Hello

Hey everyone! My name is Hannah, I am a qualified small animal hydrotherapist. I started working with Woozelbears in 2012 as their first ever apprentice, fresh out of studying animal care at college. I quickly became Qualified as a Hydrotherapist, after pestering poor Charlotte (CEO of Woozelbears) to get me through the qualifications as I was so eager to learn. In my time working as a hydrotherapist I had to go through hours of CPD (continual professional development), and this included seminars and individual research. I am very passionate about education in prevention rather than just cure alone because for me I would rather the animals were never in pain in the first place if we can avoid it! And that’s where my passion really started to shine through. I wanted to be able to educate, not only sporting and working dog owners but also pet dog owners too! Over time I became Senior Hydrotherapist & centre manager at Woozelbears in Witney, and also trained in the use of the FitFurLife Gait Analysis Treadmill. But then sadly had a skin problem which the chlorine exacerbated and after working for 2 years with a dermatologist is made my health so bad that I had to stop. I still work with Woozelbears behind the scenes, but I always missed the work so much, which is when I decided to become a K9PT! I felt like this would lead me back into the world of prevention rather than cure, allowing me to work with the dogs who haven’t yet had an injury to try and help build their fitness up so that the chance of injury is reduced as much as possible. In working with many clients on their dog's fitness it became more and more apparent to me that pain almost always had a part to play with behaviour issues. This is why I decided to become a Dog Trainer because I feel like in the field of rehabilitation and canine fitness, we need to have a good level of understanding of behaviour as there are so many places in which the two realms cross over.

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My training journey has always been an interesting one, as my eldest collie Luna, born around the start of August, 2011, has lead me on an amazing journey. Luna was a rescue, with a very bad history, she was skin and bones when we got her, with other signs of neglect too. She was very afraid, and did not like other dogs or new people. When we rescued her, the center advised we see a trainer. I was only 18 at the time and took the training card and got straight onto contacting them. She was my first dog that was not a family dog and I didn't know much about training at this point, so it made sense to seek the advice of a professional. However this first trainer used very aversive methods - a lot of shouting, check chains, spray bottles, constant corrections etc. Now at the time I didn't realise how bad this was, it didn't feel right, but I could see behaviours being "fixed" (suppressed) before my eyes so I thought that was the way. Fast forward a year and I started to find more dog people in the training world, who opened my eyes up to the world of positivity. Here I went to a new trainer who used mostly positive, but still some aversive - less severe aversive than the previous trainer. Now I started to feel like mine and Luna's relationship was being patched up. We had more fun training in this manner, but there were still corrections, which would always withdraw from the relationship. Fast forward a couple more years and we switched to a purely positive trainer who didn't use any aversive. And while mine and Luna's relationship got much better, her behaviours in other areas got so much worse, because we were no longer suppressing her responses, which showed that the root problem was never actually addressed. It got so bad that I returned to our previous trainer - not fully understanding what was happening, all I could see was a dog "behaving badly" again. Now fast forward a few more years to 2019 when I found concept training. Concept training methods and games based training are the methods which I use now. Honestly our lives were totally transformed by this training style. I was able to heal our relationship AND repair the roots of all the problems Luna had which caused all her behaviours. We started growing her calmness, disengagement from the environment, focus on me, optimism, self control etc. Growing all of these concepts absolutely changed everything. She has since accepted 3 dogs into our home, been able to meet other dogs and people out and about, she doesn't spend all day fly chasing, she no longer re-directs onto me, no more lunging and barking at the end of the lead, no more reacting to almost any noise, no more obsessing over the TV. There are so many other behaviours I could name, but all of them have improved so much I cannot tell you. When I started seeing her make the choice to not do these things on her own I cried so many happy tears you would not believe. And Luna's story is one that always fills me with so much motivation to help anyone that I possibly can. 

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Another little note to add is that I have also been training in agility with my dogs for fun for years, and recently have started to take it more seriously and will start to compete very soon as well!

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This all has led me to where I am now, doing my absolute utmost to help dogs all over the country and their owners to live a happier, harmonious life. I want to be able to reach and help as many dogs as possible, that is my number one mission!