The Whole Tooth and nothing but the tooth!
1 hour ago
Friday, February 5, 2010
Warming up
I thought I would go through some things I learned at the DGS seminar on warming up your dog. First of all warming up your dog actually increases their performance. If you can mimic some of the activity you will be doing on course, this will help their brain too. Its gets their brain thinking and remembering. The first part of the warm up is the elimination phase. A 5-10 minute walk which also allows them to use the bathroom. After that , the next 5-15 min move to a slight jog so your dog is trotting or to a slight gallop. By this time your dogs heart rate should have increase and there is good blood flow to the muscles. Now its time to stretch your dog. You want at the very least to stretch the major muscle groups and the toes. When you are done with this ,start mimicking the activity your dog will be doing. If you are running an agility course, your dog will be doing tight turns, then practice figure eights through your legs or over the practice jump. Remember its not just for their muscles, its for their brain too. If its not your turn to run after you have finished all this, keep your dog moving.
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9 comments:
Thanks, gosh sounds like a good start to warm up for the person part of the team too-your description is very helpful
Yeah, I've really got to start getting into the habit of stretching Marge. I usually warm her up with some jogging, recalls, etc, but haven't done much stretching. Now that we're hopefully going to be competing a bunch this year, I think it's important.
Thanks so much Diana! I really appreciate you posting this. I guess Zoe and I did more of a warm-up routine than I might have thought. I always take the dogs out to give them a chance to use the bathroom before we run, then I do usually use the practice jump, but then after that, Zoe really didn't get much else other than maybe practicing a down or a sit, depending on what the table was that day and maybe a bit of a stay and release. Anyway...thanks so much again!
Thanks so much for posting this. I've been looking into different ways to warm up Layla, and the description is very insightful.
That's great information. I do some of that, but probably not nearly enough.
All good ideas! Thanks for sharing them!
Never even thought about warming her up. Though we usually do a bit of heeling before class, I think it gets her to start focusing on me and to realize we're "working" now rather than just goofing off and sniffing everything in sight.
Good ideas!
Great information, thanks for sharing! I definitely need to do more of that with Riley- especially now that she's not a young pup anymore and is having lameness issues :( I really wish that they would teach us more about that in our beginning agility classes, because it is such an important part of agility (especially in the winter!). A lot of us don't know much at all about it- I would love to take a class or seminar on it!
Thanks for sharing the info, Diana. This helps a lot as I'm signing Eva up for a puppy class in March.
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