Conditioning

[Peanutsmommy]

Just wondering what does everyone do to condition their dogs for the dock?

Peanut is in awesome shape but i would like to learn more about what we can do to improve his dock jumping. we do not have access to a pool.

we do a lot of hand walking and wind sprints (with fetch) mainly but to burn off his excess energy i am willing to learn new things to do with him.

thanks :)

[mightyjack team]

Hiking.

I also do agility with my pups and one of the best things to condition dogs is off leash hiking for an hour + a day. Work up to that of course. Being off leash the dogs can push themselves at their own rate, (most aren't lazy like us humans can be). That's a great base for training.

Also balance training on a yoga ball (they sell special dog balls too) for core training has been very popular.

:)

[Sassy Girl]

I do some core body work at home and lots of cross training in other sports and activities. Lots of group off leash walks and swimming. In addition to excercise, I also do warm up/cool downs on my dogs that includes stretching.

[Spit]

Flyball has seemed to be the biggest help for most of my dogs as well as long trail runs ( 10 plus miles). We also do some quad building exercises.

[Peanutsmommy]

thanks for all the replies. i find them helpful :)

we have started a lot of running. we also do stretching and massage

Spit- if you don't mind what do you mean by quad exercises? i would really like to include some of that for Peanut

[Kruml's Rudy]

All great advice! We were in a really suburban area but we had this park with a very steep hill. We would take our dogs out there with a huckit and make them run the hill.

[Spit]

"Quad" exercises for dogs would be going through tunnels, crawling, sit, down, up etc....


here is a great article....
http://www.cleanrun.com/images/features/StrengtheningExercisesForAgility2.pdf


Quads are a very important thing to strengthen. They support the knee which is a very important thing to support.

[Peanutsmommy]

thanks for the article and the info spit. my boy has huge defined quads now but i definately want to learn to how he can better utilize them and have better performances. i really appreciate the info :)