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Infectious Conditions: What Trainers Need to Know

Course Overview

In this module, we will review the signs and risk factors associated with infectious diseases in dogs and cats. We will cover how to minimize disease risk when training pets as well as how to properly disinfect and manage the training environment.

This module has been approved for 1.5 RACE CEU and 1 CEU from CCPDT, IAABC and KPA.

The one-hour course is only for trainers with renewal credits and costs 1 credit.

Lesson One: Common infectious diseases of dogs and cats

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Recognize possible signs for various types of infectious diseases in dogs and cats
  • List common modes of transmission

Lesson Two: Minimizing disease risk when training

At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Identify ways of minimizing the spread of disease in the training setting
  • Recognize the components of a clean environment and how to achieve it
  • Identify when to liaise with veterinary professionals over preventative health concerns

For Good Cat-Dog Relationships, Focus on the Cat, Study Suggests

By Linda Lombardi
Do clients have questions about how their cats and dogs get along – or if they can get along? Information from a recent study may help you advise them.

We use the phrase “fighting like cats and dogs” as if it’s a law of nature, but many households include both species and they get along fine – or at least tolerate one another. Still, cats and dogs have very different communication styles and social structures, so harmony isn’t a given. A recent study analyzed a survey of 748 owners mostly in the United Kingdom and the United States to see what factors contribute to having an amicable multi-species family.

What Makes a Good Relationship?

Overall, most owners reported that their pets seemed to get along well. On a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 was “can’t stand each other” and 10 was “close companions,” few ratings of 4 and below were found. Most relationships fell in the middle although there were a few “best buddy” scores of 9 or 10. Pets with the best relationships were reported to sometimes play together or groom one another, and some even shared food, toys, and beds.

The details suggest that if harmony is the goal, owners should pay special attention to the feline side of the relationship. While owners only rarely perceived their pets as seeming uncomfortable with one another, when they were, it was far more often the cat who was uneasy. Although pets were rarely reported to have injured each other, scuffles more often involved the cat threatening the dog than vice versa.

Age and Environment are Important

When researchers looked at factors found to correlate with better relationships, what was most important was the cat’s comfort level with the dog. The best relationships were those that reported a low frequency of incidents in which the cat appeared uncomfortable. Frequency of the dog’s discomfort was less crucial. Of the demographic factors, the most important was that the cat had been introduced to the dog at a young age – the dog’s age was less important.

Cats who lived indoors full time had better relationships (letting cats go outdoors is still common in the UK compared to the US). This suggests that the more time cats spend with others in the household, the more likely they are to eventually develop good relationships.

Dealing with Conflict

It’s important to note that the study was based on owner observations, not those of trained behavior experts.

“It would be a good follow-up study to see whether behaviorists’ views of how well they’re getting on match up with owners’ views,” says Zazie Todd, Ph.D., author of the website Companion Animal Psychology and the Psychology Today blog Fellow Creatures. “Some signs of stress, like avoiding being in the same room, people might be a bit more likely to miss, but we haven’t assessed that directly so we can’t be sure.”

Since people may not notice subtle signs of conflict and discomfort, dealing with the more obvious ones is important, even if they aren’t ending in bloodshed. Dogs chasing cats is sometimes seen as inevitable, so you may need to explain to clients that it is possible to train a dog not to pester a cat using positive methods.

Appropriate expectations are also important. “It does sometimes happen that a cat and a dog become good friends, but I think one of the striking things from the study is that the relationships mostly weren’t that close,” says Todd. Owners should see lack of conflict as a success, even if the pets don’t seem to be best buddies.

Along with training the dog, though, it’s important to give the cat some control. Make sure owners are providing high places and secluded spots where the dog can’t follow and feeding the cat in an area inaccessible to the dog. Try to see things from the feline point of view – what can be done to help the cat avoid conflict in the first place? Says Todd, “You have to think about helping the cat not to be stressed and to feel safe, as well as training the dog how to behave.”

This article was reviewed/edited by board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Kenneth Martin and/or veterinary technician specialist in behavior Debbie Martin, LVT.

Animal Trainer Proactive and Preventive Training

Course Overview

In this course, you will learn ways in which the Fear Free Animal Trainer can partner in Fear Free efforts to keep animals calm during veterinary care, procedures, and even on the day of surgery. This includes teaching animals the concept of a Treat-Ment station, training them to accept passive restraint, and acclimating them to sounds and equipment used during common diagnostic procedures.

While it’s impossible to train for every possible scenario, general training strategies can be practiced, such as training a dog to lie on his side while being handled, preparing him for an injection, or teaching him to indicate his willing consent for handling or care.

Through several in-hospital and at-home video tutorials, you will learn step-by-step how to proactively prepare animals for procedures such as ECGs, radiographs, ultrasounds, surgery, and more.

This module has been approved for 1.5 CEUs from CCPDT, IAABC, and KPA as well as 1 RACE approved CE hour.

Certified Practice Member Exclusive: Force-Free Training Books for Clients & Staff

Force Free Training Books for Clients & Staff

Mikkel Becker, Lead Animal Trainer for Fear Free Pets, CBCC-KA, CDBC, KPA CTP, CPDT-KA, CTC, Fear Free Cert, BA Comm

Fear Free’s Lead Animal Trainer, Mikkel Becker, CBCC-KA, CDBC, KPA CTP, CPDT-KA, CTC, Fear Free Cert, BA Comm, will provide you with resources to deepen you and your staff’s understanding of canine and feline behavior and a provide a plethora of options you can confidently share with your clients.

How Do I Meet the Trainer Standards for Practice Certification?

There are no Fear Free trainers near me – how do I meet the trainer standards?

This webinar features a review of the practice certification process and an in-depth look at the Mandatory Physical & Emotional Standard 1.11: “When training and behavior modification strategies are employed, they must be free from aversives and adhere to scientific principles for humane handling techniques”.  Think you know what it means and just want to be sure?  Have no idea what it means or how the standard can be met?  Either way, this webinar is for you!

Feline Destructive Scratching Solutions

In this one-hour module, you will learn what natural functions scratching serves for cats; common owner responses to scratching and the problems associated with them; and the potential fallout from declawing cats. Most importantly, you’ll come away with several safe and effective alternative solutions to the problem of unwanted scratching, and a made-for-owners handout to help guide them in the right direction.

This module is open to all professionals that are already signed up for the certification program, and is RACE approved for 1 hours in the category of Scientific.

    Feline Destructive Scratching is divided into five lessons:

  • Lesson 1: Feline Scratching Defined (The Good)
  • Lesson 2: Scratching as a Problem for Owners (The Bad)
  • Lesson 3: Common Responses (The Ugly)
  • Lesson 4: Why Not Surgically Declaw Cats?
  • Lesson 5: Safe, Effective Alternatives to Declawing

Nutraceuticals in Behavior Therapy

Behavioral disorders can be stressful for pets and their people, especially during summer, which has so many holidays and events that can wreak havoc on noise-phobic pets. Krista Sirois, DVM and Joshua Middleton, DVM explain how nutraceuticals can make a crucial difference in behavioral therapy and help alleviate fear, anxiety, and stress in pets.

Fear Free: Beyond the Treats

Many of those not familiar with Fear Free think it’s all about the treats. Rachel Abrams, DVM (Practice Certification Manager, Fear Free), shows us that while treats are an effective tool for veterinary professionals, they’re just the beginning of ways that Fear Free can help improve your treatment of patients.

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The Most Important Question We Aren’t Asking

By Liz Bales, VMD

If we asked a client, “what are you doing for environmental enrichment?” the likely response would be, “what?”

And that’s a problem.

In our profession, we suffer from compassion fatigue.  I get it. I really do. Our clients break our hearts and wear us out. When they are at the end of their ropes because their cats are chronically urinating outside of the litter box, they might implore us to perform a convenience euthanasia. When their cat has destroyed their furniture and they just can’t deal with it anymore, they ask us to perform a declaw. When their cats keep fighting with each other we drain their abscesses, sew them up and talk about re-homing. And to top it off, if we either recommend an alternative or tell them that we don’t perform a debatably ethical service, we risk having our Yelp reviews tarnished. Some days it is just too much to bear.

But, my colleagues, we CAN get in front of this problem. After all, isn’t this why we became veterinarians? Our clients are looking to us for education and support at their first kitten visit. They are looking for more than vaccines and screening blood work at their annual visits. The time to inform and educate our clients about environmental enrichment is before the human-animal bond, and our professional spirits, are broken.

The science is there. The American Association of Feline Practitioners has beautifully laid out the 5 pillars of feline environmental enrichment, why they are important and the consequences of denying our cats the resources that they need to be physically and emotionally healthy in the indoor environment.

In case you have not had the opportunity to read this entire paper, here’s my favorite bit:

“Many behavioral and physical disorders that are seen in cats are often secondary to stress from lack of appropriate stimulation. Environmental enhancement (EE) should be part of the overall treatment plan for these disorders. As part of the wellness exam, it is the responsibility of the veterinarian to discuss the current state of the environment and to provide resources for EE to indoor cat owners.

It is well known that if an appropriate environment is not provided for indoor cats, they are at greater risk of stress induced illnesses such as the following:

  • Feline lower urinary tract disease
  • Obesity
  • Different forms of aggression
  • Over grooming and other compulsive disorders
  • Upper respiratory infection

In an attempt to prevent the above conditions, it should become routine for the veterinary team to inform owners of the importance of EE and to provide resources to owners. It is also important to consider EE in shelter cats for the same reasons.”

The cats are counting on us to get this information from the page to their caretakers. One way or another, this is a veterinary job—our job!

We study kidney disease, endocrine disease, ophthalmology, oncology, along with so many other specialized areas of medicine and thus we are prepared for those cases when they walk through our exam room door. But do you know what every cat in our care has in common? Every cat is our care is completely dependent upon their human to create an environment where they stand a chance of being physically and mentally well. Are we prepared with information and resources to treat or cure this?

If I haven’t convinced you yet, I would like to share with you the statistic that changed my life. Do you know the #1 cause of death for cats? My guesses were kidney disease, or hyperthyroidism. Nope. Well, we know so much about feline obesity and it’s consequences, perhaps that’s the answer? Again, no. The #1 cause of death for our feline patients is euthanasia.

So what do we do about that? Where and when do we talk about environmental enrichment? We are already squeezed with the amount of information we need to simultaneously digest and communicate back to our patients in addition to the procedures that we need to cram into a 15-20 minute appointment, it might seem impossible. Easier said than done, of course, but why not simply train our technicians (and ourselves) to carve out just a little extra time for every feline appointment to walk the client through the five pillars of environmental enrichment. At the very least, there are resources available both digitally and in print that we could simply email to our clients or hand out in our waiting rooms or at check out.

Just like with Fear Free, I promise you it’s worth it. Sometimes those seemingly small things can make all the difference for the pets we took an oath to help treat. And also like Fear Free, the benefits will actually save us time in the long run.

As a profession, we can figure out how to incorporate this into our practice. I know we can. And the time starts now, with a very simple question:

“What are you doing for environmental enrichment?”

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