Peak Performance Dogs

14/08/2021

14/08/2021

18/04/2021

Rear-End Awareness

Dogs do not consciously thinking about their back legs. Teaching them to be aware of their rear legs can increases the dogs performance when working and reduces the risk of injury. The dog becomes more aware of foot placement and where their body and rear-end is in relation to the environment around them.

Start by teaching your dog to place their back feet on a low target. Place the target behind your dog and gently ask them to move backwards, anytime their back legs touch the target mark and reward the behaviour. Soon the dog will start reaching to find the target with their back legs. As the dog progresses, the exercises can be slowly varied and the difficulty increased.

Other rear-end awareness exercise include cavaletties, backing up on raised surface, pivoting the rear-end, etc. These exercise improve your dogs performance by allowing them to turn tighter taking time off course runs and if there are any slips or stumbles the dogs has the awareness to correct its self without injury.

18/04/2021

Weight Shifting

One of the best but most under-appreciated exercises in canine conditioning. Weight shifting is a concept of conditioning in which body weight is moved on to a specific part of the body. This is a great exercise for strengthening and can also increase your dogs body awareness at the same time!

Dogs carry nearly 60% of their body weight on their front end. A simple exercise is having your dog put its front feet on a raised surface this increases the load on the hind end, the same concept applies when raising the hind end or the lateral or diagonal limbs. The difficulty of the exercise can be increased by raising the height of the surface, increasing the time on the equipment or changing the stability of the surface.

The first video shows an experienced dog on a low platform and a higher platform. If your dog has never been taught to target on an object start with a lower platform until your dog is comfortable and understands the behaviour. The second video shows a dog learning to target an object for the first time. You will see in the beginning she does not understand what I am asking so she offers other behaviours. Simply keep the treat in front of the dog and reward as soon as they put a paw on the surface. Take the dog off, reset and try again. As the dog beings to understand what you are asking they will being to offer the behaviour faster and more frequently.

05/04/2021

Its Canine Fitness Month! 🐶
Keep an eye out for some fitness & conditioning tips and tricks as well as some sports specific exercises to improve your dogs performance

09/01/2021

Always important to take the dogs age into account when designing a conditioning program for your young dogs.

𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐭𝐡 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 are found in young dog's bones. They are a place where bone cells grow, mature and calcify. Their main job is growing the length and width of the bone. Closed growth plate (solidifies into bone) means that the bone is done growing. It is the weakest part of the growing bone and can be damaged (fractures, stress injuries), resulting in possible growth deformities.

𝐃𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐩𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐣𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐭𝐡 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬, so doing too much of the same thing is not good with them. It's better to strive for less repetitions/time and more diversity in exercise or training. This does not refer to not exercise pups at all, they need and benefit from various activities and exercises, but there are certainly some things we as dog owners can put some limits to in order to avoid putting excessive stress on their growing structures.

𝐃𝐎𝐍'𝐓𝐬
❌ Long walks or hikes, where your pup is not able to take some rest or go at his own pace
❌ Repetitive starts and stops like running after and stopping for a ball
❌ Jumping off objects (such as from the sofa, or down the higher objects in the environment), repetitive running up and down the steep hills
❌ Repetitive tight turns around the objects, sudden stops (landing after jumps, or to pick up a toy), fast changes of direction

𝐃𝐎𝐬
✅ Instead of doing a 5km walk do two half an hour walks where your goal is not the distance but rather the different experiences your puppy can get exploring different terrains, sniffing, playing, etc.
✅ Find flat or slightly varied terrain to prevent running up/ down the hill, jumping off things
✅ Playing gentle tug, food games; nose work games such as searching for a toy or a treat in the grass
✅ Working on puppy manners and useful behaviours you will need when the puppy grows up (recall, leash walking, settling...)

𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫: healthy puppies aren't made of glass, and shouldn't be kept on exercise restriction, but we should use a common sense when it comes to encouraged activities - for example instead of exploiting their natural instincts of chasing, by having them chase a toy until they drop down dead tired, spend rather some quality time with your pups with a variety of different lower-impact activities where you let your pup dictate his pace. This will help your dog grow in a confident, capable and fit young adult. ;)

04/12/2020

07/11/2020