Stress, buckets and calmness, Inspire calm and have great life.

We all know stress is not ok for our health, and this is obviously also true for our dog's. There are many things we can do do to reduce stress in dogs, we only sometimes are not aware of it.

Inspiring calmess into our dog's daily live is a huge benefit in longevity and reducing stress.

If we had a bad day, it is often advised to go out and breath in some fresh air, however often walks can be huge bucket fillers for our dog's. 

There is a car, a bike, a squirrel, screaming kids, you name it. All those little things pay in their bucket. And when that bucket overflows, wow, barking, lunging, screaming dog, not funny.

I've had this with multiple dog's in the past, and sure enough nowadays, I do have occasionaly those situations happening. Life happens, you cannot really control what is going out in the world or in your enviroment. Only a few years ago I really did not know what to do, I had no clue and it was hugely annoying, and I read all the books of so called experts and we came to this amazing conclusion, I needed to exercise my dog more!! 

Was I wrong, the only thing what we did was filling her bucket more and more, never gave it the change to empty. And she was getting strong, because we trained her on the treadmill, she really got great endurance condition, not to mention her amazingly strong muscles.

Well the muscles where not that bad, altough her behaviour was not really to be exitited about. But when you do think the current tv dog trainers are what you must do and follow, you really think you do the right job.

I never tought that calmness was a thing to consider, actually, I did not even like the idea of owning a calm dog, because I really tought that is would matter in the conformation ring. Sure enough I wished she would not bark, pull, lunge and snap at dogwalks, but calmess was nothing to consider.

Eventually we put her on pills and she was ok, ok, but not great. 

Sometimes I feel bad about what I now know, and what I didn't know back then. However nothing can be changed and I did try to do all things to make her life a nice one, I do think we did we had a great relation, the pills did work and she was enjoying her trainingsessions with me. 

I also knew I didn't want to use the not so happy methods again, and I started training in a games based training. I learned about every dog having a bucket, that fills up with everything that happens on a daily basis, and that it sometimes isn't so bad to skip a walk. It can be even better to skip a walk and have a positive quality walk instead of just making those km's, and get it over with.

I learned that the dog laying on a bed and chewing a kong or licking a mat is de-stressing and calming. And because of that, easier to train. So I incorporated snuffle mats, calm k9 mats, kongs, just chilling on the bed in my training. And I found a beautifull supplement called  A-ok9 calm  

It contains ingrediënts that support gut and brain health. (you probably all know dog's that are having very loose stools because of stress) It contains L-Thrypthophan, and that gives a boost to the Happy chemical in the brain called Serotonine.

Because of that they are more confident and happy in life, buckets don't fill so quick and they are generaly calmer on the walks, and calmer in the house.

And what I really liked, it can be put over food, and be put in a kong or on a lickmat, so you can inpire calmness double time.

So if we had a stressfull walk, I now just skip a walk, exercise them at home, by playing some fitness games and lett them have a pasive calming activity like a slowfeeder bowl or a lickmat.

Lickmats are also to be found on the website of A-ok9 aswell as many other great products.

Emmy is having calm now, and she will walk on a loose lead, can go for oflead walks, is not spooked anymore by everything. And is also more focused and easy to train. 

Emmy, happy and healty