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What are your routines for conditioning your dogs?

I have an almost 3 year old Australian Shepherd dog who I have been working with mainly in agility. I am looking to start his conformation career now that he is maturing more and was wondering what you all did for your show dogs. His agility training in limited due to lack of equipment, and otherwise we just started building up his (and my!) endurance for running.

How do you condition your dogs? Running, treadmill, biking, performance sports/training, frolic in the yard, etc? Also, do you have any routine as far as how you feed, water, stretch etc. before or after any strenuous work-outs with your dogs?

I not only want to prevent injury to Roster, but also want to find something that is effective in maintaining a healthy and fit conformation dog. At the moment, a treadmill is not an option for me, but if you use one, I'd still love to know your routine so that I may consider for the future as well.

While you all ponder, here is a picture of my dirty show dog.

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Last edited by wahottsdogs on 9/2/2014 9:07:09 PM

When we were conditioning for agility we played recall games up and down the stairs as well as hiking up & down steep hills to build muscle strength not just endurance (strength training makes big muscles, endurance is better for health & wellbeing)

grif,

Long walks and swimming ... LOTS of swimming

Depending on the dog:

Long walks.

Running alongside human.

Running alongside bike.

Flirtpole.

I do agility with my girls and do a mixture of things such as long offleash hikes on hills and runs through the woods, swimming, treadmill (when weather was not decent for hiking), balance ball work and lastly conditioning tricks (handstand, beg, backup, etc) . I have noticed my 6 year old with an old shoulder injury and a lower back condition does not tolerate hiking/treadmilling on a consistent basis very well so we switched to mostly swimming with her and I've noticed she is still having some challenge with her lower back in agility... realized we had dropped the balance ball and conditioning tricks when we dropped the hiking and so we've since picked those back up and the first few sessions you could tell things like the handstand were difficult for her (as controlling her rear up in the air/against the wall was difficult and I could see her shaking a bit the first session like people do when muscles get tired) but ive already seen a huge improvement with her back/rear in tricks and agility again so I need to remember not to neglect those core muscles!

I like to do the tricks/balance ball work about every other day for maybe 10-20 mins max between both my girls. I like to hike/treadmill on the other days and swimming can be a nice way to cool down after the hiking/treadmilling or can be a fun way to further condition on the trick days, just depending on my mood or schedule usually get 1 to 2 days off per week just since my schedule usually causes me to have to skip a day here or there but days off are just as important as the conditioning so factor those in for sure!
For treadmill work if your dog can briskly trot on the treadmill for 30 minutes straight then he is considered "fit", however for conditioning purposes your goal is typically to carry/backpack 10-20% of his weight while trotting those 30 minutes.

Not sure how people usually build their dogs up, but I was following a navy bootcamp running schedule for myself and my girls and it had us doing:
Week1 - walk briskly 20 minutes, 4x per week
week2 - walk briskly 30 minutes, 4x per week
(Here on out every stage is run 3x per week)
week3 - run 2 mins, then walk 3 mins. Repeat 4x
Week4 - run 3 mins, then walk 3 mins. Repeat 4x
week5 - run 4 mins, then walk 1 min. Repeat 4
week6 - run 7 mins, then walk 3 mins. Repeat 2x
week7 - run 7 mins, then walk 3 mins. Repeat 3x
week8 - run 10 mins, then walk 3 mins. Repeat 2x
week9 - run 15 mins, then walk 3 mins, then run additional 10 mins
week10 - run 20 mins
week11 - run 30 mins

Who knows, that might have been rushing the process or it might have been overkill. All I can say is from an unfit persons view it was a killer getting through each stage, however by the last run each stage/week it felt easy/do-able, then you'd move on to the next stage/week and feel like you were dying again I need to get myself and my fit younger dog back at it

Also generally a 5-10 minute warmup is good for treadmilling or strenuous activities/tricks (conditioning tricks and swimming) , I dont worry about it for offleash hikes/runs aas the dogs arent being forced to move at strenuous speeds. For agility related wrmups people suggest walking for 1-2 mins, trotting 2-3 mins, cantering/running for 5 mins, then any warmup jump work. For conditioning warmup I just briskly walk for 5 mins and throw in some stretching tricks near the end, then condition and then ideally we do stretches again to keep things loose and help prevent chiro issues, then cool down with a 5-10 minute walk. Really when you start thinking warmup, cooldown and stretches any conditioning plans can start getting much more complicated than originally thought and also suck up a lot more time however the benefits certainly are worth it if you can make the time.

Hopefully that helps a bit and gives you some general conditioning ideas any questions feel free to ask!


TCrown