The K 9 Listener centre has had a busy couple of weeks. The Nick Thompson and Julia Robertson event was a real success, bringing this kind of knowledge to the area was a really big thing, as I feel Lincolnshire on a whole is a bit behind the times when it comes to alternative care for our canine companions.

Nicks talk on canine nutrition was really interesting, going through the ins and outs of what dogs should eat, and what eating the commercial foods actually does for behaviour and health.
Nutrition is one of the most overlooked aspects of canine care, open a bag of which ever complete food that has been marketed at you beyond belief  and there you go. Well n a nut shell no, our canine friends deserve more than that. Not once on these supposed complete foods does it say how healthy the food is for our dogs, they list how great their foods are but not how healthy they are for our dogs.
Without turning this into a nutrition blog post I urge everyone to really find out what is in their dogs food and do their own research as to what is better for dogs. Don't just believe the marketing !

Julia's talk was really incredible, speaking the subject of natural progression. Natural progression is about allowing our dogs to develop their muscles and skeletal structures in a natural way.
The biggest thing I took away from her talk is how our everyday lives affect our dogs, if they have pain they will behave differently. How many of us though look at the type of exercise we give our dogs and puppies as a contributing factor in this ?
Most people take care not to walk our puppies to far, but how many of us look at the pace we walk with our puppies as a factor for causing problems later in life? 

What do I mean by this? Well imagine you have a Jack Russell puppy, when we go out on a walk with it it is having to break into a gentle trot to keep up. Give this dog this type of exercise for to long and you could well develop health issues later in life due to the excessive work load on the tendons/muscles/ joints etc...

I can only urge you to take a close look at the exercise we give our dogs, if you are interested in learning more about this subject look for Galen Therapy Centre on a google search.

Until my next post

Best wishes

James

www.k9listener.com