Training Adventure Dogs

When you think of exercising your dog, what do you think of? Most dog owners associate exercise with an activity that involves running and expelling their dog’s energy; and they are not wrong. Physical exercise is important as all dogs need exercise, no matter their breed or age.

My goal with this blog post is to change how you view your definition of exercise when it comes to your dog. Exercise is a simple concept but it has numerous layers and in order to truly fulfill your dog’s daily exercise needs, you need to address all three aspects of balanced exercise.

There are three essential layers to balanced exercise and that is: 1. Mental Exercise 2. Physical Exercise 3. Variation in Exercises.

This concept may seem overwhelming initially but there are several forms of exercise that will provide both brain and body workouts and easily allow you to create a variety of exercises from week to week.

Why does your dog need mental and physical exercise each day? It is the same as why kids in school have classes, gym class and extra curricular activities. Dogs are intelligent creatures bred for specific jobs and they crave mental and physical challenge. As a dog mom, it brings me great joy every day when I have fulfilled my dog’s needs and they are content and happy and relaxed.

As a trainer, most owners that I have worked with, who, solely focus on physical exercise – complain about how their dog exhibits unwanted behaviors at home despite the fact that they send their dog to daycare, take their dog to the dog park, play fetch everyday or run with their dog. If you too are in this boat, you are not alone. These types of exercises are just not mentally stimulating and unwanted behaviors pop up when a dog is bored or frustrated and a dog who is bored is one that is not getting their needs met.

Additionally, when your dog routinely gets the same form of exercise, it is more likely that you are doing nothing but building up your dog’s endurance – much like creating an athlete. The more frequently your dog runs, the longer he will be able to run meaning you will keep having to increase the duration of physical exercise. As a canine fitness trainer, I love to see fit dogs, but too much of one thing is never a positive.

The best thing about balanced exercise is that creating variation in your dog’s exercises is beneficial not only to your dog but also YOU in many ways! Having simple and effective workouts to do with your dog will help prevent unwanted behaviors that result from boredom. For example, when you are restricted to the indoors due to the weather or if you are sick; or busy days when you have time constraints… having a variety of exercises that you and your dog enjoy together will greatly help in maintaining the consistency of meeting your dog’s daily exercise needs.

If you are struggling with meeting your dog’s needs or if you are simply looking for new exercises to try with your dog – here are some exercise ideas to inspire you to switch it up!

1. Canine fitness
2. Swimming (outdoors or at indoor facilities)
3. Hiking
4. Structured Walk: bring food rewards and practice loose leash walking and rewarding your dog for engaging with you. Randomly practice your dog’s tricks and/or obedience
5. Treadmill training
6. Training session
7. Search games with your dog’s favorite toy or with food
8. Food toys and puzzles for meal times (to replace your dog’s food bowl)
9. Flirt Pole
10. Tug Play
11. Structured Fetch: adding obedience between throws
12. Recall Games / Practice (with a long line)
13. Frozen food toy
14. Engagement and Confidence practice through public obstacles: bring food or toy rewards on your walk and challenge yourself to find stable obstacles to play with your dog! Park benches, picnic tables, empty playgrounds, stumps, logs, rocks, boat docks, etc.

Remember that change is always challenging but an essential element to having a happy dog is committing to meeting your dog’s daily exercise needs to provide balance in your dog’s life.

Creating daily balance in a dog’s life inspired our “Meet your dogs needs” sticker… check it out at our sticker shop!