카나인 피트니스: 모든 반려견에게 그것이 필요한 이유와 시작하기 좋은 쉬운 운동 3가지 #87

she has zero limitations on what she does. She participates in every event that all my other dogs do. The third big reason why this is so important, because dog fitness is just dog training. It's spending some time with your dog, building up a behavior using reinforcement. So the dog is getting fit. But the bonus of this is you're building your relationship and that's going to impact other behaviors like him listening when you ask. So it's just an extra bonus of keeping your dog in shape. Now, it really doesn't take that long at all. If you invest five to 15 minutes, two to three days a week, that is a phenomenal fitness program. But if you do one session of just a couple minutes, it's a start. And I'm going to share with you how you can get started here today. Now you might be saying, oh, Susan, I take my dog for long walks and we hike on weekends. Isn't that enough? There's a principle in fitness called adaptation. And if you work the same exercises all the time, your body adapts. They don't improve. And if you're starting with a dog who maybe is a little unbalanced in one leg versus the other to begin with, you are actually contributing to that imbalance, which down the road leaves a dog vulnerable for an injury. And with our dogs, things like cruciates or shoulder problems are common because unfit dogs chasing after a bouncing ball could lead to exerting their body in a way that the body isn't prepared for. And those kinds of surgeries can cost three to $10,000 and months and months of rehab. So keeping your dog fit, using a fitness program is a way to help prevent that from happening. Of course, there's no guarantees, but wouldn't it be great if we all did the best we could to never have that happen to our dogs? You know, I started doing fitness with my dogs years ago when I started doing sports, but back then there was no direction. So I used some of the exercises I used as an athlete myself, but today there are so many experts that do nothing but canine fitness. So I defer to them. So my puppy, this has been working with Carolyn McIntyre, who actually is a physical therapist. She has a master's degree in physical therapy, has her own human physical therapy clinic, but then took a course in working with dogs. And since then has grown a great reputation, has traveled with the Canadian team, has designed fitness programs for a Canadian team. And she keeps things super simple. I'll share with you what that looks like later on today. What does fitness look like? The first consideration

is your dog's weight. So many people are walking around with an overweight dog and a lot of you don't actually realize it because you think, oh, he looks okay. Most dogs are overweight. Most people think my dogs are underweight. Going to a veterinarian who has worked with canine athletes is a great place to get an evaluation. Now I, every year take my dogs to Dr. Sherman and Deb Knap down in Maryland. Of course, during the pandemic, we haven't gone there, but I go there every year to get a fitness evaluation. Dr. Knaps, they see athletes all the time, but with so many dogs playing dog sports, your local veterinarian will probably have a really good idea of how fit your dog is. The second thing is soundness. Soundness is different than fitness. Does the dog have a slight limp or is there imbalance? Like one of their hind thighs is a lot thicker than the other one. That imbalance shows where that fitness should be focused on. And the third consideration is age appropriate exercises. So we could be doing fitness with our puppies. We could do it with our middle-aged dogs. We could do it with our geriatric dogs, but the exercises need to be tampered to be age appropriate. You might've surfed the internet and found a couple exercises and you're working on your dog's fitness at home. But what if you did only bicep curls in the gym every day? You would be developing an imbalance in your arms and that imbalance leaves your body open for an injury. That's why it's great that you're doing something, that you're attempting something, but it's really important that it be structured. So the four areas that I focus on when I'm doing fitness with my dog, number one is strength. And that's strength of the limbs, front limbs, back limbs, strength of the core, strength of the dog's top line, strength of their neck. It's flexibility in all those areas. It's balance. It's how able will the dog adapt when they're put on unstable surfaces. And it's proprioception. How aware is the dog of where to put their feet at any time? Those four areas, considering all the areas of a dog's body is what makes a fitness program. Now today, there's all kinds of fancy fitness equipment you could get for your dog. And trust me, I probably have every single one of them. And I use almost every single one of them. Many of these are inflated. Inflated discs, inflated donuts, inflated balls. And that's the sexy side of dog fitness. But when you're working with an unstable surface, you're actually adding your dog's stabilizer muscles, which are little tiny

muscles into that fitness equation, which is great when it's appropriate, but we need to build up our dog's main muscles, those big muscles before we start focusing on adding the stabilizer muscles to that. So lucky for you guys, it's super easy to get started with your dog's fitness because we want to work on a stable surface. Something like your living room floor. If you're going to use equipment, you just want to use a target for your dog's feet. So that could be something like a blue foam cushion. That would be the first step I would use for an unstable surface. Or just a square piece of wood, a two by four with a yoga mat covering it. Anytime you're using a target, you want it to be a non-slip surface. So if you go to my YouTube video called Perchwork, Pivots and Spins, it's a great way to get started on how to get your dog to target their feet on a piece of equipment. But guess what? Fitness starts without equipment. So this is what you can do today to get started. You're going to ask your dog to sit, take a video of this, and now you're going to be really critical. Does the dog have their front feet level with each other when they sit naturally? Do they have one foot out in front? Are their back feet splayed outside of their body, which is pushing their thighs in towards their core? Or do they have really tight adductors so they can get their back feet right under their body? A simple sit, work on building duration. Can that dog hold a sit for 10 seconds, 30 seconds? Can they, while they're in their sit, look over their one shoulder or the other? A simple sit is a great strength building exercise. Sit down and stand. Three easy behaviors. But what you can do to make it more complex for fitness is get your dog to target their front feet on one of your little pieces of equipment and then ask them to stand or sit or down without those front feet coming off. That engages a whole different group of muscles. Now you can do the opposite. Get them to target their back feet onto that little piece of equipment and do a sit, a down and a stand without them moving those back feet. It's things like that that is a great and easy way to start. But if you're saying, oh, Susan, you know, you said you have a fitness coach and I don't know if I feel comfortable jumping into this all on my own. Well, I thought of that. So I asked this as fitness coach, Carolyn, I said, you have a great fitness program. The one that I'm a member of. It's called From the Ground Up. I'd like to offer that to my podcast listeners. And she said, well, Susan,

it's not open for registration now. And I said, you know, here's the thing about not. It could be easily turned into it is open for registration now, right? Okay. So I convinced her of that. And then I said, my podcast listeners are super nice people, Carolyn. How about if we offered them a discount? And she said, Susan, I've never offered a discount. And I said, what if I offered a discount? What if I took it on myself to do that? So what we're doing is I'm going to give you the link to Carolyn's program From the Ground Up. It covers not just sit down stand, but it covers a whole progression of amazing fitness exercises that you could do with your dog. And it doesn't matter if you ever want to do a dog sport. It doesn't matter if you have a puppy or an adult dog. It doesn't matter if you have a dog you've been doing fitness with, but you may not have been going about it the right way. It will work for all dogs. And I'll put the link to that course from the ground up in the show notes or in the description of the video here on YouTube. And when you register, put in the discount code Susan20. You get yourself a discount just because you're a podcast listener. Hey, if you love fitness and you're watching this on YouTube and you're interested in doing more with your dog, do me a favor, hit that like button and then jump over to Carolyn's website and check out From the Ground Up. That's it for today. I'll see you next time on Shaped by Dog.