PetMassage Paw Prints

“Creating and Marketing Your Animal Massage Business”, by Jonathan Rudinger, has been rewritten, updated and will soon be available beautifully printed with perfect binding. Creating & Marketing Your Animal Massage Business will put you in the vanguard of the new animal health care vocation spreading around the world… that is, providing the service of holistic care for animals through the medium of massage.

Every culture since the dawn of time has developed and used some form of massage for purposes both therapeutic and pleasurable… for humans. Massage helps animals, too.

Dogs, cats, horses, ferrets, birds and reptiles all benefit from enhanced circulation, flexibility and body awareness. With massage, all animals can enjoy greater progress over-coming and correcting current physical issues. They can also connect with past issues that have resulted in behaviors associated with fear, abuse, and grieving.

Pet guardians are demanding more holistic forms of wellness care for their pets. Massage, as the cornerstone of hands-on holistic care, helps them maintain pet wellness, recover from traumas, and transition more easily from this life plane to the next… More and more, veterinarians see the value of massage and incorporate qualified animal massage practitioners in their pre- and post surgical rehabilitation programs.

In this book, Jonathan Rudinger, the founder of The PetMassage™ Training & Research Institute, expands upon the marketing course taught in the PetMassage™ workshops. This how-to-market book is unlike any other you’ve seen. It synthesizes concepts of T’ai Ch’i, Feng Shui, Ancient Folk Wisdom; current business strategies and PetMassage™ theory to create a useful and supportive course in developing the first stages of your animal massage business.

This book will become your personal cheerleader in your business creation.

These strokes are used to help break down connective tissue or adhesions, found within muscles, tendons and ligaments due to a direct injury accompanied by inflammation, like tendonitis. The therapist would use small circular motions making certain not to evoke an inflammatory response. Frictions are performed when tissue is in a relaxed neutral position and the thumb or fingers are used to compress the tissue over the [lesion] site. The pressure is increased and small back and forth movements are applied perpendicularly in the direction of the tissue fiber. No oil or lotion is used. (Source: Massage therapy terms and definitions from the ABMP website)

Application: friction is a way of increasing heat beneath the surface within the soft tissues. Press your fingers or palm gently yet firmly on the coat, over an adhesion and rub in tiny circles or across the muscle. The key is to not brush your hands across the coat. Keep solid contact and move the skin, fat, and fascia over the underlying tissues.

You know, of course, that Jonathan Rudinger, the president and director of PetMassage is also the founder and president of the IAAMB, International Association of Animal Massage and Bodywork. In the IAAMB arena, we have a goal of creating an active database/library of research papers. Please be not frightened or intimidated by the idea of doing a research project. We are not looking for PhD level dissertations. If you would like to do a small study, we’ll help you. It will be fun, easy and rewarding… three good things. We simply want to begin the process of documenting the effects and opportunities of animal massage and bodywork. Some of the things we may be believing and teaching may have their sources in myth, rather than science. We want to document these, as well. For example, what is the truth about massaging the ankles of pregnant people and animals? Your papers will be peer reviewed and discussed. Then, we can publish them in the IAAMB Journal, a publication that will come into existence when we have content for it. We are not quite there. Yet.

As a professional group, we are serious about growing and developing our profession, our credibility, and our market. So, we need this step. If you are an IAAMB member, you will soon be able to go on the IAAMB.org site to download a copy of a project that we created, with the help and guidance of the Touch Research Institute, led by Dr. Tiffany Field and her excellent team of researchers. The TRI is interested solely in doing research on the effects of touch and massage with humans. They wish us well on our ambitious goals of documenting the effects of touch and massage with animals. Please use my original PetMassage study as a template for your own. If you are not yet a member, join us today and begin contributing to our greater knowledge base.

It’s time to act on your dream: Learn PetMassage for Dogs.

Change your career path. Change your life path. Learn techniques that you will combine with the way you already connect with animals. With PetMassage you’ll astound and amaze all the dogs you touch. Do it. Now’s the time for this all important continuing vocational — personal development education. Call now to reserve your space in our workshops: 7-day Foundation, 7-day Advanced and 5-day PetMassage WaterWork.

Need more information? You have but to ask and we’ll snail mail your PetMassage Pet-a-log and Travel Information brochure, with all the information you’ll need to attend a workshop. Call us at 800-799-1001 or email .

Dogs Kids PetMassage Course

In my presentations in Seattle, at the IAAMB conference and at the H. H. Backer Pet Industry Christmas Show in Chicago, the PetMassage for Kids program attracted a huge amount of interest…especially from elementary school educators.

Just why is this course so important? Children learn the skills of awareness, which will keep them safe as they see how an animal is responding to them. They learn compassion, taking them out of themselves as the center of the universe. They learn the power and healing effects of intentional touch. This socially appropriate touch honors the space, the body, and the emotional states of their dogs.

Kids learn the basic handling, touching, holding, stroking, and other PetMassage techniques with their stuffed dogs. Confidence in their new abilities grows while important psycho-social skills develop. The PetMassage for Kids™ program teaches children the basic hands-on skills of canine massage and principles of dog handling safety. This course will reduce the incidence of dog bites in the U.S.

The book, DVD and audio CD, individually or as a three-part set is the perfect gift for any child who loves dogs. The Dogs Kids PetMassage book by itself, at only $16.95 is at a great price point. All three are only $45, plus we’ll include the official PetMassage patch, for FREE!

Order the entire PetMassage for Kids™ program. It includes the PetMassage:A Kids Guide to Massaging Dogs DVD, the book, Dogs Kids PetMassage, and the audio CD and the curricula. PetMassage for Kids™ Curricula: Five Day: 3 hours per day and/or Ten week: one hour per week are great programs for after school, summer school, home school, camp, and scouts. One for $50, or purchase both for $75. Call 800-779-1001.Order online www.petmassage.com

We’ll even include a free official PetMassage patch so the kids can identify you as the expert. The package including one curriculum, and either the five day course or the ten week course, is only $95. If you would like both the curricula, the price, including the DVD, book and CD is only $120.

PetMassage is delighted to host its first One-day, Animal Reiki workshop.

The course will be taught by Jennifer Ortman (executive director) of the Reiki Center, Columbus, OH. Sunday November 8th from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Please register with the Reiki Center by October 30, 2009 phone 614.486.8323, email info@thereikicenter.net.

When Jonathan and Anastasia Rudinger were hosting their booth at the Backer show, several people asked about Reiki and energy work. Here is a short definition taken from a newsletter by Nationally Certified Reiki Master Instructor, Debbie Glasgow RN, CRMI. toledotlc@yahoo.com.

What is Reiki?

What is REIKI?

Reiki a type of hands on holistic healing therapy which can provide the client with much comfort, relaxation and healing in the most natural setting. Reiki can be very transforming because it helps balance and energize your energy system. “Chi” is universal life force energy which we all have. It gives us life. Chi flows through the body through pathways called meridians, chakras, nadis and the energy field around the physical body called your “aura.”

Your physical and emotional health and well being is directly related to the free flowing Chi energy in your energy system. Reiki uses universal life energy flow to assist in healing and removal of any emotional or energetic blockages you may have. These blockages are what causes symptoms you may have. Symptoms can be anything from pain , depression relationship problems, poor health – the list is endless. Reiki is also great because it incorporates concepts of positive thinking and living in your life according to the universal laws of attraction.

Humane Society and PetMassage

Since 1997 each PetMassage workshop class has spent a half day at the ASPCA, Maumee Ohio, honing the hands-on skills with the willing canines in residence. The students get to experience dogs outside of the “cloistered” security of the PetMassage school, getting a feel for the “real world.”

The dogs love it too.

They get to experience a high quality full body massage in an environment of respect, honor and compassion. Who could ask for more than that? The staff at the Humane Society expressed their appreciation for our twelve years of consistent volunteering and shared with the class that PetMassage helps make their dogs more adoptable!

One of the several “aha” moments that I had at the IAAMB conference was during a discussion we had about working with aggressive dogs. At one time or another we all experience the feeling of vulnerability and risk while in the presence of dogs who might injure us.

I wrote three cryptic notes in my notebook: 1-stay grounded, 2-stay aware of the dynamics between you and the dog (so either of your emotions don’t escalate the drama, from what is really happening to the terrible things that could be happening) and 3-maintain a high vibration.

These are only possible when, as Dr. Deepak Chopra describes, we become our own seers. When we observe our actions and life conditions we have less chance of being controlled by them.

At the conclusion of the 6th Annual IAAMB Educational Conference in Seattle in September, Jonathan and Anastasia met with Cindy Horsfal, founder of the ACWT in Sequim (pronounced squim) WA, to officially accept leadership of the association membership and to sign the documents to welcome ACWT members into the IAAMB.

As Jonathan, wearing the hat of the president of the International Assn of Animal Massage and Bodywork, I encourage everyone who practices animal massage and bodywork, wet or dry, to join this organization. There is strength in numbers. There is support in numbers. There is communication and growth and development in numbers. For more info: www.iaamb.org, email: info@iaamb.org, phone: 800-903-9350

It’s time to act on your dream: Learn PetMassage for Dogs.

Change your career path. Learn techniques that you can combine with the way you already connect with animals. With PetMassage you’ll astound and amaze all the dogs you touch. Do it. Now’s the time for this all important continuing vocational — personal development education. Call now to reserve your space in our workshops, 7-day Foundation, 7-day Advanced and 5-day PetMassage WaterWork.

There are still three workshops this year: Advanced (for graduates of the Foundation workshop) October 18-24, Foundation November 1-7, and PetMassage WaterWork November 16-20. Need more information? You have but to ask and we’ll snail mail your PetMassage Pet-a-log and Travel Information brochure, with all the information you’ll need, to you. Call us at 800-799-1001 or email info@petmassage.com.