Chris Zink seminar Day 2

Conditioning: Your conditioning program should have 4 parts.

skill training

strenght training

proproception training

Endurance training

Here are some indoor exercises you can do with your dog. Beg, wave, beg & wave, tug, spin roll over, catch , crawl and backup. Every dog should learn to sit-up (beg). Even corgi's. It is the best core muscle exercises you can do with your dog. She feels that if you teach your dog to beg-stand-beg. You can add 2 years on to your dogs life. The beg and stand should be held for 10 seconds each and the stand should have as little movement as possible. Also you should repeat the exercise three times. The indoor exercises can have variety added to them, like if your dog can roll over then have him do it on an incline. ( see how Miley holds her legs out in front in a beg, but Guiness doesn't. She said that Miley just doesn't understand the exercise well and when she does she will start pulling her legs in)

She doesn't like treadmills to exercise a dog. She feels that the dog will not extend their reach when walking on the treadmill. Also she feels that the dog uses different muscles when walking on a treadmill then on land. The dog is not reaching and pulling himself because its the band that is moving under him that is causing the movement. Does that make sense? I'm not sure I'm explaining it right. The only dogs that need a lot of endurance training are mushing dogs and herding dogs. Endurance training is at least 10 min. of continuous swimming or 20 min. of trotting.

Every dog should have a break from training. At least one month a year your dog should just be a dog. No training and only moderate exercise. That doesn't mean one month obedience training but not agility training. A month of no training at all.

Most harness are restrictive. She showed pictures of different harness she doesn't like. One was the "sensible harness". Of course that's the harness Miley had on. She feels it is the worst harness out there. It restricts the shoulders. No harness should touch or impede the shoulders. The front should go more around the neck and keep shoulders free.

Warm-up: All dogs should warm up because it improves performance and helps prevent injuries. First you should walk, trot and run you dog to warm them up. Then do stretching that mimics what will happen in the ring. She doesn't think you should pull on your dog to stretch them. Like when you see people extending their dogs legs out behind them. Because you wont know when its to far. Most likely your dog wont tell you. The only stretching she recommends is having your dog between your legs, have a treat in your hand and have them follow the treat. Move the treat along the side of their body starting at the shoulders then to the hip, keep it there 10 seconds then move it down to the rear toe and hold for 10 seconds. Make sure you do both sides. Next stretch, have the dog standing sideways in front of you. You kneel down. Holding your dogs butt, put a treat in front of his nose and bring it down to the ground and in toward him a little.He will be some what in a bow. This stretches the spine one way. Then start in the same position and this time hold the dog under his chest and bring the treat down and in. This will stretch the spine the other way. ( Hope that makes sense) Doing the figures 8's also over the practice jump is good stretching.

Dogs don't need electrolytes replaced at a trial like people do. Dogs don't sweat , so they don't loose electrolytes.

Next we watched videos of dogs doing agility. We watched dogs weaving that probably had an injury. Some times they double footed one side, but single stride the other. Some dogs stayed in the same lead all the way through the poles when they should be switching leads. I cant remember every thing we saw. But it was very interesting. She recommend you video tape you dog when they are healthy so you can see when things start to change. We watched dogs jump that had problems. She was just video taping dogs a trials and these people didn't know their dogs were having problems. One dog studderd stepped. But did the weaves well. She thought he might have a visual problem. One dog jumped very close the the jump and "slammed" his rear down. ( I couldn't see the slamming, I don't have a very good eye for these things). She said he was probably doing this because he was trying to get the weight off his front end. I cant remember what the other dog did. You definitely had to have an eye for some of there things. We watched dogs doing the A-frame. She feels the slats cause a lot of problems. She feels that dogs jump the yellow because they are trying to get off as soon as possible to avoid the slats. On her equipment at home she has no slats in the yellow zone. In the video the 2O/2O defiantly looked harder on your dog. The dogs shoulders slamming looked painful. She feels dogs should do a running contact on the a-frame. We also watched teeters and tires. Some of it looked so painful to the dog. Most dogs kept running. I told her she needed to do seminars just on agility obstacle performance. So that we could learn what to look for in our dogs performance that may clue us in that they are injured. She said she has thought about it. Its hard to get video of the dogs. Then if you have to tell someone there dogs looks injured they sometimes get offended. The video she showed us was just from random trials. We also watched dogs going up the dogwalk. It was very interesting to see that most of the dogs were having problems controlling their rear end. You probably wouldn't have noticed unless you saw it in slow motion. Only one dog went up the dogwalk straight. Many of the dogs back legs hit one side then the other and then straighten out. She recommends that you video tape your dogs back end going up the dogwalk to see what they are doing.

This is getting long so I will cont. it later.