How Grooming Affects your Dog’s Behavior
Most people know that petting and stroking their dogs provides many physical and emotional benefits for humans. However, this nurturing interaction can benefit our dogs as well.
Dogs learn to enjoy touch only when they have the right experiences with it. Rough handling destroys a dog’s trust. Tentative handling can have the same effect. Puppies will often protest being touched. If you back off when these protests occur then you send the wrong message to the puppy. They will learn that the only way to communicate with people is by growling or biting. On the other hand, if you overreact and punish the puppy for protesting, then you can actually make the puppy more defensive.
A regular grooming schedule provides structure to a puppy’s experience of human touch. With the important task of grooming to get through you are more likely to hold steady when faced with a puppy protest. In order to help your puppy cooperate through the process of grooming, you will quickly learn ways to make the grooming process more comfortable for your puppy. This brings balance into your interactions, leading to a number of benefits.
In order to maintain a healthy relationship with your dog, regular touch is necessary. While it’s easy to cuddle and pet a clean dog several times a day, it’s not so easy if you must go and clean yourself up every time. This is one of the reasons that regular grooming is so important to your relationship with your dog. When dogs have tangles and mats, they often have skin sores hidden beneath the mats. These sores hurt, making the dog fearful of being touched. However, because the sores are hidden, their family members do not realize why the dog resents being touched.
Families with long-haired dogs should know right from the start that professional grooming will be required. The training provided by a skilled groomer can be extremely beneficial. For best results, find a good groomer and stick with them. Shopping around for the best price for dog grooming can negatively affect how your dog handles the grooming process. Dogs who visit the groomer regularly tend to enjoy the experience while dogs that are not taken often enough can find the experience painful and scary.
Short haired dogs require regular grooming as well to distribute skin oils throughout their coat, keep their nails trimmed and to remove loose hairs. Families that groom their dogs regularly have healthier dogs because they are able to detect problems much sooner, while they are much easier to treat.
Claws N Paws Day Spa has been taking care of Orange County’s dogs and cats since 2001. For more information about the grooming process, or to schedule a grooming appointment please call 714-962-1005.
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