20
Nelson Weekly
Feature
TUESDAY 21 June 2016
Locally Owned and Operated
“man’s best friend” dog training, awareness and safety Every dog has the ability to be “man’s best friend” when they receive the right training and the same level of love and affection that they bestow upon us. Todd Field, veterinarian at Hali-
fax Vet Centre, began researching behavioural training while he was still studying at university around 11 years ago and now teaches puppy school and junior dog classes from the Nelson vet clinic. “Our dog attack statistics are pretty bad
and for years and years the focus has been on the breed being the main way we can prevent them. We know from every country in the world that's tried specific breed legislation [that it] doesn't work, and when you look at the bite statistics every study will give you a different breed that's a problem, but we know that
• Dog-friendly, dog training that works • One to one in home dog training • Individual puppy management
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Dog registrations closing soon: A reminder 2016 / 2017 dog registrations are due by 30 June. This year’s tag is blue. To register your dog you can either: • bring your registration form into our Customer Services Centre • complete the registration form online and send it to us (nelson.govt.nz – search “Dog registration”) and then make a payment online (search “Online payment” – use your dog owner number as a reference). We will send you out a new tag. A big “Thank You“ to all our dog owners who have already registered their dogs for this year – remember; it is a requirement of the Dog Control Act 1996 that all dogs are registered at three months of age.
Russell Black from Nelson SPCA with one of their current dogs up for adoption, Spookie. breed's not our issue, it's about how they're raised and how they're trained,” says Todd. Halifax Vet Centre was the first clinic in New Zealand to run puppy classes, starting over 20 years ago after they saw it happening in America. “The biggest thing we can do is early training and early socialisation,” says Todd. “Puppies have a huge socialisation period until about 16 weeks of age. In that first eight weeks, they really need to be with the breeder where they’re exposed to the other puppies, mum can teach them about interaction with other dogs, hopefully they meet children and loud noises in that household, then once they have that base work we get them and really have to work at that socialisation with other dogs [in puppy school], so by 16 weeks
of age they've done a big portion of their learning about the world. If you just chuck them in a cage and forget about them, those dogs are more likely to have serious behavioural issues long term.” As well as providing socialisation and obedience training, puppy school also offers Halifax the chance to educate owners on what Nelson City Council expects from them, including microchipping, the importance of desexing and vaccinations, as well as making sure owners are using effective positive reinforcement to train their pet, rather than “those things that we used to thing were right such as hitting dogs, it doesn’t work,” says Todd. “In a lot of those dog bite statistics, we've let those dogs down, rather than those dogs being inherently nasty.”
Dogs that are not registered by 31 July will incur a 50% penalty fee on top of the registration fee.
HALIFAX veterinary centre ● Consultations ● Wellness ● Surgery ● Diagnostics ● Dentistry ● Behaviour training ● Puppy, junior and one-on-one classes 205 Bridge St ● Ph 548 3871 www.halifaxvet.co.nz