Fenzi Dog Sports Academy - CC430: Helping Dogs Thrive: Massage for Performance Dogs

Course Details

In this class you will learn about massaging your own dog. We will cover canine massage techniques, the muscles we are affecting with massage, muscle anatomy, assessment, palpation, fascia, Tellington TTouch® bodywork, and much more. We'll discuss how to determine which muscle groups are important based on which sports and activities your dog performs.

We will focus on how to do canine massage safely and effectively. You’ll learn about stretching your dog and how to help maintain healthy muscle tissue. My goal is for you to know what your dog’s healthy tissue feels like and how to help maintain it.

Massage for Performance Dogs is designed for anyone involved in canine sports, including agility, obedience, barn hunt, freestyle, conformation, lure coursing, flyball, SAR, and more. My sport is canine fitness so I include myself in this program. But you don’t have to be involved in a sport to participate in this course. Dogs who are not involved in a sport also benefit from massage for their general health and well-being. And if you are spending a lot of time training and competing in your sport, massage will be a nice addition for “off days” or evenings.

This is an introductory course, meaning no prior experience with any of the topics covered is needed. For gold-level participants, I will provide feedback on your massage technique, as well as your own posture and alignment while performing massage, your dog’s behavior during massage, and more. I’ll give you tips and support on how to be more successful with all of the concepts presented in this course.

Your dog just may become addicted to bodywork!

Teaching Approach:

Lectures will be released weekly and include how to set up the environment, instructions for teaching the behavior, video examples, and benefits. We will focus on the exercises, observation skills, teaching, and your dog's willingness to participate in each session.

This class will have a Teacher's Assistant (TA) available in the Facebook study group to help the bronze and silver students! Directions for joining that Facebook group will be in the classroom after you register.

Effie Sdao

Instructor: Lori Stevens

Lori Stevens (she/her) (CPBC, CPDT-KA, CCFT, SAMP) is an animal behavior consultant, a professional dog trainer, a canine fitness trainer, an animal massage practitioner, and a senior Tellington TTouch® Training practitioner. ...(Click here for full bio and to view Lori's upcoming courses)

Syllabus

View Full Syllabus

Syllabus

Week 1

Benefits of Massage
Setting the Stage for and Starting a Massage Session
Massage Techniques
Anatomical Terminology
Anatomy Illustrations
Week 1 Focus on Massaging Your Dog

Week 2

Assessing Your Dog for Massage
Massage Techniques
Week 2 Focus on Massaging Your Dog

Week 3

Observing Posture and Movement Before and After Massage
Bony Landmarks
Muscle Characteristics
Fascia
Sports Massage
Setting Goals for Canine Massage
Massage Techniques
Week 3 Focus on Massaging Your Dog

Week 4

Focus on Fascia
Dogs in Performance Sports
The Nervous System
Tellington TTouch® Training
Massage Techniques
Week 4 Focus on Massaging Your Dog

Week 5

PROM
The Musculoskeletal System
Protect Your Massage Work
Stretching
Week 5 Focus on Massaging Your Dog

Week 6

Massage for Your Performance Dog
Bones
Muscle Anatomy for Bodyworkers and Biology Nerds
TTouch Bodywork
The Tail
Week 6 Focus on Massaging Your Dog

Prerequisites & Supplies

View all Prerequisites & Supplies

Prerequisites and Supplies

Good observation skills. But working on them will be part of the course and I will be very active with feedback.
Poles and cones (cavalettis). These will be useful for assessing your dog in movement. See Note 1 below on how to make them.
Optional: A dog anatomy application for your phone or computer to refer to. I use an iphone and the application I sometimes use for quick reference is called Dog Anatomy: Canine 3D. Also, an anatomy book, if you are interested, such as Color Atlas of Veterinary Anatomy: Volume 3, The Dog and Cat by Stanley H. Done BVetMed, PhD, Peter C. Goody PhD, and Neil C. Strickland PhD OR Miller's Anatomy of the Dog by Howard E. Evans PhD and Alexander de Lahunta DVM PhD.

Note 1: If you don’t want to purchase a set of cavalettis, you can create the poles with mop and broom handles or agility jump poles and painters tape. Rest them on top of cans at various heights (tuna cans are the lowest height, other than the ground which is also an option, and big cans of tomato sauce are the highest).

This class is for dogs of all ages.

Note also that puppies and young dogs are less likely to spend a lot of time under your hands. However, they will benefit from massage and shorter sessions are fine.

If your dog is recovering from an injury you’ll need to work with your canine rehabilitation professional or veterinarian first. I’m a small animal massage practitioner, so I will assume your dog is healthy enough to benefit from this work.

Contraindications for massage include:

Open wounds
Cancer (check with your veterinarian)
Fever
Broken or fractured bones
Acute muscle injuries
Chronic muscle injuries (check with your veterinarian)
Shock
Epilepsy
Infectious Diseases
Pregnancy (check with your veterinarian)
Infections of the skin
Recent surgery
Any disease, e.g. diabetes (check with your veterinarian)

If you have any questions or doubts, please check with your veterinarian before doing massage. There is no way that I can cover all of the contraindications for massage.

Training Philosophy

My training philosophy, for all animal training, is centered on the following principles:

Ensuring safety for dog and handler from physical and psychological harm.
- No forcing
- No threatening
Empowering both the dog and the handler to have control, i.e. a choice in participating.
Making desired behaviors easy for your dog, i.e. setting your dog up for success.
- Change the environment as needed
Reinforcing desired behaviors.
Finding the joy! Seeing it in your dog’s face!

Sample Lecture

Observing Movement Before and After Massage

I like to see movement before, during, and after massage so I know how what I’m doing is affecting the dog. I encourage you to take video of your dog standing and then moving (slow motion video is best) before and after massage. It’s great to video your entire massage session as well. This will give you a lot of useful information. I promise you will learn from your videos. If you have a smartphone, you can easily take video.

What you want is to video your dog moving as naturally as possible, at a walk and a trot if you can. So you might want to set up your smartphone for video and then ask your dog to walk and trot back and forth to get a baseline. I’d prefer your dog look straight ahead rather than up at you. You can encourage your dog to look forward by placing something like a mat at each end of the room so your dog has something to target or look at rather than you. It also helps if you don’t look at your dog. Another thing that will help you get more natural movement is to keep food out of your hand during the movement portion. Reinforce when you’ve reached the target at each end.

Here are two videos of Cassie walking back and forth:

Here are two videos of Cassie walking around cones:

Here’s Cassie walking and then trotting over two-inch high cavalettis:

Here’s Cassie trotting over two-inch high cavalettis:

Now, watching your dog, look carefully for anything you think might be improved upon. For example, you might see that your dog is stiff, or that her back is slightly roached and could be longer. Her back feet could be too narrow or wide or even moving in a curved pattern, or she might be favoring one side.

After you do a massage, take video again and compare. In addition, as you go through this course, you’ll want to periodically review slow-motion video from earlier weeks to see what is changing,

Our goals for taking video while our dog walks and trots, before and after massage, are the following:

To improve our observation skills
To see how massage impacts our dog’s body
To see any improvements in how our dogs move after massage
To get used to using video as a learning tool

This site is useful for you to see the various gaits. Click on the gait you want to learn about:

http://vanat.cvm.umn.edu/gaits/index.html

Depending on what I observe, I may ask the person to take their dog to their primary veterinarian for an exam. I have seen a dog with ataxia more than once. This is an example of a clear sign that something is wrong and the dog should be examined by a veterinarian as soon as possible.

Photo by Bryan Scantland

Testimonials & Reviews

Read All Testimonials

A sampling of what prior students have said about this course ...

This is a MUST HAVE in any dog sport library !!! Techniques were well explained and the feedback was very detailed. The whole course created a sense of calmness and relaxation, whether we were working on our own dogs, or watching other students' videos. Personally, the class really helped me develop my relationship with my dog without the use of any props, toys, food, or even words. Just a deeper connection with my dog.

Lori's Class was awesome!! So much helpful information in the lectures and in the feedback for Golds and Silvers threads. She opened my eyes on how to observe my dog, see what he needs and how to help make him feel better through Massage. I highly recommend this class for everyone. THANK YOU SO MUCH LORI!!!

Although only participating as a bronze student, I gained sooo much from this class. Lori did a great job and of course, the videos were absolutely essential to the class. I am glad this will stay in my courses for a year because I'm certain I will continue to defer to it for some time. Thanks Lori and FDSA

Lori Stevens did an amazing job teaching the humans to massage their canines. She provided just enough information to be thorough but not so much to be overwhelming. I highly recommend this class.

Thanks Lori! I've really enjoyed the classes I've taken with you so far! Material-wise, I really love how you break down your lessons and format your homework assignments. And personality-wise, I like how calm and caring you appear--it makes me feel good while I'm learning from you!

This is one I would have taken at gold if available, but silver was excellent here. Reviewing other gold threads was helpful more than in some classes. Excellent materials, excellent teacher, and excellent gold students. Just wonderful! Thank you.

Registration

There are no scheduled sessions for this class at this time. We update our schedule frequently, so please subscribe to our mailing list for notifications.

Registration opens at 10:00am Pacific Time.

CC430 Subscriptions

	Gold	Silver	Bronze
Tuition	$ 260.00	$ 130.00	$ 65.00
Enrollment Limits	12	25	Unlimited
Access all course lectures and materials	✔	✔	✔
Access to discussion and homework forums	✔	✔	✔
Read all posted questions and answers	✔	✔	✔
Watch all posted videos	✔	✔	✔
Post general questions to Discussion forum	✔	✔	✖
Submit written assignments	✔	✖	✖
Post dog specific questions	✔	With video only	✖
Post videos	✔	Up to 2	✖
Receive instructor feedback on	Questions All videos	Questions All videos	✖

Find more details, refund policies and answers to common questions in the Help center.

Self-Study

CC430: Helping Dogs Thrive: Massage for Performance Dogs

Course Details

Teaching Approach:

Gold

Silver

Bronze