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What is canine conditioning and fitness?In the last 15 years, Veterinary Sports Medicine has come a long way. As with human athletes, we now recognise the importance and benefits of the targeted strength, fitness, endurance and coordination exercises we can do with our canine athletes to help them compete at their best in their chosen sports and performance dog owners, like ourselves, often have conditioning programs developed by vets, physios and myofunctional therapists specifically for the sports we compete in with our dogs to ensure we are targeting and strengthening the right muscle groups for our chosen sports. Handlers across most active sports now do some level of fitness and conditioning work with their dogs to help them keep in top condition for their chosen sport and to help prevent injury.
A lot of the exercises are simple muscle strengthening exercises - things that will have the dog engage their core, or their leg muscles etc, and which use their body weight to create resistance, which in turn strengthens the muscles - but other exercises might include the dog learning to move their limbs independently of one another to help the dog learn proprioception (recognising where their body is in space) so they become more stable on their feet and can balance more easily, or simple fitness and stamina exercises so they can perform at their best for longer. In time, this idea of actively doing strengthening and conditioning work with your dog has spread to pet parents, whose dogs may not compete in sports but who still need to be fit and active to live a healthy life, and especially for those pet dogs who may have suffered an injury. In 2019, Do More With Your Dog began offering a stream of titles to encourage more pet parents to work on their dog's flexibility, balance, stamina, coordination and strength - this stream of titles is known as Canine Conditioning and Fitness, or CCF and can be completed online through a Do More With Your Dog CCF Spark Team. We recommend the Langel Tails Canine Conditioning and Fitness and Woofermutt K9 Fitness Fun facebook spark groups. |
Quick Facts
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Training level required: ☆☆ (moderate)
Training type: at home/online course Equipment cost: $ (inexpensive) |
Overseeing body: Do More With Your Dog
Minimum age for competition: None! Breed restrictions: None! Open to all breeds |
What equipment do I need?Conditioning is very accessible for all dogs as exercises can be done with as much or as little equipment as you have and owners can spend as much or as little as they can afford. While many people (ourselves included) have spent thousands of dollars on conditioning equipment that makes the exercises harder on the dog and therefore, more effective, there is a lot to be said for DIY gear, and many people with very fit, well conditioned dogs have never purchased conditioning equipment specifically designed for dogs. The benefits of free running, swimming and simple conditioning exercises like sit to stands should never be underestimated and all the equipment in the world can't make up for poor form or bad training if the dog isn't doing the exercise correctly.
Most dog specific gear - fitpaws peanuts and fitbones for example - are designed to de-stabilise the dog's core while they are performing the exercise so their muscles have to work harder to keep their body in balance. There are some shortcomings to working out exclusively on unstable equipment like this however and this is where a lot of DIY gear shines, as most home made pieces of equipment are stable surfaces (small platforms, bricks, plants, DIY cavalettis, PVC ladders etc) which are used to perform dynamic exercises. Other than the above, you will need some delicious treats for your dog, something to film your conditioning exercises with (video phones work great!) and some software to edit the videos together with. |
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Age appropriate exercise
While many Canine Conditioning and Fitness exercises are able to be taught to dogs of all ages, proceed with caution for young puppies. We recommend consulting with a vet or physical therapist before starting training to make sure that the exercises you want to do with your puppy are age appropriate or, if possible, have them create a conditioning program for your puppy with your specific goals in mind. We do not recommend repetitive or high impact exercises (like jumping) for puppies below 18 months of age, and recommend allowing your puppy to free run to build stamina, rather than taking it for long, leashed walks on footpaths. Taking care of your puppy's body as it is growing is important and can help set them up for a long career in dog sports.
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How much training is needed?This depends on the level of fitness and conditioning your dog already has. Some dogs are naturally much more fit than others, and some breeds and dogs are simply naturally more athletic than others.
We recommend having your vet or other professional exercise therapist assess the condition of your dog before you begin, to find any areas that may need improvement, and then focusing on these areas first. If your dog is fit and healthy, you should have very few problems taking them through to the championship level relatively quickly, though we do advise looking carefully at the exercise and looking at your dog's form while they do it to ensure that you are doing it correctly. As with human exercises 5 correctly performed reps are much more beneficial (and safer!) and 100 incorrectly performed reps. We also recommend checking the surface that you are asking them to perform the exercise on to ensure that it isn't slippery for the dog if you are doing control exercises, or that it isn't too hard if you're doing high impact exercises like jumping (eg. jumping them on the grass rather than on concrete which does more damage than good). |
Titles
Do More With Your Dog offers five titles in Canine Conditioning and Fitness. They are achieved by submitting a video of your dog completing each of the exercises described in the requirements to a CCF Instructor, usually through one of the DMWYD Spark Groups and once they have approved the title, applying for the title on the DMYWD website.
The titles, in order are:
The titles, in order are:
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The first level of competition
CCF 1The first level of CCF is relatively simple and should be quite easy for any dog to learn. Your CCF Instructor will work with you if you don't have the equipment needed to complete an exercise eg. we used a lure coursing run to show endurance rather than having Slinky and Squiggle run on a treadmill. This level includes some optional exercises that aren't required if the dog isn't comfortable having its limbs manipulated in that way.
Optional Exercises:
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