Confidence Clinics

Confidence clinics are designed to build trust and increase your dog’s confidence when coming to the vets.

We understand that a vet visit can be extremely challenging for some pets which in turn can make it stressful and frustrating for you, the care giver. While no one can remove fear, what we can do is help you to build your dog’s confidence in us by providing a care plan that is tailored to your dog’s needs.

Your individual dog will set the pace of each session. The goal of each series of clinics is to build trust between the practice and your dog. This is achieved by working with your dog at their pace, being guided by your dog’s body language and behaviour so that each visit is always ended on a positive. We will always ask that you wait in the car and phone us to advise reception that you have arrived. This avoids you sitting in the waiting room, which could lead to overstimulation, before we even begin. For some dogs even walking in the door is too much and, in this instance, we can give you resources and exercises to prepare your dog for their first confidence clinic.

Once we are ready for you, the RVN running the clinic will fetch you to one of our consult rooms which will already be laid out with a bed and a treat scatter. The treat scatter is designed to guide your pet from the doorway into the room and to the waiting bed but will not be used to force contact between your dog and the RVN. As your dog settles, we will make sure that a small supply of tasty treats keeps appearing on the bed next to your dog while having a chat with you about how that day’s session will work. The full 15 minutes will be booked out for each session, but your dog’s body language will dictate when the session is ended.

As we progress and your dog becomes more comfortable, we will begin to add little confidence boosting exercises which we know your dog is already familiar with, such as sit. Getting rewarded for carrying out familiar cues is an easy and quick way to boost confidence. As your dog progresses, we can even teach them, and you, some new tricks.

After each visit, we will give you some homework, this might be practicing a new trick at home or trying something new on a walk. While it might seem to be unrelated to visiting the vet it will all work together to help boost your dog’s confidence.

At the end of each course, we will re-evaluate your dog and how far they have progressed. We can then make a new plan for your dog’s next steps.