6 Reasons Why Some Dogs Get Worse Every Time Ep185

Why Some Dogs Get Worse Every Time Ep185

[00:00:00] Episode 185. Why do some dogs get worse about grooming time after time and they just keep getting worse? Shouldn't they eventually realize that it doesn't hurt them? Why don't they learn to just go with the flow? That's what we're gonna cover today in episode 185. The Six Reasons Why Some dogs get worse every time.

[00:00:18] I am Chrissy Neumyer Smith. This is the Creating Great Grooming Dogs Show. I am a master groomer behavior specialist, a certified professional groomer, a certified behavior consultant for canines, a certified professional dog trainer, an instructor at Whole Pet Grooming Academy, and I'm the owner of Happy Critters in Nashua, New Hampshire.

[00:00:35] And this my friends and colleagues, is the show where dog grooming and dog training meet. So I wanna talk about six reasons why some dogs get worse every time. There are plenty of other reasons, but I narrowed it down to about six. But the first and foremost, before we even get into those six reasons, I do wanna clarify.

[00:00:55] Dogs are having difficulty with being groomed. They aren't giving us a difficult problem. They are having a problem. So at its very core, if a dog is continuing to have problems, then their issue isn't being addressed. And I want you to pause and think about that for a minute. 'cause we don't often think about it that way.

[00:01:16] Does this dog have an issue that maybe has been overlooked? Maybe we haven't really found out what makes this dog tick and that's really common. So we'll go through six reasons. Why many of these dogs have an issue, but really at the end, there are lots and lots of reasons for a dog to continue to have difficulty being groomed, and that's what's happening.

[00:01:39] If a dog is getting worse every time or staying the same, staying at the same level of, nervousness, aggressiveness, , it's because they have an underlying issue that maybe hasn't been addressed. So let's get into our six reasons. And I'm gonna say I did pull this off of a Facebook discussion.

[00:01:58] This was directly out of a Facebook discussion. , I didn't join into the discussion. I know I probably should have, but I decided to make a podcast episode instead. , because there are so many reasons, and it's more than just a quick post, but what I found was a lot of groomers, , were concerned about just one aspect.

[00:02:17] So a lot of these six reasons came up. We aren't always thinking about all of them. Everybody had like a quick one or two answers, maybe not six or 20,000. 'cause really it's more like 20,000. So let's talk about the first one. And if you are involved with any of my classes or anything like that, or involved with dog training, one of the first things I always want us to do if we see a behavior problem, whether you're a trainer or a groomer, Anything.

[00:02:46] If you see a behavior problem or a behavior problem that's continuing to get worse, our first question is, is there a health issue? Is there a physical reason for this pet to be behaving this way? And I'm gonna say pet, because these are not just for dogs. A lot of these things are for, for cats too, for other types of animals.

[00:03:05] If there is a behavior problem happening, I want us to first think, is there a physical reason? So health issues could be something like pain. And I know that a lot of people who are not groomers might not realize that. A lot of our dogs live with a lot of different types of pain. Just like people come on, they get older, they maybe have sore hips or sore toes, or ear problems or tooth problems.

[00:03:33] , lots of things that could be causing pain. And a lot of our owners don't recognize that. They don't see it, they don't notice it. And sometimes they kind of beat themselves up when we tell them. , but I want you to think about. Is there a reason why this dog could be in pain? So I think we tend to think about older dogs, you know, our senior dogs, but I'm gonna throw out here, let's not forget our adult dogs.

[00:04:00] Maybe they had an injury, maybe they were running up the stairs and just, you know, fell funny. There are lots of things that could happen. And with our puppies, our puppies are teething. Think about that as a source of pain, what do human babies do when they're teething? They cry, they're fussy

[00:04:16] so think about there are lots of different types of pain and discomfort. Discomfort. Let's think about how many dogs just find this uncomfortable. The reason why dogs have behavior problems during grooming, Because they find it unpleasant, uncomfortable, and or scary. I say that a lot on this show, and if we can all just take that in because it helps us to refocus, like, oh, what is this dog having a problem with?

[00:04:45] Does this dog find it unpleasant, uncomfortable, and or scary and uncomfortable is part of this health issu