n e w s Pet Professional Guild Announces Corporate Partnership with Zigzag Puppy Training App; Valuable Tool For PPG Members to Use in Their Businesses
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PG has announced a new corporate part nership with Zigzag, an allinone puppy training app designed to help puppy parents teach their pups core life skills using positive reinforcementbased methodology. The app was scheduled to be made available to the public starting August 30, 2021. As part of the new partnership, the PPG Canine Committee will provide technical support to help users with app navigation and FAQs. In cases where additional support from a trainer or behavior consultant is requested or needed, the puppy owner will be referred to the PPG Member Directory to help them find a professional in their area. Phase 2 of the corporate partnership will be rolled out in the coming weeks. During this phase, the app will be made available to PPG mem bers for FREE, along with a member affiliate program. This will enable PPG member users to refer their clients to the app as a support tool for their own training programs and curriculums. To support the August 30 app availability, PPG president Niki Tudge will host Zigzag head of program Lorna Winter and PPG Canine Commit tee chair Judy Luther in a live discussion on September 3, 2021 that will be streamed via PPG’s public Facebook page. The pair will discuss and outline PPG’s support role for the app and how PPG members can bene fit from using it, as well as discuss the many advantages for puppies and their owners.
No Formal Training The early stages of puppyhood are critical for a dog’s healthy cognitive and life skill develop ment, but according to the PDSA Animal Well‐ being Paw Report (2019), 60% of dogs in the UK get no formal training, while 12% of dogs never get any kind of training, socialization or life skill development at all. This can lead to a variety of behavior problems, and risks creat ing puppy parents who feel overwhelmed, leading to the possibility of relinquishment and, consequently, increased strain on shelters and rescue centers and, ultimately, the num ber of dogs facing euthanasia. Zigzag aims to break the cycle and pre vent this from happening by acting as a digital coach which guides puppy guardians through the ups and downs of early puppyhood. A personalized plan based on modern, scien tific, and positive only training methods is provided, while ensuring the training is fun and stressfree for both puppy and owner. Zigzag is currently the only digital coaching app that focuses purely on this early puppy hood phase.
Teaching Life Skills The actual life skills are taught via stepby step video tutorials and exercises over the course of eight12 weeks. Users are given three to five daily tasks, seven days a week, that are adapted to their puppy’s breed – from preparing for puppy’s arrival, to learning potty training, name recognition, mouthing,
manners, recall, fetching, and more. “I’ve been a qualified behaviorist and trainer since 2009 and, yearonyear, through all the behavior and training networks I’m a part of, we see more and more issues with dogs being unable to cope in our world,” said Zigzag’s Lorna Winter. "These often require se rious – and often long – behavior modification programs, or even euthanasia in some cases. Yet many of the issues being presented could easily have been prevented with fairly minimal training and education during those early months of development when the dogs were still puppies. With physical puppy classes, we only ever manage to reach a tiny percentage of the puppies being born each year around the world, so it was our vision to find a way to bring all the amazing expertise we have in this industry – and get that out to millions of puppies and guardians, rather than the few hundred we usually may be able to influence.
Improved Welfare “Just hearing some of the feedback from those guardians who feel im mensely overwhelmed, unsure and stressed at the start, to then seeing them flourish and have wonderful little puppies who are coping well in the world, drives me to continue to be the best we can possibly be for them all. We are very excited about the future and strongly believe that by working together collaboratively, we can all help reach millions of new guardians and promote the highest level of education and support, that ultimately leads to improved welfare and hopefully re duces abandonment and euthanasia.” “We are thrilled to partner with Zigzag as part of our ongoing mission to broaden our reach among dog owners to ensure they get uptodate, sciencebased information and education to help them make the right choices for their pets’ training needs,” added PPG’s Niki Tudge. “Importantly, Zigzag’s Guid ing Principles, with their focus on positive re inforcement training methods and their understanding that dogs are sentient beings who have individual personalities and prefer ences, align with those of PPG, whereby members commit to do no harm and always hold the pet’s welfare as the top priority.
Business Tool “Zigzag will be a valuable tool for our mem bers to use in their businesses, so they can reach more puppy owners as well as provide the potential to bring them more clients. If I were newly launching my dog training busi ness today, I would fully integrate it into all my curriculums. The content is professional and easy to use, and it’s a great resource for professional dog trainers as they strive to pro vide good quality education and support tools for puppy owners. The app has untold bene fits for all parties, while also allowing for dog training professionals to inject their own cre ativity and ideas into how they implement it into their businesses.”
BARKS from the Guild/September 2021
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