E108: 로리 스티븐스(Lori Stevens) - 카나인 마사지(Canine Massage)

But I want to say things like it loosens tight muscles in fascia. I'll explain what fascia is and its effect on the musculoskeletal system in the course. It certainly reduces the risk of injury, or can reduce the risk of injury, rather. It helps recovery from injuries or surgery. It helps relax the nervous system, or it can stimulate the nervous system. It speeds recovery after sports and exercise. It reduces muscle spasms. But another side, oh, it increases flexibility in joint movement. But another side of it is that it also has an effect on behavior. It really is a trust builder. And that can translate into a lot of other areas around handling. I can talk about that a little bit more later. But that's a really nice side benefit of it. Gives you a way, gives you some methods to kind of help your dog relax more quickly. If, you know, once you've built up the trust, and once you've built up the touch relationship with your dog, then you can actually influence relaxation when you'd like to. It enhances proprioception. It enhances the dog understanding kind of where their body begins and ends, and how it is aware of everything around it during movement. It does a lot. Helps rid the body of toxins. Helps aging dogs, for sure. All dogs, though, really, and sports dogs, for sure. You know, you mentioned in there that it helps with trust. And, you know, I could really see how, from a relationship standpoint, that could really be beneficial. You know, so often when we're interacting with our performance dogs, it's work, work, work, work, work. And it's kind of a less worky part of relationship building. Yeah. I mean, I could go on and say a little bit about that. And that's that every time you touch your dog or handle your dog, you're really doing husbandry under a general umbrella of husbandry. And the more touch you have and the more ways of handling your dog, there's more options in terms of what you can do with your dog in a way that your dog doesn't get uptight at all. And there's something I've been thinking a lot about because I've got a webinar coming up on pre-senior dogs. And one of the things I think is important are tactile cues. So, as you know, whenever we add a new cue, we do new cue, old cue, and then the behavior happens. Once our dogs lose their senses, once they can no longer hear and see as well, then you can't use that old cue to help you build your new cues. That's another side of it is tactile cueing. And, of course, if you have done a lot of body work and you've done a lot of handling, then tactile cues are much easier for you to teach your dog than if you haven't.

So, to me, this course is for everyone because it spills over into so many different areas. That's a really interesting point. I wouldn't have thought about that, but I could certainly see how useful it would be as a dog's aging to be able to already have kind of that language, you know? Yes, absolutely. Really important. Is a massage something that, you know, anyone can do? Are there limitations to what, you know, somebody like me who knows maybe nothing about it can kind of do? Yes. So, I mean, there are limitations. And, yes, it's something anyone can do. So, I don't want to take away from a really experienced sports massage therapist that have very practiced hands. Those of us that are certified and have been doing body work for a really long time, we can feel things happening in muscle and we can identify quickly what technique to use to change that tissue and make it help encourage it to be healthy again. Not necessarily make it healthy, but encourage it to be as healthy as it can be again. So, that's, you know, the professional side of it. But as a, not a certified massage therapist, it's just a person who works with their dog. What you can do is you can really get to know the geography of your dog. You can really get to know what their muscles feel like, what their fascia feels like when they're not injured. And you can also, hopefully, from taking my class, you can learn how to feel when tissue may not feel as normal as it did before. And that gives you a clue that maybe you should have something checked out. Um, so, I think that there's a lot you can do to just keep it stay, keep the tissue elastic and, um, get a really good sense of, of, uh, how your dog feels when you touch your dog. So, you know, you can learn a lot with your own hands on your dog. But, um, then there's also the professional side of it, which is just a little bit more technical. You're talking about kind of feeling all these different parts of your dog, right? So, so how important is it for students to really kind of understand what it is they're feeling, that underlying anatomy? So, I, I use illustrations in the, in the course that people can always go back to and kind of see the general, uh, muscle fiber direction for various muscles in various areas of the body. Um, I don't say now we're going to massage the biceps brachii, for example, or now we're going to massage one head of the triceps or something like that. I don't do that. I don't think it's important for, um, those of us that are just learning massage to have to know where every single muscle is.

Though each week I will give a list of muscles will be affecting and what their function is. Um, so people will see that, but they don't have to know it in order to put their hands on their dog and, um, for their dog to get a lot of benefit from, um, the massage techniques we will learn every week. So there are, there are anatomy illustrations. There is information on muscles and what their function is, um, or their functions are, but you just don't have to really know that you can just have kind of a general feel of it, um, in order to massage your own dog. So it's there if you want it, but you don't have to have it. And we won't be saying, like I said, we won't be focusing on individual muscles. We'll be working on muscle groups. You know, can you share a little about kind of how some of those different systems are involved when it comes to massage? I know you talk about like the nervous system and the musculoskeletal system and holy cow, I totally stumbled over that word, but that's okay. Oh, you did great just then. Um, I cannot say it to save my life last night. Let me tell you. Well, sometimes the end of the day, you know, it's different, but, um, I do talk about the nervous system and the musculoskeletal system and how we can affect it. Um, I'll give you a couple of really quick examples. If you reach down and pat your dog really hard and fast, you might be affecting the nervous system and how you might be affecting it is you might just be speeding it up. So you're doing the opposite of calming your dog down. Um, and you might also cause some muscles to kind of hold or, or tense up with that hard padding. So you might be affecting various systems, not just one system. So everything works together in this, in these super complex systems of ours. What an, what an amazing thing these, these entire systems are. But what's also cool is that you can actually reach down to your dog and do a really slow stroking touch when, um, not for every dog and not in every situation, but, um, there are ways we can touch our dog to actually calm the nervous system and therefore calm our dog, which is super cool. I even have a section in the course on the tail and believe it or not, you know, when, when, um, Cassie was younger, she would get, um, quite excited when she saw another dog and some would have called her very reactive. You know, she could bark, lunge and all that. And one of the first signs that she was getting ready to do something like that was her tail would go up in the air. Her long, beautiful Aussie tail would go up in the air.

And so that was one of the signs I looked for because she has a tail. Um, and if I stroked her tail in a certain way, starting quickly and then slowed down, that tail would relax. And so would her nervous system. So would she oddly enough. So, you know, you can actually, um, have an impact on how up your dog is. Like you might want them really up before you run, um, in agility and you might want them, um, to come down a notch when they get out of the ring. So you can do a slower stroke. So you, you're, you're affecting everything every time you touch your dog, but you can actually see the changes based on how the speed of your touch, the way you touch. Um, and the same goes for working with fascia in the musculoskeletal system. You can, you know, relax the muscles and kind of, um, help them warm up and get more, uh, more elastic. Um, when you're touching them with the warmth of your hand versus not doing anything, for example. So you've mentioned, uh, fascia. I think I'm pronouncing it right. Maybe a couple of times. Do you mind just giving us kind of a quick explanation of what that is? I don't know. Think of your muscles. There's kind of this network of, think of it as kind of a net and there's this net under the skin that within this net or network of tissue are all the muscles. And if your fascia is super tight, your muscles are going to have trouble elongating and being elastic. So, so actually fascia is my favorite thing to work on because we can relax and manipulate the fascia at a lighter level, not a tickly level, but at a lighter level than feeling like we have to go down deep in the muscle. And when we do relax that fascia, we are relaxing muscle. It's pretty amazing. And I talk about it in a little more detail in the course, but, um, fascia is it, man. I love working with fascia. So I encourage everyone to learn a little bit about fascia and how they can affect it. So it's a neural network of protection for the muscles and it can get tight and respond to things just like muscles can. Interesting. Mm-hmm. So I know you mentioned in there that you kind of focus on muscle groups. So are there specific muscle groups that matter more to some sports than others, different techniques that matter more or less for a given sport? Okay. So for agility, for example, massage everything. Whole body, huh? Yeah. Whole body. I mean, I think really every sport, everything, but like nose work, you know, the dogs are out front. They're forward on their bodies more than they're moving from the back end or twisting and turning quite as much.

I mean, they move in all directions, but, but their nose is forward to the ground or forward and up. So, you know, maybe the front end gets a little bit more work than it normally would. Obedience is probably most parts of the dog. Certainly, you know, a bunch of herding work and sports work, field work. I mean, you know, that is all like the whole body. So I think it's good to learn the whole body and then maybe just knowing your sport and which areas the body get the most work, then you can focus on that area a little bit more. Now, what, to what techniques to use for each sport? I say, use the ones that work best for you and that your, your dog responds the best to. So I've taught this class once, I think before, but I've taught body work quite a bit. And so every time I teach body work, people are like, my dog likes this technique the best, you know? So people figure out kind of what they're able to do the best and what their dog responds to the best. And they usually go together. And I say, use those, develop the other, develop the other things more slowly. But some of the techniques just don't resonate with people. And that includes me. I mean, I don't use every single technique. Every time I work on a dog, there's certain things I go back to because they feel the best for me to do. And I get a lot of response from dogs when I do them. So some dogs are more willing to lay still and be manipulated or be kind of physically handled than others. I know in my household, I have two dogs that would love to crawl inside my skin with me. They can't get enough touch. And one dog that's like, eh, you touched me twice. That's enough. Yeah. Are there things students can do to kind of help set themselves and their dogs up for success with massage work? Or are some dogs just kind of not, not going to be into it? Well, so I've worked with dogs that it took me two or three months before I could really work with them. So there are some dogs that are very, very sensitive to touch. And those dogs, what's important is that we take our time with them and we really let them decide if and when we can touch them and for how long we can touch them. So this isn't a you lay down and I manipulate you type of thing. Okay. This is a, I'm asking you if I can touch you and I'll show you ways that I can touch you that are less invasive teeth from your perspective. Not that I can know their perspective, but I can tell that if I use a little bit of the back of my hand versus my whole palm and hand on them, that's less threatening to many, many dogs that are super sensitive.

And then I can go from there to help desensitize a dog to touch. And oftentimes those dogs that are the most sensitive to touch end up being the biggest hogs, the biggest touch hogs. You know, they, um, we don't push it. We take our time. We look for signs that they're uncomfortable. We let them move when they want to move. It's super, super important to understand that this is one of those things where less is really more. Um, it really comes into play. However, the payoff is huge because then you have a dog that can accept touch. You've just really developed your trust relationship with your dog by giving them the choice to say yes or no and how long. And then, um, we can get much, much further with massage, cooperative care, vet exams, all sorts of handling, and then, you know, tactical cues and all of that. So, um, but it's, uh, for the really sensitive, I know some people hesitate to take this course because their dogs, um, are so sensitive to touch. And I would say, um, take this course and I'll cover, I'll cover a bit about the, um, sensitive dogs, but then you've got the skills you can practice on yourself or on another dog. And you can very slowly, um, work up a dialogue with your dog about, um, when and for how long you can touch and when you can move from the back of your hand to the front of your hand, when you can move from a stroke that's two inches long to a stroke that, you know, if your dog's long enough, 20 inches long. So all of that is building slowly, um, and guided by your dog. You used a phrase in there that I really love. You said you can work up a dialogue. That's just so, it's almost poetic, right? And just be kind of the sense of the, of the whole thing of kind of capturing what you're trying to do. Right. Gosh, I can't stress that enough. I mean, that goes for so many things, right? It's not just touch. You know, when you think about the people that are sensitive to touch for whatever reason they may have, I mean, you know, I've had people in my body work classes where I'm showing things on people and I tell them, you know, if you're somebody who's sensitive about touching, don't want to be touched, please feel free to not participate with another person. You can just do this on your own leg or your own arm. And there are definitely, you know, I mean, take it slow, only do what you're comfortable with. And that goes for our dogs as well. Not all dogs have been handled in the best way, or they were just born with super, super sensitive skin or nervous systems. And we have to take it slow and build that very carefully.

One of the bullets on your syllabus mentioned specifically kind of observing posture before and after massage. And that kind of just piqued my curiosity a little bit. Can you, can you share a little bit on what you mean by that? Yeah, of course. Yeah. So I work with a lot of dogs and some of them, you know, recovering from injuries. Some of them are older and they may walk into my practice to get a massage and they, they may be moving really stiffly or they may look really uncomfortable standing. So what I do, what I tend to do is I tend to work on a part of the dog and then have them move and work on a part of the dog and have them move. So I do a lot of back and forth between movement and body work. And what I see or what I hope to see by the end of the session is that the dog is standing much nicer. They are moving much better. They aren't as stiff. They're more aware of their bodies. So by combining slow movement or movement, really slow movement with body work, I'm kind of integrating the body work. And I mean, these two go perfectly together. So I'm integrating the body work into the, into movement basically by going back and forth. And what I see is even the posture and standing changes and dogs move better. They move better with, this is why I do, this is why I do behavior, fitness, body work and massage, you know, or body work and massage and T-touch that's included as well. But it's because they all go so well together. I mean, they're all intertwined. There's not a just behavior component or a just touch component or a just movement component. It's all, it's all part of the dog. For folks who are kind of thinking about the class, do you want to share a little more kind of what else is included? I know it's a pretty comprehensive syllabus when I was looking it over. Yeah. I don't know why I include so much in every class I do, but anyway, they could all be multiple classes probably. So in this class, I talk about specific massage techniques. So we learn a new technique or two or three every week. And I incorporate some T-touch in there, not just massage, not just what you would learn in a massage school. And I cover the touch sensitivities as I spoke of before and fascia. We do some passive range of motion, some stretching. We talk about, you know, the different parts of the body, even the tail or the nub of the tail. I give a list of muscles and their function. So there's a lot in there, but it's broken down by a week and general topic. And then for homework, I really like people to just pick and choose what they want to work on.

So maybe in a particular week, they only worked on one technique and really, you know, that's fine. You can work on another technique later. I mean, every week, just as long as you're turning in video or trying things that I have covered. I don't think people have to learn everything that's presented in one week. You can always go back and add stuff. And like you were saying, some things they may experiment with and decide that, you know, okay, that's not a technique that I personally am going to use a lot. So maybe I'm not going to work on it a whole bunch. Yeah, exactly. That's really neat because it kind of lets people pick and choose a little bit. So if folks are listening and, you know, they're interested in signing up, I know we talked a little bit about touch sensitive dogs and kind of dogs around different places in that spectrum. Who's really a good fit to take the class? And is there anything else they should really know going in? They should probably know the golds are sold out. Fair enough. Yeah. And honestly, I'd have a difficult time coming up with who should not take this course. I think because of the way body work translates or converts or, you know, generalizes over into other things we use our hands for. I just think, you know, you can't go wrong taking this class. Even if you just use a couple things out of it, you're, you're hopefully what you're really getting is that touch dialogue, right? And also doing some things that help maintain the health of your dog. That's a second one. And a third one is making it easier for you to discover when there might be an issue. And I have, I cannot even tell you how many times people have brought their dogs in for me to work on them. And I find the lump, you know, I find the, you know, I mean, they can be fatty tumors, whatever, but I find everything because I put my hands on their dog and they're like, what? You know, I'm like, what's this? And they're like, I had no idea. So, you know, that knowing the geography of your dog with your hands is so important. And it's not just knowing, it's knowing, learning how the tissue feels, how the tissue responds. Like maybe all of a sudden the, you see the skin tense up in an area where you touch or your dog flips their head around. Um, you might notice certain areas are cold or hot. All of this is information. And I think, um, there's a wealth of information in touch and touching your dog. Um, I think it's important for us to use that just as much as we use looking at our dogs. And, uh, I think smell is important too, actually.

If all of a sudden our dog smells bad, their breath smells bad or their ears smell bad. And that's something to get checked out. Right. Um, so, you know, there's, I'd say short of tasting your dog, just for some entertainment, um, you know, using our senses, listening to, you know, how they bark or how they breathe, you know, using our senses and all of them, including touch with our dog is just super important. So kind of as a final question here, you know, what's a lesson? That you've been reminded of or learned recently when it comes to dog training or, you know, kind of stuff we've been talking about. It's funny. Cause this does kind of go with my, um, webinar I have coming up on the pre-senior stage, because I think that there's, um, a lot more we can do. I'm going to call that dog train. There's a lot more we can do with our dogs as they get a little bit older before they're considered old or senior or aging really quickly. There's a lot more we can do. And one of those is the tactile cues. Um, another one is, you know, fitness to prepare for being a senior and to go into that strongly. Um, so many dogs, um, come and see me once they've already lost function. And so we work to get the function back. I'd like to see more dogs keep the function throughout their entire aging process. You know, I'm reminded of that a lot, that all of that. Do you have the date and time of the webinar handy? I don't have it up. I think it's April 11th at 6 PM. Well, hopefully some folks will join us for that and we'll check out the massage class. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Laura. I should say, I think it's 6 PM Pacific time, but I'm not positive. It's April 11th. Yes. I could double check. I could be, I could be good, a good host and actually pull it up because, you know, it's only part of my job. Okay. Um, yeah. So it's Thursday, April 11th, um, at 6 PM Pacific time. I think so. Uh, for folks that are interested. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you again for joining me. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. I'm talking about body work. Yeah. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. This time with Jessica Heckman to talk about the biology of building a performance dog. If you haven't already subscribed to our podcast and iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fensi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fensi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy.

Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. Today's show iso. Thank you.