*This is not a sponsored post, and all opinions expressed are my own. I found this graphic from PuppySpot, and I loved the information they had to share.*
I’ve said time and time again, one of my favorite things about having a pup is getting to take her places and do things with her.
She even supports me and comes to my races….with limited success. She goes CRAZY when I run away from her! And then again when she sees me come racing in.
As you may have gleaned from previous posts, Chloe is a bit of a difficult dog. I say that lovingly, of course. She can be anxious, needy, and bored when she doesn’t get enough exercise. As a high energy breed, she needs to travel at least 3 miles a day or she is just wild. Because I love fitness, ideally we would get our exercise in together, since we both need it!
Our morning walks together quickly became some of my favorite parts of the week.
The difficulty? For such a high energy dog, she sure is picky about how she exercises. She likes her walks, but she gets bored easily. If I take her to the same trail over and over, she doesn’t want to go, starts dragging, and sometimes refuses to move.
She literally stops walking right in the middle of the road.
When PuppySpot reached out to me with some “Fido Fitness” workout ideas, I jumped at the chance to share, because as I said, my difficult pup needs variety and intrigue in her exercise routine, and yours might as well!
Check it out:
We all know many people are overweight, but did you know many dogs are as well? In my experience, I’ve seen many animals that are overweight. Exercise is a great way to reduce the likelihood of this. So why not do it together?
Unfortunately, my silly dog hates fetch. However, we have done “doga” together before. Protip: a yoga mat on the floor is a dog magnet.
While Chloe hasn’t gone swimming in anything too deep, she does love fountain hopping. She runs around like crazy, and it’s a great way for her to cool off during a hot walk.
Another idea I really love, and can’t wait to try with Chloe (when I see her next. she didn’t come to vet school with me :'( ) is the interval running. I love this idea because she is far too easily distracted to run for very much distance, but I definitely think I could get her sprinting for a few seconds! Anytime I’ve run with Aussies, they seem to want to go full speed, anyways!
I also do want to talk about PuppySpot for a moment. PuppySpot is a network of selected breeders, and helps people find puppies to adopt. I’m not going to go into the “shelter vs bred” adoption debate; obviously there are a lot of dogs in shelters that need homes, and if you adopt a shelter pet, that’s great! Some people want a specific breed for one reason or another, and that’s great too! I want to highlight one particular aspect of PuppySpot: they have certain standards for their breeders, including health and humane standards. I love Chloe, but when we got her she was chock full of parasites, many of which were communicable to humans. When we let our local breeder know that she had tested positive for giardia, the breeder brushed it off. I wish we had had some sort of standard when we were adopting her, because a lot of her behavior problems as a puppy seemed to be linked to her parasites and constant medications. If you want to check out adorable puppies to work out with, check our their puppy page!
In summary: I’m guessing that most people who read my blog love fitness; don’t forget to include those pups!