At K9 Fitness Works, we know how important it is to keep your dog healthy and active. We’ve compiled a list of the Top 10 Dog Fitness Questions to help guide you in maintaining your dog’s physical health, mobility, and overall well-being. Whether your dog is recovering from an injury, building strength, or improving body awareness, we’ve got you covered with answers from our expert trainers and therapists.
Over the next 10 weeks, we will release one detailed answer to each of the Top 10 Dog Fitness Questions on a weekly basis. Each post will include expert insights, helpful tips, and a video tutorial to guide you in maintaining and improving your dog’s fitness. Be sure to check back each week for new updates!
1. How can I keep my dog engaged and motivated when we’re both feeling unmotivated and not getting enough exercise?
Transcript from the video:
Okay, start with the question. What motivates your dog? Are they treat, toy, activity motivated? Motivated more outside or inside? What motivates your dog? The best way to find that out is to play with them and try different things.
My pup is highly treat motivated. I can train her with just about any treat. If there’s distractions around, I need more of a high value treat. I’ve tried different high value treats and learned goats milk cheese curds are amazing. They don’t get messy in your hands and are great for your dog’s Gut. Also, high value sausage works well for her. Like I said, any treat for her. But if I want to, if I’m training something really complicated, then I go for the really high value treat or toys. Are they toy motivated? Makoa is also toy motivated, but treats Trump toys. So great to know. And I’ve been working more on training her on having a toy that she likes when we do nose work, only having that toy when she does nose work. It’s something that she just really wants and it’s a lot of fun.
Learning and playing with your dogs to see what motivates them. She loves being outside. She loves playing ball outside. She doesn’t so much like exercising outside. Finding what motivates them by how much joy they have for doing it, how much drive, what makes them happy? Is their tail wagging? Are their ears up? Are they engaged? That’s how you find out what motivates them.
The next question is, what motivates you? I mean, is this fun for you? Is taking your dog out and playing ball fun? Is doing exercise with your dog fun? You want it to be fun for you as much as it is for your dog, because this is a bonding experience for the two of you. What motivates you to play with your dog? If you like to go out and hike and your dog likes to go out and hike and that motivates you, great. Go do that.
It’s really simple and it comes down to those questions. What motivates your dog and what motivates you? And it’s about playing and having fun and thinking outside of the box.
When you start to get bored, then think even bigger outside of the box. Okay, we’re bored with hiking. Well, what else can we do outside? What’s the next level? Parkour. Parkour is basically agility on environmental equipment, you know? Looking at different things in your environment that you guys can do. Take a class so you can learn new things that you can do out there. Just be creative, think outside the box. Play with your dog, figure out what motivates them, and then what excites you and motivates you when you play with your dog. Okay? And let me know what you find, because I would love to hear back from you.
