Sharing essential skills to keep dogs safe and healthy is fundamental to the K9HS ethos and embraces our philosophy that we are "all about the dog."
A proactive approach to canine healthcare involves exploring a wide range of essential key skills to promote safe and effective practice for the dogs in your professional care.
A dog centred approach to general fitness and good health uses a wide range of health checks as an integral part of monitoring every dogs health status.
Understanding how to use health checks as a regular monitoring process is essential for your clinical practice and overall healthcare approach.
View the instructional Canine Technical Videos (K9TVs) in your K9HS Course Manual. The Oneshot Inside K9HS video below is to provide you with a useful guide on how to devise your health checks annotated storyboard to achieve a pass for your health checks practical.
Signs of a healthy dog
A dog should be alert, engaged and interested in its environment
Eyes should be bright and clean
Mouth should smell fresh and be free of sores or growths
Gums should be salmon pink and free of sores
Ears should be clean and free of discharge, odour and redness
Nose should be clean, without discharge or sores
Coat should be shiny, clean and matt free
Nails should be intact and not split
Dogs should have consistent lean weight. Active, playful puppies are rarely overweight
Canine Body Condition
Body condition scoring is a useful clinic tool to monitor your canine patient's weight if you don't have access to weighing scales. This technique allows you to assess the amount of fat the dog is carrying.
How to body condition score a dog;
Starting with your hands behind your dogs front legs, gently run your hands along either side of their chest towards their waist. You should be able to easily feel the outline of the ribs without having to press too hard, the waist should be easy to feel behind the chest and you should feel a "tuck" under the belly.
Looking down from above the dog you should be able to easily see the waist behind the chest. Looking from the side of the dog, the abdomen (belly) should be tucked up towards their pelvis.
Useful links to check out;
This K9HS Practical Hub was produced for you and is owned by K9HS Courses.