Grooming and Gundogs

Another busy weekend, on Friday we visited Trevor Pearman from Pedigrees n Pooches based at Fosters Pet and Garden Centre in Hertfordshire.

Trevor was nervous but was excellent in front of the camera, very clearly showing and explaining to us:
- Bathing dogs
- Drying dog
- Plucking dogs ears
- How to find a good dog groomer

On Saturday we attended Dog Ease training school near Buntingford to film some of their agility class and also film Gundog trainer Adem Fehmi explaining how to teach a dog distance control.

These videos should be coming to you over the next few months.

Give a dog a P.A.T.

With autumn approaching, the Happy Dogs team were on the road again, this time in Buckinghamshire to catch up with the great work being done by Pets As Therapy, a nationwide charity with volunteers visiting a wide range of establishments, from schools to care homes.

First we met with Chief Executive Lisa Coles who talked to us about the organisation in general. Then we met with a Regional Coordinator Jennifer who took us to Stoke Mandeville hospital and St Leonards care home so that we could see first hand the good these animals do.

We'd like to thank the volunteers (Sylvia and Myrna) who talked to us about their work and also the patients, and everyone at Pets As Therapy who made us feel so welcome. We look forward to bringing you the first of these videos in November.

(pictured is Sylvia with Hetty the dog meeting patient Maurice at Stoke Mandeville hospital)

Back to Wood Green

Happy Dogs was pleased to be invited back to Wood Green The Animals Charity headquarters in Godmanchester, this time to film articles covering rehoming a pet, both from the angle of current and prospective owners, and also a piece with Tracey Hill about Paw-to-Door, their trial scheme which aims to re-home animals without the need for a stay in the shelter itself.

We would like to thank Tracey, and also Barbara Fances and Victoria Cannon for their time today, and look forward to bringing you these articles in the coming months.

Itchy and scratchy

Today we met up with Richard Allport during a consult with Michelle Brown and her Jack Russell Jake.

Jake has been biting and scratching his skin in various areas, including his legs, feet, tummy and around his ears. Michelle wanted an alternative to the 'masking' effect of steroidal drugs, and so consulted our natural vet contributor. Both Richard and Michelle kindly agreed to allow us to film this consult, the second time that Michelle had seen Richard about this problem.

We look forward to bringing you this article soon.

October 2012 dog videos go live

October's videos are now live, including articles by Dr Ian Dunbar, Dr Roger Abrantes, Jane Harvey, Margaret Carter, Alex Wilson, Sophie Flux and Neil Flint...what an expert filled month!

Our diary for the rest of this year is filling up rather quickly with filming for the next 6 month's issues, we look forward to bringing even more top canine experts to your computer screen soon!

Agility introductions

Today we visited a local agility class - Wrayfield Agility Club who were holding one of their regular 'taster' agility sessions for people who hadn't done agility with their dogs before.

Some of the students were brave enough to try teaching their dogs a few pieces of agility equipment 'to camera' with help of dog trainer Sally Marchant.

The videos on how to teach Jumps, Tunnels and Weave poles will be coming soon.

Basset Griffon Vendeen (Grand)

We spent a lovely day today in a gorgeous National Trust area just outside Tring with Vivien Phillips and her Grand Basset Griffon Vendeen (and her Dachshunds, Petit Basset Griffon Vendeens and Beagles although we weren't there to film the other breeds!)

Vivien was a natural in front of the camera and we are looking forward to bringing you her fascinating insight into this great fun breed.

Our September 2012 issue is live

This month, Jez gives us a fascinating insight into Understanding dog language. We get some useful overviews on dog training techniques. Grisha Stewart tells us how Behaviour Adjustment Training (BAT) works in practise in Behaviour Adjustment Training: Case studies and Dr Roger Abrantes clarifies what is really meant by ‘reinforcement’ and ‘punishment’ in dog training in Reinforcement and punishment explained.

It’s good to have fun with your dog. Dr Ian Dunbar is a great believer in the value of playing tug and tells us how it can be a useful tool to support other training in Playing tug and , for all those would-be canine film stars out there, Sally Rowe teaches how to get your dog to go to a ‘mark’ in Teaching tricks: Mark.

On a more practical front, we can learn about Choosing the right harness, Doggy day care and the ins and outs of pet insurance in Pet insurance explained.

Food and diet

We were sent some useful information recently that we thought you might be interested in. For more great ideas, we have a number of 'how to' recipe video ideas in our 'Diet and Nutrition' video section.

Healthy Dog Food: 4 Things Your Puppy Will Love
If you've been looking at some of the labels on commercial pet food products lately, you may be wondering: how is this supposed to be healthy dog food? There has been a series of scandals recently regarding tainted and low quality pet foods being sold in supermarkets around the nation. 
This has prompted many people to ask themselves weather the foods that we give to our pets are actually safe and good for them. One thing that pet owners need to be aware of, is that unlike human foods, dog food must be certified to be able to meet a dog's nutritional needs, no matter what brand of food it is or where it is sold.

A dog has certain nutritional needs that will differ from humans. According to veterinarians, the best diet for a dog would be one that contains roughly half meat and half vegetables. Avoid foods that have too much grain, wheat, or other ingredients that are simply used as fillers and offer very little in terms of nutritional value. 

While grains can be used as part of a healthy diet for a dog, as they provide long term energy, the problem with them is that they are often used as a cheap filler and to boost the protein count on the label. The best type of food is one which has meat as a primary source of protein.
If you want examples of healthy dog food that provides the proper nutrition and is enjoyable for your dog to eat, then here are four healthy meals for healthy weight. 

Organic Canned Dog Food 
Many pet owners would say that this is the very best that you can offer to a dog you love. It contains organic chicken, turkey, liver, sea salt, kelp, flax seed, plus all the essential nutrients and vitamins to help your pet thrive. It is also a food recommended by veterinarians for dogs that are recovering from health issues.

If you want to skip commercial dog food entirely and make your own, there are some options which are open to you. After all, dogs have been domesticated long before commercial pet food came into existence. Here are some ideas:

Hamburger meat, seafood and liver combination 
This is done by preparing 2 pounds of hamburger, 10 ounces of shrimp or lobster, plus 1 cup of raw liver. You can add half a cup of brown rice to the mix as well.

Vegetarian meal 
While dogs are carnivores, some of the meals can be vegetarian. One idea to make a vegetarian dish is using 2 lbs of grated carrots, 3 bunches of grated broccoli, 2 cups of brown rice and 4 grated zucchinis. 

Dog meatloaf plus vegetables
You take 2 lbs of lean ground beef, add 2 carrots, 3 small potatoes, 1 chopped celery stalk to make a meal that your dog will definitely love and enjoy eating.

These are just some examples of recipes you can make at home. Before making your own dog food, you need to do your research, as there are items such as grapes, chocolate and some onions can be very harmful to dogs.

Fantastic new veterinary practice

We have had a lovely day today in Swindon with Joe Inglis and Jez, celebrating the opening of their new 'Vet's Klinic' surgery. It really is great to see such innovation in the world of general veterinary practices, this Klinic has a large glass fronted room for preparing dogs for surgery and completing minor procedures such as dental work.

The vets will use iPads to record their client's information and behaviourist Jez will also be able to use their technology to record behaviour sessions for owners to watch back afterwards.

We have been ultra efficient at editing this video and so it is live already here.

We look forward to them opening a new surgery closer to us, we will certainly be one of the first to sign up!

While we were there we met up with 'Mugly'- officially The World's Ugliest Dog! We asked his owner Bev to explain how he got the title, that video should be live in our September issue.

Animal Aiders and Portuguese Water Dogs

We went off to Bury-St-Edmunds today to interview Sophie Flux from Animal Aiders.

Animal Aiders provides practical and high quality vet led courses in animal first aid throughout the country. With her invaluable help, we were able to produce videos on: basic health signs - how to tell when something is wrong and what to do; eye injuries – signs of and how to treat; poisons and poisoning; and heat stroke. Sophie was a perfect host and a dream to film. We look forward to meeting up with her again for more articles in the future.

It was all go today, after filming Sophie in the morning, we were off to another part of Suffolk to meet Jocelyn Creffield to interview her about Portuguese Water Dogs. PWD’s turned out to be an affectionate and lively breed. As the name suggests, the dog is native to Portugal, is an excellent swimmer, and worked for hundreds of years helping fishermen. The “lion trim” they were given, where the rear is close cut, helped them to work in the water, and is still used in the show ring today. Many thanks go to Jocelyn for her time and hospitality. We look forward to adding this video to our breed library soon.

Cavalier Matters

We met up with Tanya Ledger and Margaret Carter from Cavalier Matters today.

Cavalier Matters is a not-for-profit organisation set up to provide health and other information about the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. It’s brilliant website may be full of fun cartoons but is jam packed with useful information on serious issues for CKCS owners.

It’s founder, Tanya, was prompted to set it up after she discovered her own Cav suffering from some serious health issues. We did an interview about the organisation, one about health issues and another about how to buy a healthy Cav. Tanya is keen that future CKCS owners don’t face the problems she had to.

August 2012 is live

Our August issue is live, this month we have some practical demonstrations including Behaviour Adjustment Training in action to help a dog overcome it's fear of vacuum cleaners and an instruction video on how to clip your dog's claws.

We also have a very interesting article on the Critical Periods of a puppy's development, an explanation of the assessment process at Canine Partners and we find out more about the research behind the CV247 cancer therapy.

We met up with Xtradog to find out about the benefits of harnesses, Lizi Angel gave us some advice on how to help dogs with Separation Distress and Jez discusses how he would help an unusual problem of a dog who didn't like 'walkies'.

German shorthaired and longhaired pointers

Today we travelled to Cambridgeshire to meet David and Eileen Winser and their German Shorthaired Pointers and the less common German Longhaired Pointers. David and Eileen have 3 Longhaired and 2 Shorthaired pointers and a litter of pups. It was a real pleasure to meet them and their very well trained and well behaved dogs. Even the 7 week old pups were demonstrating lovely recalls and sits! We should be bringing that video to you soon so do keep an eye out on our video library Breed Section.

Sex and growling!

We travelled to Buckinghamshire today to see the great Ian Dunbar at his seminar at Amersham Rugby Club. He very kindly spent much of his lunch break with us and we have some fantastic new videos on inappropriate sexual behaviour, unwanted toileting behaviour, playing tug and teaching 'growl' and 'shush'. Ian was, as always, a natural in front of the camera and we filmed these four great videos in no time, leaving him in peace to eat his lunch before returning to the packed venue for his last day teaching during this trip.

July 2012 issue is live

This month we feature the work of the National Search and Rescue Dog Association (NSARDA) Kent organisation. They are this month's featured charity, and we bring you a fascinating insight into the thorough work they do with this month's first article.

Also this month we bring you an interesting article about pet cremation, a sombre subject but one that all pet owners out there should consider in good time.

Our Canine Partners series continues with an article about puppy parents, and behaviourist Jez talks to us about guarding issues that can arise when you have more than one dog in the house.

TV vet Joe Inglis talks to us about nutrition through the various stages of a dogs life, whilst Victoria Stilwell talks about the process of introducing a baby into a family that already has dogs.

Our gun dog training series continues with Adem Fehmi with a 'retrieve' video and we see another grooming video about trimming feet featuring Jo Hart go live this month also... another action packed issue, well what would you expect!

Maybe next time

The Naturally Happy Dogs team attended the FSB Hertfordshire Small Business Awards 2012 Gala dinner along with a few hundred other finalists. There were some very strong entrants this year and a few businesses stood out as leaders in their industries.

Unfortunately we didn't come away with an award, however our framed 'finalist' certificates are up in our offices. We were very pleased and honoured to even get to the finals so we didn't leave disappointed. There's always next time and we'll keep trying!

Irish Terriers

Today we visited the lovely Ann Bradley and her Irish Terriers, which she breeds and shows.

It is rare for us to visit someone so organised, and Ann had prepared her answers in great deal making her an absolute pleasure to film. Her older bitch 'Lady' was a calm and thoughtful example of the breed, and helped Ann welcome us to the home, but gave us a false sense of security - Ann also has a number of younger dogs and they were anything but calm! An energetic and lively breed, they were a real pleasure to meet and film and were a credit to themselves.

We very much look forward to bringing you this article in our breed library, one of our best so far! Thanks very much Ann.

Ready, Set, Finnish!

Today we filmed another two breeds for the breed library, Finnish Lapphunds and Irish Setters. First we visited Elaine Short and her Finnish Lapphunds.

Elaine has 9 Lapphunds including the various colours that the Lapphunds comprise, and a variety of ages from 8 months to 12 years. She also had one bitch in whelp, about a week from full-term...we should have visited three weeks later! We wish Elaine all the best with the new additions to her canine family, and thank her again for her time.

Then it was onto visit David Bell and his Irish Setters. Again there was a variety of ages on show with their youngest dog being only 4 months old, and their eldest 13 years. David is the Chairman of The Irish Setter Association, England and with 40 years experience of the breed was very knowledgable. We thank David and his wife for their time, and very much look forward to bringing both of these breed videos to you soon.

June 2012 dog videos

Another month, another action packed issue goes live on the Naturally Happy Dogs website.

This month we feature the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, with an interview with Jo-Ann Essex and Lesley McFadyen from the East Anglian Staffordshire Bull Terrier Club, who are also our charity of the month this month.

We also have another interview with Karen Lawe all about training deaf dogs, and a great video about the training process that Canine Partners use to train their partner dogs. With another interview with Victoria Stilwell about the problems of anthropomorphising dogs, a fascinating insight into the canine cancer treatment option CV247, and another video from Mary Ann Nester about dancing with dogs, it is another very full month - see all our videos in this issue here - June 2012

But that's not all – we also feature the first in our series of dog grooming videos with groomer Jo Hart, who explains how to clean your dogs ears.

We've had another busy few days full of filming too, so lots more interesting articles coming up in the next few months, stay tuned!