E318: 알렉스 우드로프(Aleks Woodroffe) - "스포츠견을 위한 카나인 마사지"

And we lucked out that all the laws were changing in Arizona at the time. So it actually became legal just as we became certified. So it was really kind of a nice benefit that we could get out there and not just work on our own dogs, but actually do it for other people as well. And I got bit by the bug at that point. And I really started enjoying being able to help out fellow competitors in agility, but then it started expanding more and more from there. And it's something that I don't, I don't do like all day worth because it's very physically demanding and mentally demanding. But I do several clients every week that I can work on for massage. That's awesome. So what kind of got you started on the positive training journey in particular? Luckily, because I got into dog sports from agility, I really didn't end up going with any other methods than learning positive at the very beginning. I grew up on a horse farm. And so we worked with high end dressage horses and they're powerful and I'm not a very big person. And so very quickly you learn, you have to have a lot of respect for the animal around you and work with treats in your pocket. And guess what? You can make them do anything, especially as a young girl growing up. So I did a lot of that stuff just with positive reinforcement from the very beginning. I remember when I was little, I used to have a field spaniel and I was playing agility in the backyards at the time in Canada, super dogs. So I grew up trying to do super dogs with my dog in the backyard and it was all with treats because how else do you make a field spaniel do anything? So yeah, that was kind of how I got started. Interesting. If I was to kind of ask you to describe your training philosophy these days. Yeah, for sure. So I still definitely am positive reinforcement based. I might be a little bit more open-minded because I've worked with a large range of dogs. I work with a lot of Schutzen dogs and Schutzen trainers as well as obedience and agility and all these different nose work and professional dogs as well. So detection dogs. And of course, all the philosophies aren't all the same. And so I've seen how you can apply different methods. It's not necessarily how I like to train, but I understand them. So my relationship-based training is still relationship and watching the dog and responding. And I like the philosophy of splitting things down. If they aren't getting it, it's probably because they aren't understanding it. And punishing isn't necessarily my method for it. It might be a faster answer in some situations. I like training.

So I go back to the training aspect and kind of putting some finesse and joy and enthusiasm into it and then put it back together. So I do that kind of same thing, not just with training, but with massage as well. So we do a lot of fitness training that way and massage that way is that observational-based thing. So you kind of talked about this a little bit in there, but kind of looking at training that way, how does that impact what you do with massage? Sure. A lot of massage is patience and being able to see the responses in the dog as they are getting touched in different locations and seeing what the responses are and being patient and allowing them to process and tell you what's going on. So it's a very much still trust and relationship-based kind of interaction through observation. And observation meaning like watching their eyes, watching how they respond their body to your hands and to your touch and different locations that you're touching. So their eyes are big. I didn't realize that I looked at their eyes so much until I worked on a dog that doesn't have eyes. It was kind of eye-opening, if you say, right? Pun intended. Okay. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So I realized at that point that I watched their eyes because they start getting a little squinty eyes and soft when they're happy. When it's something sore, then their eyes bolt open and you can tell a lot of information from their eyes, but you can see it through the way that they're breathing, the tension in their body and all those kinds of things as well. So since massage is such a big part of what you do, do you mind just kind of talking a little bit about what the benefits are? Sure, for sure. Well, the reason why I got into it at the very beginning was rehabilitation, right? Working with muscle tissue that's not healthy and that you're trying to increase circulation and get it healthy. It can really help with surgery. I work with a lot of my clients after surgery, not necessarily where the surgery happened, but through the rest of their body. So compensations that happen when they're not walking evenly. It also really helps with flexibility, range of motion, having that healthy tone of muscles. So as a dog's building muscle and they have regular massage, even though they don't have all these pains everywhere, you can really build nice, even muscle tissue and support the dog that way. Circulation, having a lot of blood flow through those areas, which promotes healthier muscles and reducing stress, which was kind of a side effect that we don't always think about.

I don't have her anymore, but I had a very reactive, anxious dog, which actually got me into nose work way back when. But because she's so stressed, we would do massage to reduce our anxiety levels and actually reduce the endorphins in our system that are causing some of that anxious energy. And it really can help with something like that. Interesting. I mean, it kind of makes sense, right? Like a lot of times humans go in for massage for stress purposes. So yeah, exactly. Are there different types of massage for some of those different things? For sure. There's like the overwhelming therapeutic is what you call it, a wellness type of massage. Those ones are going to be for seniors. Or if you just want your dog to go in and get a nice overall massage, full body, looking at everything. Puppies. We do a lot of therapeutic massages for puppies. I do a lot of massages for puppies, for sport dogs, because those owners want their dogs to be touched and introduced to what canine massage is before their dog needs it. So there's the therapeutic kind of things. What I do most of is sport massage. So very targeted. It can include trigger point therapy, which some people are very amazing trigger point specialists. I'm not one of those. But there are some really great people out there that do really good trigger point massages. But it's very targeted. It's not necessarily whole body. And you're looking more at addressing a single little piece of the body that has an issue. And then there is deep tissue massage, which I could tell you many dogs don't tolerate deep tissue massage because if something hurts, a dog doesn't want to be there for it. In humans, we think about deep tissue a little bit more often, especially for sport massage. You have to be a little more thoughtful about deep tissue with a dog. And they have to be able to tolerate it. Right. That makes sense. Kind of to that point, do dogs need training? Are there skills that it makes sense for dogs to have before they try massage or before you start massage or any of that? Yeah. The big answer is no, not really. But the dogs that understand what a massage is are much easier to work on. I don't find that a dog needs a certain position so they don't have to be laying down on their side, which is typically what you see when you see people doing massages is the dog's nice and perfect. It's always a border colliered agility. I can tell you, border colliers are way easier to say, can you lay on your side, please? After like two or three sessions, they get it. I have retrievers that I work on that will never lay down.

And the closest we can get, I call it turtle position where they're in a perfect lay down, like a down position, but their elbows underneath and their knees all tucked up. And that's all we get. And that's their position. And that's fine. We can work on a lot of different things. Maybe they stand up for different pieces so you can get to their legs, but you don't have that typical. I don't think that because a dog needs to learn how to lie down means that that person can't have massage for their dog because their dog doesn't do that thing. Right. But it doesn't mean that you can't teach it and build up that experience. The more the dog is experienced in massage, it's cool. You can start seeing them know they can give a response. So they might look at you a little bit and they go, that's a spot. And you go, okay. And you move on because it's sore. You continue there a little bit. And the dog goes, okay, thank you. And they really know how to respond back and forth with the massage therapist. So it's kind of cool to see that experienced dog happen. Interesting. Thinking about kind of massage for the average sports athlete, right? When are we looking at it? Are we talking about as part of the warmup, as part of the cool down, just when the dog's injured? Like what do you, when do you recommend it? When do you kind of integrate it into the dog's life? For sure. There's two different versions, right? There's non-sport days and then there's sport days. So we're talking about a sport dog and doing canine massage. Right now, most of my clients see me on non-sport days. So we are working on ongoing issues. We're keeping track of things. We're maybe keeping an eye on different parts of the body to make sure nothing new is popping up. And so those are going to be on the end of therapeutic massage with little pieces of sport massage within there to make sure that we're addressing any sort of tension or issues that are popping up in their body. So that's away from the sport day. During massages, and I've worked national events and I've worked. At just local events as well. There's a whole bunch of different groupings. So I find some dogs really don't do well for massage until the very end of the day. They get too relaxed. They get too loose. And then they're slow, like in agility. They're a little bit slower to move. They aren't as finesse. They aren't so powerful. Other dogs need that warm up and they get really tight easily. So having a little bit of a warm up massage, which is going to focus more on circulation and getting blood flow moving. That works really well for them in the morning or first thing in the day.

Other dogs need little tune ups throughout the day. And so the little tune up in the middle of the day might be really good to hit a very specific location, like maybe the middle of the back or really tight muscle in the leg. And then it can keep that circulation going. So your warm up actually lengthens a little bit longer without a lot of the problems that can happen from cooling down too quickly after doing sports. And then you have the cool down tight massages might be right after the ring, which is a lot more circulation based and making sure the lactic acid isn't building up. Or you do at the very end of the day before they go home so that they're ready to go for the next morning. So a lot of different versions. I find different people have their different preferences and the dogs have their own preferences on when that happens. And I imagine it's a little bit of trial and error to kind of figure out what's best for that particular team, right? Exactly, exactly. And so you notice, oh, my dog's a little slow today. They were kind of sluggish. Okay, let's not do that before again. Fair enough. Fair enough. So when we're talking about like handlers actually doing some of the massage workers, is there information or yes, what kinds of information can they kind of gather from working maybe a little bit on their own dog or maybe they should watch out for as like an early sign that something may be becoming more sensitive or might be in the verge of an injury or, you know, talk a little bit about that stuff. So I find canine massage is the biggest thing that we can do to really keep track of that stuff. We can watch our dogs and I find we don't watch our dogs as much as we should because we're ahead of them or above them and we don't see that kind of thing. And so canine massage can be really helpful for that. So regularly you're doing it on your own, which I really recommend even for my massage clients. I'm like, okay, here are the basic stuff that you need to be doing on your dog every day so that you can get a feel of what's going on. Or you're going to see a massage practitioner and then you're having a regular appointment with them. And so then they're keeping track of things as well. It depends on some practitioners will keep notes themselves. Some will give reports. It depends on what one, if you feel like you want to keep track of those things, you can always ask them to give you notes, whether that notes is just written in a text message or you're getting a full on report, which is really kind of nice to have, but you can

keep track of things that are happening and it's the patterns that are happening. So it's not just once that we see something that pops up and then we have to get worried and it might be, but maybe it's that same like, oh, they're really sore on their back. Oh, they're really sore at the specific part of their back again and again and again. So then we start going, okay, is there a fitness program that needs to be happening to prevent this? Maybe there's an ongoing something you need to go see your vet and get a diagnosis for. And this is talking about healthy dogs, right? It's not just an injured dog, a healthy dog that's going to come in. Specifically in the massage itself, there's a few things that we can be looking for to have the dog give us that information. So there's things, I call them behavioral reactions. So you can have something like as simple as the dog wants to get up when you touch a certain part or they turn over on their back, which looks really cute, right? But it's submissive. It's trying to turn away from that pressure on their back or wherever you're touching. That's a problem. I see it most often if you're touching like a sore spot along the middle of their back or in their glutes and they might turn over and they go, okay, that's enough. You don't need to touch that anymore, right? So that's one of those behavioral reactions. Other ones can be a little bit more specific. So eyes getting wide. That's an easy one. If you're looking for it, if you're not looking for it, you might not see it at all. Head turning because that's the precursor to head turning and snapping. That really fast turnaround that goes, oh, that's sore. Something I might see that on is a dog who has a tight psoas muscle, which is if you talk to agility people, that's like, oh my gosh, psoas muscle. Um, because if you have an injury in psoas, it's a really hard rehab and it's an easy muscle to get injured when there's other things going on. Um, so a head snap when the psoas muscle is touched, that can definitely be an indication that something's going on there. It doesn't necessarily mean that that muscle's injured. It could just mean that it's tight or guarded because it's sore. Um, other things are vocalization. Some dogs are really vocal and not even just like yelping, right? It's like, or growling, grumbling, and you can hear different kinds of vocalizations that will happen when you touch different parts of their body. So it is a good precursor. You kind of recognize that and you go, oh, maybe we need to stay here longer. And that's what that signal means.

Other ones, it's like, okay, we're going to leave that alone for a little while and maybe we'll address it again later. Maybe they're just feeling overwhelmed from something else and you come back to that location later and it's nothing. And so then you let the dog give you that information as you move through. Um, trying to think of some other ones. I've had some that will put a paw on my hand every once in a while. Okay. That's enough. We don't need to touch that anymore, but usually the eyes and the head turns and then how tense they are within their body will be big signals for them. Do they just kind of relax into it over time if everything is going wrong? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So if you hit a spot and I was working on a border collie just like a few hours ago. So, and as he was laying there, we got into his glutes and I just dental pressure right on that location of the glutes that was really tight and the whole leg stretches out and you can see even the toes stretch out to the very tips and it stretches out behind him. And then the, everything in the whole body goes, ah, and he just relaxes on the bed and the head down. And before he's like looking at me and twisting around and moving around and you hit that spot and he's like, yep, that's it. And so it's really cool to see those releases and they happen. Yeah. That is pretty neat. Yeah. You, you mentioned kind of rehab earlier and I'd love to dig into that just a little bit more, you know, how can massage work maybe be complimentary to vet care? Can you talk a little bit about role when we're talking about recovery or treatment of a injury? Sure. For sure. The biggest piece about any sort of injury in this, I think I'm going to speak for almost all canine massage practitioners is try and get a diagnosis before coming to us first. And there's like, I've been there in the agility world. It's like my dog's lame or they're sort of off. Can you put your hands on and see what's going on? And like, I understand it, especially as a competitor, but at the same time, massage is the most effective when you have a diagnosis, when you're working with a team of good specialists. And so most of my clients now, because I'm doing most of my work from home, I do ask for diagnosis because it allows us to have a unified front to try and treat something. The veterinarian teams, when you go in to get a diagnosis or we have a treatment plan that's in place that normally has other modalities, things like acupuncture, maybe acupressure, some of that can be done by a massage practitioner if they're certified. A laser.

You've got really high powered lasers that the vets can use and very much target a specific location. Maybe even prescriptive medicine and being able to have that forefront of dealing something acute can be very effective. Or maybe there's arthritis or something happening like that within the system. And you need to know that to be able to manage it effectively and not just kind of guess. When you're guessing, it's kind of like ongoing, like hopefully it makes it better and you don't really know if it's happening or not. So being able to work with a team that can really be helpful for something like that. With the vets that I work with, and I work with several different rehab vets as well as specialists, I find that they use my information because I have a dog that's calm and I'm patient. I have a lot of time that I can spend with that dog to be able to figure out exactly what's going on or close-ish. So maybe they weren't able to figure something out. They came and saw me and I got to work on them a little bit. And then I've seen something even more specific. Then they go back to their vet. And now we have an actual diagnosis that can happen. So that's really kind of cool to go back and forth within the teams or maintain post-surgery or post-rehab. Okay, this is ongoing and we're getting some compensation still happening here, or they're still turning out on their shoulder here. And so then we can work back and forth to try and figure out what's going on. If there's something further, maybe one piece of the problem was fixed, but maybe there's another piece that was also injured at the same time. And so working with a team can really help with something like that. That makes a lot of sense. And I can see how being able to have kind of some of that back and forth conversation is really useful, especially if you're willing to talk to their vet. Yeah, yeah. I actually, so not all vets want to email back and forth. And I totally understand, like their life is so busy. Uh, so sometimes I just give the report to the client. Um, if they're going to be going back and forth with a vet, frequently I say, like I let them communicate that to me and I will give them a full on report versus just my notes that I see that day and it's ongoing, just healthy dog stuff. So, yeah. Yeah. So you're offering a workshop and all of this canine massage stuff at FDSA. It starts June 25th. Do you want to just talk a little bit about what the workshop's going to cover and maybe who should consider signing up? For sure. Uh, so the sports or the, the workshop itself is going to be focused on sport massage and

because that's what I do most of. And I think that's going to be most of the people that are wanting to do the workshop, especially through FENSI, um, is they've got sport dogs and they want to make sure that they're keeping up with their dogs and trying to keep them as healthy as possible, which I'm totally supportive. I think that's awesome. Um, teaching people how to do massage on their own dogs is really helpful, even as a canine massage practitioner, because it means they're going to come in with some more information. My dog keeps getting sore right here, right? And then we can work at it and come in with my expertise to say, okay, well, have we looked down here? What about over here? Maybe it's front end that's causing this back end. And we can kind of nail down that stuff. So the workshop is going to be focused on sport massage and what will happen with the owner, maybe at the end of a day that they're at an event and they want to do some cool down and, uh, help their dog release some of the stress that might pent up from a certain massage or a certain sport. Um, but I want to make sure people don't think that they have to have this perfect dog that lays down. Uh, even my dog who it took, she's seven for the videos that I took for the workshop. She's not one that was like that at the very beginning. She's lying down really nice on her side for the demos now, but that took me five years to build from puppy hood. All right. Um, so don't think that you have to have this perfect dog. They can just be sitting. Um, what's nice about doing canine massage at home. And I'm hoping that this kind of gets portrayed in that workshop is that you can do it in bed. You could do it sitting cuddled on the couch, watching TV. You don't have to have this perfect environment that we think of for canine massage. Um, so something that I'm doing with the workshop is not really diving into too much anatomy. I think Sue's out there doing an amazing job with her classes and there's some really great classes through FENSI to really have the time to go into anatomy. Uh, so I'm not going to spend that time doing that. I'm going to go through major areas in the body and kind of generalize them a little bit more and focus on how to work with each individual types of dogs. Uh, so at the very end of the workshop, we'll go through different types of sports and what muscles might be affected by different kinds of sports and what you might want to look up for your dog. Very cool. And, um, so in terms of who should consider signing up, pretty much anyone's out there

competing, any age limits or anything there to worry about? Not at all. Senior dogs are welcome. I find if you've got a younger dog, knowing how to do this, putting your hands on your dog, everybody's getting used to it. So that by the time that they meet, reach middle age, they're going to be a little bit more used to it and you can get your feeling of what they should feel like as the time goes on. Are there any times when massages is not recommended? There is. Um, so some of the main ones is when we don't want circulation to move something through the system. And that's kind of the easiest way to think of it. So things like fever or severe illness, abscesses, um, cancer, belly fever, or any other fungal infections like that. Cause you don't want it. If it's localized somewhere, you don't want cancer spreading through the rest of the body. Now there's end of life consideration. So if that's your dog, then massage might be a good end of life care for easing pain, but being very aware that it increases circulation. So you have more chances of things spreading through the body, um, fresh injuries. So if there's like a cut or a sprain, you don't want to be putting any sort of pressure on that location. And something that doesn't always is like a strict rule, but in general, as a canine massage practitioner, I'm only going to touch a dog with a spinal injury on their extremities. I'm not going to work around that spine until the healing is there, if there's going to be healing. And so being very aware of any sort of spine, um, issues like bulging discs or slip discs and things like that. And then the last one is if your dog says no, and that's something that we don't always pay attention to because we have our plan. We're going to sit down and we're going to learn massage. And so letting go of our ego of what we think we should be doing is going to be pretty important for that. So if you have a dog that says no, try and pick a different time of the day, maybe a different place. Maybe you're doing this on the carpet in the middle of the floor and you're like, okay, we've all set up. And your dog's like, no, we're not doing this here. I'm really exposed. Uh, so maybe hanging out in bed or on the couch or somewhere a little bit more relaxing for your dog, maybe pulling out a big comfy dog bed, um, that might be able to answer. But if your dog just says no, you're going to have to listen to them. Don't force a massage on a dog that really doesn't want it. Yeah. Could you imagine if somebody dragged you to the massage? I mean, that's just not ideal, right?

Um, any final thoughts or key points you can maybe want to leave listeners with? Sure. Um, the big ones is that I want you to observe your dogs. I don't think that we do enough of this observing and even documenting our dogs. Uh, I know Sue Yanoff is a big one on this too. Take video of your dog, take photos of your dog and not just like, oh, they're cute of their face. I want to see how they're sitting. I want to see, are they roached in their back as they're standing? Are they moving? Okay. Are they even when they're moving? And if you can do this regularly, you can start seeing chronic issues, something that happens over a long period of time, a little more easily versus, oh, all of a sudden I just noticed something, but how long has it been going on? Nobody knows. So the more that you can document your dog from the side and just having video, the more you can see some of these things. And then the last one is like, get a diagnosis. If you have a dog that has an injury or you suspect something's going on. I do find the vet is the best spot to start and coming to a massage practitioner with that information is really helpful. And then it can start creating a whole plan. Um, I'm a recent canine fitness trainer certification, which is really kind of fun. It's the same thing. Thank you. It's the same thing. There is, uh, coming in with some sort of vet approval and, um, knowledge coming in is going to be super important, uh, because fitness training is not rehab training. And so we have to make sure that we're very clear on where those lines are. Yeah, absolutely. Well, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much, Alex, for coming on the podcast. Yeah. Thank you. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. Don't miss it. If you haven't already subscribed to our podcast in 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 Fendi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fendi 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.