RawPetMedics Tuesday Live Guest Dynamic Dog

Good evening, good afternoon, welcome America, welcome back some stranger who seems to have re-emerged from his travels and decided to drop back into his part of the trio. Thanks, Nick.

I thought I'd grace you with my presence and so Uh, it's great to be back. It took me— I tell you what, it took me a week to decompress, to actually start enjoying Sri Lanka, which doesn't take much. Sri Lanka is very easy to enjoy. And then it's taken me a week to get back into the groove.

Yeah, I'm back. Is that unbelievable? The little French braids out of your hair after living in the jungle and on the beaches?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cool.

Yeah.

And the enormous tattoo on my back is just about healing. So, you know, it's all good.

Did you get the dragon this time? Yeah. Or were you just chasing the dragon? I can't remember what you said you were doing.

Fabulous, fabulous tan anyway, Nick. So you were clearly on the beaches every day, were you?

No, I tell you what, I did not go out in the sun the whole time. Ellie is brown as a button and FIFA is exactly the same. But Arthur and I, we just haven't got the skin for it. I just, I just stayed undercover and just read, read, read, read books. That was it. That's all I did for 3 weeks.

It was—

yeah, prepared everybody for a monumental amount of book recommendations over the coming— it's gonna be agony.

If anybody wants book recommendations for their holidays, I've got a few.

I won't bore you, guys. We are Raw Pet Medics. You'll find us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. Price of a cup of tea or pint even, uh, is most welcomed. If you can, absolutely great, we very much appreciate it. And if you can't, no problem, we're going to be here anyway. We love doing this. Um, so, uh, yes guys, tonight we have, uh, Gemma on, Gemma Hodgson. And, uh, I have bumped into Gemma a couple of times and she has been helping me a touch with Dudley, who had a bad back back in the day. Ruptured a couple of discs, and now he's surprisingly— he's 9 years old, Gemma. If I told you he was 6 or 7, it shows how many years are slipping past me, but he's actually 9. And now I'm starting to think I need to be more careful about what I'm doing with him. He still jumps on and off the couch with this, you know, his back legs are weak. He clearly has a little gammy kind of back right foot that just wobbles. You can hear the scrape of the nails now and again, so they're not strong. So that's when I started using Gemma more and learning more about gait, but I suppose I could learn an awful lot more. So Gemma, do you want to just introduce yourself and tell people what it is you do and why you're so interesting?

No pressure. So I am the owner and founder of the Dynamic Dog Practitioner Program, and I teach other trainers and behaviorists how to spot potential pain and discomfort in their clients' dogs that they work with. But my background is behavior rehabilitation therapy. I'm a student of advanced physiotherapy and hydrotherapy, although I've already studied like stuff like that anyway, and a smattering of other alternative therapies out there like massage and kind of various kind of hands-on stuff. So, so that's me.

Cool, cool. And so what kind of— you are now kind of firmly in the— like you're teaching other behaviorists about the relationship, like even just looking for posture, talking about the link between pain and behavior. What is the link between pain and behavior?

So there's actually 4 categories of pain-related behaviour. So one of them is unwanted behaviour caused directly by pain. We've then got pain-causing secondary behaviour issues. We've also got unwanted behaviour made worse by pain. And then we've got non-problematic behaviours that are actually indicators of pain, but the behaviours don't actually bother the owner. So you could class a pain-related behaviour it as anything really, anything that the dog offers which potentially is unwanted. It might be something really, really small. It could just be something like spinning constantly and only in one direction, like an OCD, obsessive-compulsive behavior, to something more kind of extreme like a reactivity or separation anxiety or something like that. So, so really you can't kind of pinpoint, okay, that's definitely a pain-related behavior. But if you look at the dog as a whole, which obviously you guys do when you you do your thing with food and everything, then you can actually start picking up, you know, physical issues that are amiss with that dog and actually go, okay, well, there's something not quite right here. Could it be down to the physical aspect that's prompting the behaviour, or are we looking at strictly just the behaviour? But we can't rule out the physical aspect until we actually kind of go delve down that rabbit hole and take a good look at what's going on for the dog.

Gemma, I've got to ask you before we get into the, the, the, the long grass. The first thing is, is to just remind everybody that you can catch these wonderful shows, and, uh, when even when I'm not around, they're recording, and Gemma is here, and that's all going to be on our podcasts. Any— whatever podcast you follow, we will probably be lurking and haunting that channel, so jump onto those as well. So Just to plug the podcast. Now, Gemma, I just wanted to say how— because to me this seems pretty obvious stuff, but I know from conversations with other professionals in vets and various animal-related professionals that this may not be quite as well accepted. How do you find it when you're, when you're talking to vets, when you're talking physios, when you're talking to massage practitioners, whoever it might be, do they link the pain thing with the behavior thing? Is, you know, what kind of conversations do you have?

Not always. So there's a pain specialist, Gwen Cobie-Crump, give her a bit of a shout out. She works at Langford University in Bristol, and she's actually come out and said on the APBC veterinary webinar a couple of years ago that it's, it's actually nigh on impossible to diagnose a dog for pain in a, in a clinical environment. So if a pain specialist is having trouble diagnosing pain, what chance do GP vets have? Now, GP first opinion vets don't have much, if anything at all, on training on behaviour issues. And then obviously we've got behaviourists and trainers that don't have any training on kind of like maybe how the dog is put together, how they move, what's healthy, what's not, and a less a lot of vets specialize in orthopedic side of things, they don't have much in the way of kind of gait issues. So there's kind of, there's holes in everybody's knowledge and skill set that kind of need to be filled. Generally, when I speak to vets, because Dynamic Dog, what we teach the trainers and behaviourists to do is also write a very, very specific evidence-based report backed up by photos, backed up by videos, all lovely edited together and marked up, very, very beautiful.

Yeah, I like a well put together report.

We send that to the vet and, you know, we do a lot of the donkey work that the vets don't have a chance to do. So we will spend hours trawling over photos and videos and watching dogs walk up and down stairs if they're able to, do functional assessments, ambulation assessments, you name it. And because it's hours of work, and then obviously the vet only has 10 to 15 minutes usually to assess the dog, we then have a vet that's actually got more information that they ever had before, and they're better equipped to make a more informed diagnosis based on what we give them. We give them a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff.

Yeah. Do you give that, do you give that in advance? Sorry, Bren, do you give that in advance, like before the vet has their 15 minutes of fame? Yeah, so they could proceed if you go through that before a client comes up to them?

Yeah, a lot of them don't. I mean, you know, I know that's a hard push for time and things, and they've got targets to meet, um, but we give it to the owner as well. So, and we, we coach the, the owner, the client, through what that first consultation with the vet once they have that report might look like, what the vet might do to the dog, what the, um, what the next steps are, like pain medication trials, X-rays, scans, referrals onto specialists. So we give them a bit of an idea, we empower the owner so that they can actually ask for things as well, because a lot of owners aren't actually aware that they can ask for a lot of stuff, like a simple referral to a vet physio. You know, a lot of people wait for that to happen.

Oh yeah, yeah.

So I totally get, you know, a lot of the stuff that you do, you know, from dealing with acupuncture and a lot of complementary medicine and spending some of the time watching those. Um, I'm really interested a little bit more about you, you know, because you've had a bit of a journey into what you do now, and you've sort of very eloquently at the very beginning say what you do now But I think it'd be really good to share with the guys out there, you know, what's— what was the first thing that really pushed you into this? And there's many strings to your bow now because you've done a lot of little courses and big courses and, you know, lots of qualifications to get to what you're doing. So just take us on that journey. What set you off?

What was the—

in all honesty, it started when I was 6 years old and I'm 43 now. Don't look it, but yeah. Um, so it started off when I was 6 years old. I grew up in a whole house full of show dogs— Welsh Springers, Italian Spinone, Pussycat, Griffon. My parents had, uh, my grandparents had, uh, German Shepherds. Um, and I was dragged to every single conformation show in the UK known to man, kicking and screaming, whether I wanted to go or not. Um, so I grew up in a household where good conformation and good movement were key a success. My parents raw fed from like the, the mid-'80s, okay, so, um, it all kind of went in hand in hand basically. I never wanted to work with dogs as a kid, no, I skipped off to Hartpury College, I wanted to pat ponies, um, so I, I gained qualifications in equine science, um, at Hartpury College, um, the equine people do things so much differently than the dog people, than the canine people. They look at structure, conformation, how it affects performance, the gut. And I was really, really shocked when I came into the dog industry about how that wasn't part of, of the industry. I had horses. I actually had one horse, she was a 16-hand Dutch Warmblood mare by the name of Poe. She wound up with gastric ulcers But I didn't know she had gastric ulcers. What she was displaying was some pretty horrific, dangerous, problematic behaviors like lying down in front of lorries in country roads, taking me backwards over 6-foot hedges. She dislocated my thumb, my knee. She dumped me on the ground. I mean, she was in a right state. The vet that I actually approached came out and gave her a checkover and said she's just being naughty, give her a smack on the ass. That is not me at all. If anybody knows me, that's just, that's just not me. I went off, I did my own research, kept coming back gastric ulcers, gastric ulcers. So I asked for her to be scoped. I met a brilliant specialist by the name of Tim Brazil, Equine Medicine on the Move, and he came and scoped her. And gastric ulcers are graded from 0 to 4. She had grade 3. And that kind of like sent me down the pain and behavior where horses were concerned. Um, and within 3 months, obviously with the right treatment, um, the right therapy— I learned TTouch to help my horse— um, I had my horse back again. She was nice and cool and calm and quiet. Occasionally she slipped back into some of those behaviors, but usually when it was at very, very stressful moments like hedge cutting and things like that, certain times of the year. Um, But then it was like when I went back into, into kind of like dabbling in dogs with my own bulldog, Ron, going to puppy classes on slippery floors and seeing all these puppies, all these dogs that were struggling physically because they were still growing. So, you know, that awkward kind of gangly stage that even humans go through, the growing pains that come with that. We were asking dogs to perform certain positions and tasks when they were physically uncomfortable, but also on a flooring that was was not conducive to what we were asking them for. And I don't know if you hear the dogs. Um, and yeah, that, that just made me want to know, know more. So that was it, down a rabbit hole of alternative therapies, massage, rehabilitation, and physiotherapy, hydrotherapy. And the more I see, um, I can't walk out the door now without going, oh my God, I just— there's not one dog that I can't see something slightly not quite right, whether it's muscular issues or something, you know, more, more structural or more severe.

So, and would it be that, um, would it be like, injury and sickness aside, would it be that some breeds probably suffer? Like, you know, you see your sausage dogs and other dogs that have, um, your shepherds and stuff, where we have, you know, maybe inadvertently put a few little Yeah, and so does that affect them long term? Does it— is that going to lead— I don't want to pick on breeds and stuff, but it's just a fact.

Yeah, it is, it is. You can be breedist and you can be breed typist if you like. Yeah, yeah, it's— we can look at, we can look at the Heinz 57 varieties and see breed types and go, you know, short legs, long backs, like you said with the sausage dogs, with the dachshunds. Yeah, I mean, it predisposes these dogs to certain conditions. There's a brilliant book actually behind me, Predispositions of Disease in Cats and Dogs, which is absolutely brilliant if you're a dog pro, especially trained in behaviour. You need to have it because you're—

can we have a look? Yeah, would you grab it and just hold it up? By Gough, Alex Gough. Ah, my friend Alex.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, really good to have because, because, you know, Dynamic Dog, we don't diagnose. Just want to say that now. We do not make any diagnosis. All we do is share information and obviously conversations with the vet, but having an understanding of breed and breed types and potentially what they can actually— what can afflict them, um, actually kind of can, can help you, um, you know, and, and you can have that more open conversation with the first opinion vet in, in my experience. But, um, but yeah, there's your German Shepherds, your Dachshunds, your French Bulldogs, your English Bulldogs, of which I have one. You know, they're all predisposed to having certain conditions, and we need to take that into account when we're dealing with behaviour. We have to, because those conditions are painful. You know, there's no bit— no human on the planet can turn around and say that an animal is not in any pain and be 100% certain of that. We always need to err on the side of caution, and we have to take these breeds and what they suffer with predispositions with into account.

So how does that— how does a person— you had mentioned there, um, that, you know, there's a change in kind of gait and whatnot. Look, I've been to so many dog shows when I was a pet food producer, and I didn't see one bit of difference in all those dogs. I really didn't. They all looked the exact same to me. I just thought people were making it up. Uh, still do, to be honest, because I don't see it myself. Nobody else possibly can.

No, I did see videos of your dog, and I was like, you do realize he's still not moving the way he should be.

Yeah, he's a kind of a fully cased But like, what about people at home? Like, if they have, um, what are things that people would be looking out for in a dog that might be showing signs of pain more so than just naughty behavior?

Okay, so first of all, I just want to say it isn't always a change in behavior or changing gait or something like that. There's this preconceived idea is that there will be a change. There are a lot of dogs that have had issues from birth, so these are developmental issues, um, and they, they get— become chronic, um, that they're they get worse as the dog ages. And a lot of the time these dogs are labeled, oh, he's quirky, he— it's just the way he is, he's reactive, he's, he's anxious, you know, it was just him. It's not. That's not normal for any dog to do regardless of how old they are. So sometimes it's not always a change. However, if you familiarize yourself, if you've got a specific breed or even just kind of like a Heinz 57 variety or type, familiarize yourself with what healthy movement, healthy posture, and healthy conformation should look like. You know, we should have straight columns of support on these dogs when viewed from directly in front and directly behind. We shouldn't have all these dogs with like angular limb deformities, like Queen Anne legs, is it? It used to be where the legs bow and, you know, this deviation of the carpals and, and things like that, and that the feet are rolling in. It's painful. It's going to cause soreness. It's going to cause weaknesses, tender, tender spots down the legs. The limbs aren't going to be balanced if they aren't straight when you, when you view them. It's going to start zigzagging, and that then causes increased pressures in the joints, which leaves the joints open to further play, wear and tear, which is going to lead to osteoarthritis. You know, however, if we can step in sooner and go, okay, so maybe we can't change anything surgically for this dog, and I'm not saying everything has to go surgical route, you know, we can support them better with better diet, better environment, joint supplements. And, you know, we can't always support with joint supplements and diet. Sometimes we do have to reach for the conventional stuff, and especially if a condition progresses. But there's so much more that we can do. And familiarizing yourself with how a healthy animal should actually look like will pave the way for you then to be able to spot what's abnormal in your own dog.

Mm, that's a good idea.

After you've said all of that, you see, I now want to see Ron, who is a bulldog, I understand. And you know, you've talked about all of those conformational issues, and I now expect to see the most perfect, you know, example of what a bulldog should be, with a longer nose and perfectly straight legs.

Despite his allergies, and I mean, Nick knows he suffers with chronic allergies. You know, he's pretty much a perfect example of what the Bulldog should look like in theory. He's actually got a bit of a nose, you know, he did— well, now he's starting to suffer with kind of like joint issues and that. He's 9 years old, he shouldn't do really in theory, but you know, he is actually— he's 6 inches, I mean, he's a bit of a beast. He's 36 kilos and 6 inches.

Yeah, they're so heavy. English Bulldogs are just the most deceptive dogs. I mean, there's not that many of them you meet, but I remember a guy moved into a unit up the road from me when I was— years ago, and he had two English Bulldogs. And I said, oh, I love these dogs.

Yeah.

And I go to kind of, you know, playing with them, and he puts his paw up on you, you know, and you lean back. Oh my God, the weight of them. He goes, try pick them up. And it's just like you put your— and you just can't get this, this lump off the ground. They're so well built. They're just rock solid.

So I keep getting asked if he's a crossbreed because he's bigger than the average kind of bulldog. So, and I'm sure 30 kilos is just head, if I'm completely honest.

Yeah, yeah.

Big meat head on him, bless him.

And how much of that do you think, do you feel, is actually genetics? And how much is actually, with all of the things that you've done to adjust in the epigenetics, the adjusting his diet, you know, feeding him differently probably to the breeder, you know, doing the things that you've done conformationally to try and keep him in line, how much do you feel that has actually helped? Or did you purposely go for a genetic strain which was more of the sort of almost Victorian Bulldog, that the longer nose, the slightly different musculature?

I took 9 months of research to find a breeder that I chose, um, that was breeding for health rather than that, um, and it took me a long, long time. I, I still would stand by my choice breeder even now. Um, would I have another bulldog? No, I wouldn't. Not, not knowing. I mean, watching Ron go through the, uh, the allergies that he's got, and we know bulldogs have got weakened immune systems and they're just not the healthiest of dogs, they're prone to skin issues and things like that. And, you know, he's a bubble dog. I have to micromanage him on a daily basis. He doesn't go for walks anymore because his allergies affected his feet. He actually had massive abscess in his paws that I had to lance daily, and that's affected his pododermatitis. So that's affected his feet, and we know that bone is always forming and remodelling. So where his toes have been pushed apart, you know, his— I dread to have an X-ray done of his paws and see what's going on in there because I'm pretty sure there's, you know, they're out of alignment, those toes, bless him.

But he's got Oh, have we lost sound?

Yeah, just repeat, just repeat the last 15 seconds, Gemma, if you don't mind, please. Oh, we've lost you.

Can you go—

all we do, Gemma, is if you want to just drop out for a moment, um, and then just drop back in. What might happen is, may also be down to camera speed, so we might just adjust you in a moment, but just drop out and drop back in.

I'll tell folks.

Oh wow, this is really interesting stuff. So boys, I'm just going to ask you before we get— before Gemma jumps in again, what percentage of dogs do you think over the age of say 4 years old, all breeds, are of perfect musculoskeletal conformation? Would you say, percentage, just rough off the top of your head? Bren, and all breeds, all breeds, all breeds.

I mean, we can—

you can get granular about the whole thing, but just off the top of your head, with dogs that walk through the door or dogs that you see, friends' dogs, how many of them have really good conformation and pain-free conformation like that?

I would definitely say, for me as a practitioner, walking, you know, in through my door in clinic, I would be surprised if more than 30% actually have what I would class as good confirmation.

Michelle said 30% as well.

And you know what, if we— if the three of us went off and did a course in chiropractic or osteopathy or physio or something, that figure I think would shrink to probably like 10%, 5%. So let's ask Gemma the same thing. Brent, can you pop her up in the middle because she's better looking than Brady and the rest of us and you.

Oh, we can't hear.

Oh, we still can't hear.

Oh, you kicked me out.

Can you hear?

Yes.

Oh, we can. One second.

Pete, you can edit this out of the podcast.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, yes, I can hear you there. So don't touch anything, don't do anything.

I'll try not to.

There you go, just you, Gemma.

No, don't do that. So we've just had a little chat, Gemma. We just had a little chat and just said between us, what's the percentage of dogs over the age of 4 years old, all breeds, do you think with your expert eyes, how many of those, just looking at them and doing whatever you need to do, do you think have perfect or almost perfect conformation and, and have pain-free, spasm-free conformation? Oh, just off the top of your head, we won't quote you.

Confirmation-wise, I probably see— I might see 20-25% of dogs are actually okay. Um, pain-free, no dog. Conformation and posture are two different things. So when we look at posture—

what's the difference?

So conformation is how a dog is physically put together. Posture is how the dog arranges itself for comfort, but it can affect conformation if it's left long-term with compensation. We process it. So, so, yeah, so if you ask me posture, I would say none.

Wow. And pain? If they're in pain, would you say no? Yeah. Really? Does that mean that all humans over the age of 40— well, let's say 4 years old—

there's something, there's something going on. There's something going on. Is it, is it pain, or is it just like discomfort, aches? You know, define pain because you can have aches, pains, and, you know, chronic pain, acute pain. No.

Okay, so would you say the same in human beings, therefore Human beings over the age of 30 years old, yeah, it's kind of the equivalent of 4 years old-ish. Okay, how many people over 30 do you think are without pain?

I don't think there is very many people at all.

Oh, interesting.

What do you think, guys who are watching?

So we, should we get the entire nation to try and stand up from the sofa without groaning?

Yeah, that hit me at about 45.

It's true, then you know, do your lasers, it's like, you know, Billy Connolly has that great great line about doing his laces. Remember, like, you know you're getting old when you bend over to do your shoelaces and you wonder, is there anything else I can be doing while I'm down here? That's a great— so that's true though. I've got aches and pains, so I'm definitely not paying for you. I've got a dicky knee. And in fact, all my friends— I, I was always struck by this guy, he's a chiropractor, it is a few miles down south, and everyone knows about him. And that guy can just see what's wrong with you as soon as you walk in. He's notorious for And my friend was a drummer and his right foot used to always vibrate, which was no use because he's trying to use a pedal. And all his life he had this buzzing foot. And he's— anyway, and he walked into the— and as soon as he walked into the clinic, the guy was looking at him saying, your pelvis is crooked. And I was like, your man knew by looking at virtually— I think he had his shirt off or something at that stage, but the guy knew. And over time that starts to take a terrible toll, you know. And so you— your muscles take over for a lot of it. But over time, the pain— so I'm now starting to get pain down the right-hand side of my leg, even though it's my left knee that's bad. It's my right leg that's giving me the jip. And so I'm getting a sore, sore right ankle, sore right hip, and it's like, that's starting now. I can't imagine anybody is pain-free. I mean, not like agony pain, but just a little, you know, there's always some niggles. Yeah.

And you, you saying that, there's a— so I follow some weird stuff on Facebook. Different Facebook Live. Yeah, um, there's a, a Stirling University, but in the US they do functional fascia. And there was, um, I can try and share the link later, um, but there's a lady who did a presentation on fascia. She got this lad to wear a bodysuit and she gave this, this lad a fascial restriction at the hip, left hip, and then asked him to raise his right arm and he couldn't do it. So that, I mean, it crosses the body, it can zigzag, it goes up, it goes down. Where the issue is never stays where it is. There's always deferred pain, there's always something going on, and it will travel up and down the body. And it's compensatory processes, and it's fascia, and it's your nervous system. It's everything is connected, you know. So it's—

okay, so what can, what can the average person— obviously our audience is far from average, but what could the average person do to do an assessment at home of their dog this evening, would you say? That's maybe a little bit simplistic, but, you know, we've got to start somewhere.

We've got to start somewhere.

How would you— just, just 3 or 4 things that you can do to assess how straight your dog is, how good the conformation is, whether there are signs of being in pain. Can you give us a little rundown maybe?

Yeah, so, so first of all, if you've got a specific breed, go and have a little bit of a nose at what breed standards are. Go to breed groups, don't just necessarily go to kennel clubs and things like that. Breed groups are actually probably better at giving you better information. Have a look at what healthy versions of those dogs are like online, and then, you know, start photographing your dog in a sit, in a stand, in a down, from all angles— from the front, from behind, from the side, even some from above, okay? Because that can tell you a lot of information about what the spine's doing as well, and kind of like if there's like any muscle bulk kind of asymmetries going on. And then what you make sure you're down at the dog's level. So always photograph and video your dog down at the chest level, obviously, unless you're filming from above, because that will give you the clearest pictures and video of your dog. Then when you do a gait analysis, make sure you do it on firm footing. So no slippery floors, please, no slippery floors. It breaks my heart to see dogs trying to negotiate slippery floors in people's homes, especially when you're trying to get them to do gait analysis. And stuff like that. So go outside with your dog, simple collar, flat collar, and lead. And again, video your dog going away from the camera, towards the camera, from side to side, walk and trot. Okay, walk and trot. So walk is a 4-beat gait, 1, 2, 3, 4. Trot is a 2-beat gait. Limbs should move in diagonal pairs, not on the same side. If they do, that's kind of pacing and something completely different. But familiarize yourself with how a dog should move. And if you need some help, then obviously contact you guys, me, or any member of my team if you want a little bit of help to kind of assess what's going on. But there's some really good people out there that can help— osteopaths, massage therapists, veterinary physiotherapists, you know, just kind of get in contact with them if you want to and say, hey, I just want my dog kind of checked. If you're not confident yourself, it's always best to get somebody who's a little bit more trained in this kind of thing to cast their eye over and say, look, Is there anything I could be doing better in order to help my dog?

So Mrs. Jones has done some really nice videos of her dog, and how can she send those to you guys? Okay, you're allowed to plug your—

can I?

Yeah, yeah, do, do, do.

I have, I have a whole pile of graduates. They're about 50 strong now. I absolutely adore every single one of them. They are highly trained, highly skilled. They know the inside of my brain, which is quite scary for them. And on my website, there's a Find a Practitioner page where you can basically go and contact any one of that, that mob, and they will help you with your dog 100%. And they're all trained to work remotely. So if you've got a particular sensitive dog, so a dog that's actually sensitive to people, strangers, that kind of thing, we can work with your dog remotely. So we'll get you to do all the photographing and the videoing, we'll analyze all the photos and videos so that we don't have to upset your dog any more than they already are. And then, and then yeah, we can help your dog. So dynamicdog.co.uk/findapractitioner and you'll, you'll see all my gang on there.

So dynamicdog.co.uk is the website and then there's find a practitioner within that.

Brilliant. And are they throughout the UK, or is that throughout Europe? Is that the world?

Is that worldwide? Yeah, I've got graduates in Canada, Switzerland, Australia, America, Spain, you name it, Germany. Yeah, we are worldwide.

Nice.

Great.

You mentioned earlier there about a pain trial. What's a pain trial? Because it makes sense if my— I heard from you that, you know, a great way to test if your dog is in pain is to give something extremely mild where it's like, does this behavior improve after that pain relief? And I thought that was so painfully obvious to me. And I went, oh my God, I can't believe I've never thought of that. So that's a— isn't that a great check? If after all the gait and physical non-med stuff that you can do and you're still convinced that there might be something afoot, well, then a little bit of pain relief. What a great tip that was. What does— what is— Is there, is there much to a pain trial? Can you tell me a little bit about what I'm trying to talk about?

There's so much to a pain trial. So first of all, I need to mention a study that was done in 2018, 2019. It's called Pain and Behaviour in Cats and Dogs, headed up by Daniel Mills, Lynn Hewison, Lincoln University, a couple of other vets worldwide. And they did a study of dogs that had problematic behaviours, and they found that approximately up to 82% of dogs that presented with a behavioural issue had some form of undiagnosed pain that was causing, adding to, you know, that, that behavior. Um, and their suggestion was to give an analgesic trial as part of the course, as a first off, before behavior modification.

Wow.

So, and we can, we can take kind of analgesics as something as simple as as joint supplements, depending on kind of the level, to something more. I mean, you've got Pardal, which is paracetamol. We can go into other things like meloxicam, Metacam, Loxicam. You've got your neuro stuff, so you've got gabapentin, and then you've got your bone pain, which is your Onziore and your Galiprant and stuff like that. So there's so much out there, and the pain trial shouldn't really stop at just one medication either. Sometimes it might take a combination, sometimes it might take a few different ones in order to get the right one. Sometimes it can— a pain trial can actually resolve things or lessen behaviors within a couple of weeks. Sometimes when you're dealing with chronic pain, which is long-term pain, you might need 6 to 8 weeks, you might need longer to try and get on top of that pain. So just because one thing didn't work, and it's usually Metacam that vets reach for, for most dogs, and it's 10 days because they have to prescribe it on cascade, on license. So that might not be enough. So don't be afraid to ask for more, ask for longer, try something else. It's so beneficial to the dog, you know. And I've known, I've also known vets that say, okay, so the, the pain trial seemed to be a success, so let's take the dog off the pain meds to see if the behaviour comes back. And me, I think that's unnecessary. If you've already had a response from a pain trial, start doing tests and, you know, investigations as to what's going on with this dog. Don't just take the dog off of something that they desperately need and it's made, you know, a huge impact and given them so much relief. You know, and it's— we need to empower owners more, I think, with this, definitely.

But very much so. So Gemma, if the owner has gone through that and they've worked with their osteopath, their chiropractor, their physio, yeah, and they've spent 6 months getting the dog right, how do they maintain that? What would be your maintenance regime to try and keep keep the dog straight and strong and, and aging as gracefully as possible?

So it all depends on what's going on for the dog, and it, you know, every, every dog should be treated as an individual, you know, just like us humans. Okay, obviously food comes into that. We have to— you have to put in the building blocks, definitely have to put in the building blocks.

What sort of food? What sort of food do you reckon? What's the best food for joints in your opinion?

Well, you know, for me, if you want to lessen inflammation No pressure.

Come on, Gemma.

They're going to break down into sugar, which are going to feed inflammation. Do not, you know, that's fresh is best. We, you know, we know that it works for humans, why wouldn't it work for other animals as well? Yeah, you know, you've got to put the building blocks in, absolutely, you know. And depending on the dog, you know, the individual therapist will turn around and tell you, you know, okay, let's take it down to maintenance. Maybe, you know, we'll do once, once every 3 months. Maybe we only need to see the dog once or twice a year, and we'll gauge it on that. Usually when you have kind of treatments with physiotherapy and hydrotherapy especially, you have an intensive course which is 10, possibly 15 weeks of it, like every week that you have to go, and then they slowly start to drop it down, and then they will gauge what's right for that individual dog. Have we dropped it down too much? Let's up it to 2 weeks from 3, and keep going. I mean, even if you've just got like a normal pet dog that you don't even think there's anything wrong with it, or that it's had loads of tests and it's still not clear, I would still say take it to a good physiotherapist twice a year just to get an all-over muscular health check. Why not?

Yeah, do you have to get a vet recommendation to go to that physio? Can you ring up a vet physio or I mean, a lot of physios are, are they not, veterinary nurses? Can you not train to be a vet physio or to be a physiotherapist as a vet nurse?

Yes, of course you can. Anyway, I'm training to be a veterinary physiotherapist, otherwise I wouldn't be training.

Okay, yeah, I was going to say they have their own association though, so I think they are subsectioned under, you know, other techs effectively, like the chiropractors, the veterinary chiropractors.

So the vet, it's always best to check with the vet. In all honesty, every, every therapist should be getting consent or approval from the vet to make sure that there is, there is either nothing wrong, or whatever is wrong with the dog, they know exactly what they are dealing with. The therapist does not want to be working with a dog, getting hands-on with a dog, treating a dog, and not knowing what's wrong with that dog. They can make things worse. Okay, so you might have to— so an owner might have to go and take, um, the dog to the vet just for a general checkover to get an all clear. You then don't have to get refer— um, constant referrals from the vet if it's just maintenance. Um, the law changed, I think, a couple of years ago to state that if it's just maintenance, then no, you don't need a veterinary referral. However, if there's something changes for your dog or, you know, your dog has been diagnosed with something, then that therapist needs to now have a detailed report of what's going on so they don't, they don't cause more harm.

Yeah.

And they do their job properly and support the dog and, and hopefully bring the dog back to function.

Yeah. How keen are vets to refer to physio, osteo, chiro, do you find?

It's not at the forefront. Of their referrals, which is why I always say to my clients, you might need to ask.

I think if they ask, Gemma, if Mrs. Jones goes to her vet and says, please, could you refer me to an osteopath, chiropractor, physio, what kind of response rate do you get back from the profession?

Do you find, um, I will say unless the vet's got a damn good reason as to why they won't there shouldn't be an issue. And generally, I've never had an issue with a vet turning around and saying no.

I heard a few friends in hydrotherapy, and they found it quite difficult to get the recommendations over.

Hydrotherapy is— some vets are still quite— I don't know whether skeptical is the word. I think there needs to be a lot more knowledge given to vets about how these different therapies can actually benefit the dog or any animal, to be quite honest. I think there's some kind of like skepticism as to hydrotherapy. Physio is more accepted, but if you have a physiotherapist that's also trained in hydrotherapy, yeah, amazing.

Yeah.

And do you find that, you know, so you've obviously trained with so many strings, as I said earlier, what sort of What sort of evidence do you start to give to the vets to try and encourage them to do more? Have you got sort of certain studies in certain areas that you particularly specialize in, or do you pretty much draw from all sort of sectors and therefore there's very little research?

So it's drawing from all sectors. My first port of call is to always send that pain and behavior study to vets, just because obviously there's— vets are looking for the obvious signs of pain, you know, that when they palpate, when they manipulate certain joints and things like that, they're trying to invoke a pain response from that dog. They're not, you know, well-versed in kind of the actual true behavior signs for those. So I always send them that study and highlight things and say, look, here's the evidence, here's the science to back it up. Please, please just consider this. That's really kind of where my battle is, is getting the vet to understand the behavior linked to pain. Once we are over that hurdle, generally, you know, we can start to coach the owner to ask for different things. It's better coming from the owner with regards to kind of different therapies and that, and we don't really get pushback from the vet once the owner has said, I want hydrotherapy, I want physiotherapy, And, you know, I think Conor's going to be the guy who will post that link.

Everybody's asking about that.

It's on the Facebook page there.

Yeah, that's grand. So that's on there. So, and there's been a couple of other questions actually, and you may have lots of experience of this, and that's about, you know, you're seeing loads of patients coming in with various pain reliefs and pain trials for various drugs. People are asking, you know, what's your thoughts on some of these new products that are out there, things like Librella? Not necessarily side effects, but just what you're seeing. Are you seeing them being effective? Are you seeing some issues from your side of things, masking stuff?

What's— Guys, we're over time. Shall we do this over into Patreon as our bit on the side?

Oh, that's such a teaser, Nick.

I know.

Also, I want to, I want to hear about the top behavioral signs of pain as well. I want to hear what they are. What do you look for in a dog that's showing pain? What are the top behavioral signs? We do this over on Patreon, Carolyn, which is a, it's another platform. So we just do another 10 minutes on that if you don't mind, Gemma. So we're just going to sign off here and thank everybody for coming along today. Thanks very much. And we will skedaddle over to patreon.com/wilddogs. Wild Pet Medics where we do another 10 minutes with the speaker and we talk about those two subjects we just about to talk about. Amazing, thanks guys, thanks for coming, thanks for coming back, thanks Gemma.

So far amazing, yeah, seriously amazing.

And you know, the link for joining us on Patreon is over there. If you want to catch what we talk about over there, you will see it posted in about an hour's time. We don't go live streaming just yet. Over on Patreon for various reasons. But please do join us in about an hour's time. Otherwise, you will hear the entirety on your podcast in the coming weeks. So hopefully we'll join you then. Take care. See you soon, guys.

Thanks, guys.