Examining your dog – best practice

Transcript from the video

Hi, I’m Jo from Dog First Aid Franchise Limited, we are delighted to be partnering with Animal Friends Pet Insurance. I’m here today to share some top tips with you and all of your followers to make sure that everyone is prepared to act in an emergency situation involving their dog. 

If the dog has never had a full body examination done or has never been to the vet before it can be a very intimidating and strange experience for the dog. So, it’s really important that you get the dog used to having full body examination in the home and that it has a positive association with being examined all over.

So, there are areas of my body, like my feet, that if someone touches I would jump through the roof. Each dog is individual, as are we, and they will have areas of their bodies that they don’t want to be touched as well. The more subtle signs can be anything from, ear position being back, whiskers being back, a lick lip, a yawn.

Tail positioning is quite an interesting one. We often hear that a waggy tail means a happy dog, but that’s not always the case. If you’ve got a dog that has stiff body language, tension across the head, fixed eyes and has a stiff and quick waggy tail, that is not a happy, waggy tail. Whereas, if you have a loose wag, where the body is moving with the dog’s waggy tail, and a loose, relaxed jaw and soft eyes then that’s a nice and happy waggy tail. So, it’s really important that you refer to each one individually.