she started to limp, so we we can obviously took her to the vet and had this investigated and, to cut a long story short, she actually needed both of her cruciate ligaments operated on. So we were in for quite a long road really in terms of two different surgeries and intimate by intermittent recovery period, so that around that. So, yeah, it was about the sort of yeah, it took about nine months start to finish now, when I know people are listening, they're thinking rehab in one direction, rehab in another direction.

Speaker 1: 1:18

I've got lots of different examples of rehab, from rehabbing a psoas injury to rehabbing a dog post spay to rehabbing like just many, many, many, many many different experiences of rehab. Now, alice, when I'm thinking about your specific rehab experience, what was the most stressful part for you and I think it's worth saying just quite how big Bonnie is- yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:40

so Bonnie is a canicorso mix, so she, so she's quite a bit of dog and she's also a naughty but nice dog.

Speaker 2: 1:46

So actually the most stressful part for us was helping her to get through especially the earlier, more vulnerable stages of her recoveries really calmly and like creating and maintaining a really calm environment where we were minimizing the risk of her having potentially like a quite a big reactive outburst.

Speaker 2: 2:08

This at that time that could have been in response to like a knock at the door or just a noise in the street could have caused that at that point, you know, very, very early in our training and and that could have caused damage to the surgery site and that would have been really bad news for her. So we had to take that very seriously and Bonnie's also a dog that struggles with separation, certainly struggled a lot more at the point where this was all happening as well. So we basically camped out in the downstairs of our house because Bonnie couldn't go upstairs really, and particularly the vet was very worried about if she did go upstairs, if there was a noise or something and she came charging downstairs. That could have been one of those things that could have kind of caused a sort of a possibly irreparable damage and when you say irreparable damage, what do you mean?

Speaker 1: 2:59

you can be really clear with everyone yeah so.

Speaker 2: 3:01

So we were warned that, like if, if sort of significant damage happened to the surgery site, particularly whilst it was very new, it would have potentially meant more surgery or that might not have even possible, so it could have been the end of the road for Bonnie. It could have been a put to sleep sort of euthanasia situation if we'd gotten into that situation which I think when people are listening, you kind of go oh my goodness, like this is serious.

Speaker 1: 3:22

Now for me, experiencing so many different rehab experiences, I think we've got lots of different tips we can share with people, and I think what we should do is a bit of a sort of tip scenario where it goes from you to me, me to you and we just share some of our experience. So I'm going to start with you and you get to share just one of your top tips with all of our listeners.

Speaker 2: 3:43

Super. So I think that, Particularly when you're looking at the very early parts of rehab, you might be looking at ditching the bowl in slightly different ways than you might normally. You might not really be doing a lot of like throwing food here and there and, you know, doing a lot of the games that you might normally do with your dog. So you might be instead you might be spending more of their daily food allowance in creating nice like enrichment bowls or stuffed Kongs and things like that, Things that are like a nice activity for the dog but that they can literally pretty much do from lying in their bed. So that would be a top tip for particularly those early stages.

Speaker 1: 4:18

Lovely and I'm going to go calm, calm, calm and more calm, like there really is nothing at all that will beat calm, and if you can encourage and grow and build calmness at every level, it's going to help rehab Back over to you, alice.

Speaker 2: 4:35

Yeah. So another one of my top tips would be absolutely go mining in Games Club for the kind of games that you can still play with your dog when they are recovering potentially from a surgery or an illness or something, because there are so many games there that you can do that have. They can either be sedentary or with very gentle movement. So some of the things we did with bonnie were like teaching a nose touch or chin targeting we you know bang as well. It was even like a trick we managed to sort of teach us by capturing normal like natural movements.

Speaker 2: 5:09

As she was sort of flopping to lie down, we could just capture and teach a trick. And also really useful life skills like muzzle games. So like sort of teaching her to be comfortable and actually enjoy wearing a muzzle. Because, again, her being a naughty but nice dog and and was working sort of on on some reactivity issues, thinking ahead to kind of post-surgery recovery, when we could start growing her world again, that was going to be a really useful skill that we could actually start working on, even just from home when she wasn't moving around much.

Speaker 1: 5:37

Lovely and I so agree. I was also thinking for my dogs. One of the biggest ones was try and teach everything before you ever need it. So when you go into Games Club, look at some of the games and think how might this serve me in a future space? And one of mine is lead walking. Actually, make sure that your dogs walk really, really, really, really, really nicely on lead so that when you do need this at a later date, actually the lead work comes in in handy. Because most of the time when your dog comes out of any sort of rehab people are going to say lead work, so lead work only.

Speaker 1: 6:07

And I actually collected my little dog, blink, from surgery just, and she needed lead work. And same when she had her tibral tuberosity transposition big operation on her knee like 10 years ago. It's lead work only, so let's do lead work only with her. Well, actually, when you first put a dog on lead that's not used to being on lead they can be like jack-in-the-box monkeys, like literally backflipping on you. So for me, lead work's really important. So all of our lead games magic hand and any sort of proximity game where lead is built and valuable and effectively valued by your dog can make such a massive, mega difference to your rehab and recovery road later on. What do you think, alice?

Speaker 2: 6:47

oh, definitely. And again, it's those fundamental skills that are then so transferable, whether it's as a necessity or just for kind of general life skills. And also, I think my next tip would be that know when a game or a trick might not be right for them, so there's always an alternative, there's always a way to adapt and be creative, and there's so many ideas in Games Club and you, you know, in the lives and in the community where we sort of share these kind of ideas but like, for example, we were we were on a live recently where you're teaching instant down and actually for bonnie we discussed this and an instant stop was more appropriate for her.

Speaker 1: 7:26

So there's always a way of getting the behavior you want in a way that's appropriate for your dog, whether it's during their rehab or beyond lovely and I love that adaptation for bonnie and a great example, a stand being so much more appropriate for her, knowing that an instant down is probably not that reinforcing. Do you want to explain that, alice, as to why?

Speaker 2: 7:46

yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:47

So because sort of bonnie's had both her cruciates done and she's a lot sturdier than she was post-surgery and post-recovery like it's definitely done wonders for her overall health and fitness, but she is still a kind of lanky, wonky donkey with arthritis and stuff going on. So whereas for a lot of dogs an instant down behaviour would be really rewarding, would be a really joyful behaviour, I don't think that bonnie would enjoy it. I think it'd be a bit little bit rough on her joints. So actually she, but she's really enjoying the instance that we've done some practice since the, the live and uh, and she seems to be really enjoying that game. So it's it's about adapting to meet the needs of the handler in terms of what is, what is the behavior that we need, what do we need to grow and what do we need to teach, but also advocating for the dog's needs in how we achieve that behavior fantastic, absolutely, and and I so agree like it wouldn't be remotely enjoyable for her to try and hit her the deck like a 50 kilo dog hitting the deck fast.

Speaker 1: 8:41

Like that's not like fun, is it? Um, actually, how about just stop dead and then get to run again? I know I love that when I think about rehab. Another one for me is if your dog has any open wound actually consideration on that. So for me, when my dog recently had an open wound, we have an appropriate coat that effectively covers the tummy. We have ability to step in and step out of that coat so it's not too uncomfortable for the dog. We also think about laser on that wound. So if you know anyone with a laser, we use a category 3B or 4 laser to be able to heal wound recovery. We use Soothe lotion and we use Prime from AOK9, which are both like going to heal your dog inside out, which for me is mega, really important, really vital. But also with wound recovery, I think so many people look at the wound on the outside but they don't look at the wound on the inside, or you can't see the wound on the inside, so people forget it.

Speaker 1: 9:32

For me, whether it's post-spa or any other kind of abdominal surgery. Maybe your dog's eaten something or got hold of something or maybe done something stupid with, like I don't know, ingesting inappropriate objects. For me it's really, really key that we take our time in terms of building up exercise gradually after that and knowing that with abdominal surgery they can feel quite tight and quite restricted for a little while. So again, enabling them to have gradual lead work build up and my lead work again comes into this as well as a fitness sort of space, space with the dog. So, cavaletti, confidence circuits I know you do confidence circuits, alice. What do you think of them?

Speaker 2: 10:10

They're really good. They're really good fun and again, you can be quite creative with, like how you can even sort of build some of these things at home and just sort of use what you've got lying around. So it's, yeah, it's good fun. If people can kind of get into that badge, it's really good. But also, if you're in Games Club, then you can have these little sort of tasters of some of these sort of fitness and confidence games with the fitness friday lives, so like if sort of you're not that kind of well versed yet in how to observe your dog's kind of body condition and posture or balance and things like that. That's all stuff that gets you know, looks in, looks at, you know on a weekly basis, isn't it in games?

Speaker 1: 10:48

yeah, really nice. It is actually in fitness friday. I forget that actually you guys get to watch me train my dogs and and yeah, it's something that's great learning opportunity and and I really believe that those when you're in rehab, those are the things you want to go to, those are the can do's, because there's so many things you can't do. I think in rehab it's sometimes opening your mind up and going what can I do when the world's feeling a bit more closed off for your dog and I know that. Say, you enjoy sport and you've got an injury in sport right now. Maybe it's a tendon or a ligament or some kind of issue with your dog.

Speaker 1: 11:18

Sport wise, you can feel so inhibited because you can't get to do your normal thing and I know for you, alice, like maybe walks or exercise or being out and about or being doing some like some training or some some work where get to move it can feel so restrictive when you're told, no, you shouldn't be doing this, it's not part of your rehab. I think sometimes we need to look at what can you do. So, alice, what can you do when you're in rehab with a dog like Bonnie or with a dog like Blink? What can you do? Because I'm thinking like even basics like scent would be really, really opportunistic right now.

Speaker 2: 11:56

Yeah, scent is absolutely where I was going to go to. That's we did. I mean, we did so much of that with with bonnie when we're at home and actually it's this is it's worth mentioning. This is how I found absolute dogs, because when we were told keep bonnie on house rest, she shouldn't be having any regular exercise at the moment until we've sorted out what needs to happen and I just I can't just do nothing because this dog has a lot of behavioral struggles. I can't just put this on pause until we can get back out and have in-person training sessions. I need to find something I can do at home.

Speaker 2: 12:21

And it was brilliant to be able to find absolute dogs and sort of find it was sort of into the sort of naughty but nice sort of pathway in and find all kinds of games that had real life value, sort of on the outside world that we could start growing on the inside. So, yeah, some of the kind of naughty but nice skills, like I mentioned, muzzle game before and some of that A to B and lead work, as you were saying. But also scent was fantastic because it's such a naturally calming activity for the dog. Bonnie finds it incredibly reinforcing and it's so easy to do at home, so it's still her top favourite game.

Speaker 2: 12:58

If she sort of if I'm sort of getting ready she knows, if I'm getting ready for going to do a bit of a play session or training session and signal is that she will just dart to her bed, she'll dart into her crate and she'll be like cool, you're going to do a treasure hunt and then like kind of she'll just wait for me to start hiding little like whether it's toys or food or whatever she's going to go searching for. She'll kind of be like amazing, and it's you're teaching boundary games pretty much, but like it is her favorite thing to do and it really lights her up, but not in a high arousal way, which is exactly what you want if you're looking at sort of surgery recovery amazing, and I love hearing that, and I suppose I'm grateful, then, therefore, that you did have to go through something like that to a degree, because that's how you found this and you're such an amazing game changer.

Speaker 1: 13:43

I suppose it's almost a moment of gratitude, right?

Speaker 2: 13:46

Definitely it was a silver lining, because I think when we sort of started doing the sort of homeschooling and looking at the naughty but nice training at home and one of the first pieces of advice was think about ditching the walk, like if it's not working for anyone, if it's not fun for anyone, if no one's having a nice time time, then maybe sort of rewind and just work on some skills at home. First I thought, ah well, we're doing that anyway, so we have to do that because you know she's not allowed to go anywhere at the minute. But okay, that means that we're in the right place and actually we're learning the right skills in the right order.

Speaker 1: 14:18

I love hearing that. Now I was just thinking like switching gears a little with my little dog coming back post-surgery. She's had abdominal surgery, which effectively for her means no sort of jumping and bouncing and leaping, and I came home last night I'd left a friend looking after her and she had her and just up on the sofa with her and I said how did she get up? And she said, oh, she jumped. And I'm like, oh my goodness. And then I also looked as I got into bed that evening and I popped a bed next to my bed so she could sleep with me and the bed had a massive lip on it and it's even things like this I think we don't think about. So were there any subtleties that you didn't think about when you were going into rehab? For me, I'm going to say, jumping on furniture in and off and on beds and surfaces of floors, like actually going from like wood to tile to ashtray turf, to anything slippy, like thinking through all the different opportunities there, or maybe like potential consequences. What were some of yours, alice?

Speaker 2: 15:14

Yeah. So, like I say, because Bonnie sort of struggled with separation, we knew that we actually kind of needed to move our mattress downstairs and sort of camp out in the living room because she wouldn't have been able to settle with us being in a different area. So we're like, okay, well then, that's going to. She would have just we had baby gates and stuff to try and block off the stairs.

Speaker 2: 15:36

But if we'd been upstairs for a prolonged period of time and she was downstairs, she would have just jumped over it and again jumping onto the sofa, when they might not have been supposed to like the dogs don't necessarily know or like appreciate that they're going to just sort of do what feels like the right thing for them to do, like you know, the natural thing for them to do. So, yeah, so we kind of had to think about where we place ourselves, because we knew that's where bonnie was going to sort of gravitate to and and just think about kind of, yeah, what kind of movement we allowed or encouraged, because we have, like, our laminate flooring downstairs so it can be a little bit sort of slippy. So we just have to make sure that she didn't have opportunities to kind of really pick up speed if she wanted to. So yeah, just kind of keeping everything very sort of low down, very soft and slow and, like I say, just calmness all day, every day big one, really big one.

Speaker 1: 16:30

And I think, just to add, calm from a canine, massive support for dogs going through rehab, massive support for dogs going through any stressful or anxious period. Also, if your dog has had surgery for me it's got so many and good things post-surgery as well. So, yeah, calm, calm. K9, I think also Alice, for the win, right.

Speaker 2: 16:49

Absolutely yeah. Yeah, bonnie was on that throughout that period and I definitely think it helps, yeah, and.

Speaker 1: 16:57

I think one of my other considerations is actually how anybody else handles the dog, is actually how anybody else handles the dog. So, for example, like I said, my friend I'm sort of sitting and watching over Blink didn't really think too hard on it, and then came home to Blink being on the sofa and I was like oh no, but didn't think too hard because she would have sat there and Blink would have looked at her adoringly and she'd have said she could come up. But it is, the dogs don't necessarily know how to tell us what they can't do, so anybody else who also has involvement has that ever been something you've needed to consider or not, alice?

Speaker 2: 17:28

A little bit, yeah, like sort of Bonnie has a fairly tight knit circle of human friends, so it's not something that comes into play hugely, but but certainly just um, even things like, um, observing body language and observing the signs of discomfort, I think, like it's like saying that the dogs aren't always like the best at telling us in an obvious manner, but we can learn to look for those signs.

Speaker 2: 17:51

So you know, any kind of licking or nibbling of a specific area or kind of if, if, I kind of know, if, if Bonnie's feeling a little bit sore now, like if I touch her and then you get that little sort of skin flicker, so kind of just sort of knowing and you've had a really great workshop on this in Bowerland when I was down and and lovely, brave was your fantastic demo dog for that and and actually looking kind of how to sort of find those areas that might be a little bit sore and how to just sort of gently massage or just kind of sort of soothe those, those sort of little aches and pains that you know.

Speaker 2: 18:22

I say Bonnie, as much as she's out of recovery and has been for a long time she's, she's always going to have issues, like she's got kind of hip dysplasia and arthritis, so she's always going to have some of those little kind of sore spots or aches and pains that just we need to watch out for. So, whether it's us or whether it's anybody else who might be looking after her, for us like knowing what those signs are, and even if those signs might be just a bit of a full bucket actually, if you sort of strongly think, hang on, why is the dog behaving a little bit differently or kind of, you know, not quite as operant or as sort of cheerful as they might otherwise be, it could just be that their bucket's a little bit full, with sort of some discomfort or other of there and I really hugely believe that one.

Speaker 1: 19:06

So when I went into the vets recently and said, look, she's really not well, they took a temperature and she was kind of 39, which was just top end of of high, but it's not like, it's not excessive and silly, and and I and they said, well, we'll give her some meds and tummy meds and she can go home and you know, when you know your dog and you're like no, we need to scan her, like that it's not tummy I know it's not tummy, like it's too, and they were like no, she seems bright and bubbly and I'm like this is really dull for her. I think there's that moment of knowing your dog specifically and even, like you say, your dogs aren't in a big circle of friends, and the same for mine. Really, I don't want lots of people handling them and looking after them, even within you and Chris and me and Matt and like even within our small, like tight circle. Actually, it's really important that you even communicate between each other. So, for example, when I got up this morning, I left Blink with Matt and said just keep a close eye.

Speaker 1: 19:53

She hasn't nibbled, but don't leave her alone, because you know that it won't take a second to nibble and then actually that becomes even more a major abdominal surgery and if you can't actually heal that wound, then again you're in a position of actually quite damaging for the dog and you can't actually heal that wound, then again you're in a position of of actually quite damaging for the dog and you can't explain to them don't lick it. Absolutely. You do need to put them in a position where they're not going to lick it and I know you went through that with with your wounds and and when she was healing from a cruciate, because there are fairly big wounds with cruciate. I mean they're big enough and there's stitches and there's a surgery and a site right.

Speaker 2: 20:25

Yeah, definitely yeah, and they did it sort of took several weeks, you know, each time for them to be sort of healed up, so it was quite a prolonged period to be quite vigilant before.

Speaker 1: 20:39

And when they go in Alice, they go in for the surgery with Krisha and they come out and they almost look much worse when they come out, I think because you're kind of like, right, I took the dog in and they look reasonably bad, and now they've come out hopping lame because you've broken their leg. Like you don't realize quite how bad it's going to be until because my operation with Blink was a very similar operation. It was a knee surgery and so when I saw her and the first time she had surgery this is when I saw come out I was like God, you're like 10 times worse, and when you went in like she, she couldn't even weight bear on it at first. And for you to go through it twice, I mean, God Lord, it's a lot.

Speaker 2: 21:13

It was and you do kind of think, kind of crikey, what, what are we doing? What actually? You just, yeah, like you say, it looks worse before it looks better. But I mean there might be listeners kind of thinking, oh, we've got this coming up and or we've just kind of in that situation now and just day by day, week by week, just kind of it's just taking it in baby steps, I think, just to kind of know that actually they're going to come out the other side of that, if you just kind of do all the right things when they're most vulnerable yeah, yeah, massive, I mean massive.

Speaker 1: 21:46

So I suppose, for everybody listening, if you're going to go through rehab, alice, is it possible, is it doable? Can we help through games?

Speaker 2: 21:55

absolutely, and not only can we, but I think it's the best way that you can help. I think it's it's the and I. It's the best way for your dog and for the handler. I think, like speaking from my own experience, I think it just kind of it just made that time feel a little bit more fun and certainly more manageable and certainly calmer.

Speaker 1: 22:15

And for your emotional health and for your mental health. Really, I think it's something that actually you can do in a time when there's so much you can't do. So that was this episode. I have enjoyed talking to you immensely, most of all, Alice, because I know you've been through this. If you've gone through this, please, please, please, share this podcast. Share it with a friend, a family member or maybe even your vet, someone who might like to share it and pay it forward. Join us next week, where we are going to get a little bit more testing.