• Nadine Whittal, local dog trainer writes:

Did you know that an animal’s body has much the same weaknesses as ours? For example, when they exercise, they can strain muscles, break bones, sprain joints and get stiff just like we do. Most people take for granted that their dogs can do wonderful things like play rough, jump up and down, and do obedience work.

We tend to forget that our dogs’ bodies also feel pain when overworked – much in the same way we do. And, much the same as humans, a dog’s body needs to be conditioned to do work so that we can minimise the chances of them getting injured.

So how do we go about doing this? Firstly, training your dog to follow commands allows you to eventually “trick train” exercises that condition their body.

The exercises are not all that different than those we do when practising Pilates or yoga. We isolate the muscle group that we want to work on and then train exercises that work that specific muscle.

Many dogs develop difficulties that we are not even aware of because we aren’t looking for them. Most obedience handlers who only do heel work on the left don’t realise that they are weakening their dog’s right-hand side. Consistently turning their head to the left to look up at us puts strain on their left-hand side.

Doing yoga or body awareness exercises with your dogs helps to minimise the issues that things like heelwork, rough play and dog jumping can create in a dog. Further, it is an awesome way to develop your relationship with your dog. By working in close proximity to your dog, constantly rewarding your dog and learning how to communicate effectively with it, your relationship only grows stronger.

Consider this the next time you see your dog running around like a nut: are we doing everything we can to ensure that he can play like this without pain?