Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Get on the Ball, great for rainy days!
The Get on the Ball program is such a great winter activity and great for all the rainy days we have been having as well. Stewie gets excited when I get the ball out, and can't wait to start! It is good for his muscles/core strength, and really helps tire him out.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Run thrus today
The outdoor run thrus were inside because it was too cold. Crazy, it was in the 40's. Anyway we stayed and got in 4 runs, 2 on two different standard courses. It was tight inside, and the courses were USDAA like, but it was still fun. We worked on our leadouts, contacts, and weaves. We also got reacquainted with the teeter and the tire which we don't see much anymore. All in all a fun two hours.
Bo-Gee Agility Run thurs today
Stewie and I are heading to outdoor run-thrus at Boo-Gee in Raymond this afternoon. Should be fun!
Friday, March 26, 2010
Fun with directionals
Stewie and I had a good practice with our 4 hoops and a couple of jumps. We practiced our directionals and turns! It is great to be practicing outside again.
I am also practicing more lateral distance in my leadouts.
I am also practicing more lateral distance in my leadouts.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Ball work
Stewie has been keeping up with his ball work at least three times a week. He loves the ball, he gets attention and treat, and I have definitely noticed more his hind legs are more muscular then they were before we started in January. His doggie "abs" are stronger too. It is wonderful excercise and it does tire him out now that we do the Advanced plan.
Check it out here: Clean Run
Check it out here: Clean Run
Walk at Conservation Land
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Great Practice Today
Great practice today at the barn, and pretty warm there too! We worked on discriminations today, and Stewie did great, as long as I held up my end! Always so much harder to train yourself. I am working on leading out with more lateral distance also. It was great to get out and do a full course, and after some ball work later in the day, Stewie is ready to sleep for the rest of the night.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Interesting article on dog fitness
Thoughts on injury prevention in agility dogs
by Hannah Banks
Are more dogs getting injured now that jump heights are lowered? It seems far too often now that I hear of another dog that is injured. I don’t remember so many dogs getting injured five years ago, are there just more dogs doing agility now, or is there a reason why so many are getting injured? Some people have asked my for some thoughts on injury prevention, so here they are!
1. Your dog should be fit before it starts doing agility. Do not make an overweight dog do agility!
2. Every dog has an injury threshold. Agility is a high impact sport; do too much and something will eventually give way. Just how much ‘too much’ is will vary from dog to dog. Of course, our goal is to avoid injury. In human sports, top trainers warn people in training to beware the 'terrible toos' - doing too much, too soon, too fast. Every research paper and every expert agrees that this is the number one cause of sports injuries. The body needs time to adapt from training changes and jumps in duration or intensity. Muscles and joints need recovery time in order to handle more training demands. Intense muscle usage causes muscle microfiber trauma, and this activates the development of more muscle fibres, which is how (during the rest period after such activities) muscles become bigger and stronger in response to exercise. While muscles can respond to exercise in a time scale of days and weeks, it has been estimated that it takes six weeks for human ligaments to repair after injury. If you rush the training process, you could break down rather than build up. It is worth starting with a very small amount (on lowered equipment if possible) and following ‘the 10 per cent rule’ used by many sports coaches as a general guideline. This means that the weekly increase of training would never exceed 10% more than the week before (ie if the total amount of agility the first week is three ten minute session, the second week would be three eleven minute sessions.) However that does not take into account the intensity of your sessions, so if the equipment is being raised that should be taken into account as well (so reduce the total time spent training and only raise the equipment very slowly). In addition to following a hard day/easy day approach, many top athletes use a system where they scale back by 20 to 40 per cent on a regular basis, maybe once a month.
Action Plan: Increase the amount of agility you do with your dog very slowly. Keeping a detailed training log can help you gauge your balance of injury prevention with improving performance. Record your training and how your dog is behaving. Look for patterns. For instance, too much training could cause your dogs’ performance to suffer rather than improve. Try to find the perfect balance!
3. If something is not quite right with your dog, if it isn’t jumping smoothly, or starts having problems with something, if there are behavioural changes (doesn’t seem to want to ‘play’), or you just have a gut feeling that something isn’t right, then stop training! Most sports injuries don't just suddenly appear. They produce signals - aches, soreness, and eventually persistent pain – but your dog cannot tell you this in English! It's up to you to notice – and not dismiss - the signs. Get to the root of what's causing the changes that you notice, you could prevent a major injury by spotting problems early on. Regularly massaging your dog may also help you to notice sore, hot or tense spots that signal potential problem areas, and massage may also help alleviate minor problems before they develop into something more serious.
Action Plan At the first sign of atypical behaviour that might indicate pain stop training your dog and get it checked out by a professional. Follow the advise the professional gives you regarding treatment and a recovery period, then ease your dog carefully back into work, do not rush it back into doing the same amount of work as before, you may cause the same damage again, especially if your dog has lost fitness during its’ time out. When unused, muscles degenerate and after a period of time muscle wastage is apparent. (See points above!)
4. Core muscle strength can help keep your dogs body properly aligned. Healthy movement should be as symmetrical and as fluid as possible. If you don't have muscle balance, then you lose the symmetry, and that's when you start having problems. Just like human athletes, a well conditioned and muscled dog that is properly warmed up is far less likely to suffer from sprains, pulls, tears, back or joint problems. Strong muscles protect the joints and back from injury, as anyone with back problems who undertakes pilates classes will tell you. Bodies are susceptible to injury from carrying out the same movement repetitiously (resulting in what is commonly called repetitive strain injury (RSI) or overuse injuries). So a mixture of exercises (swimming, walking, trotting, long walks, free running over different types of terrain, ladder work, wobble boards, tricks and games, as well as agility) are less likely to cause injuries and more likely to build a happy, fit dog, than carrying out the same exercises repetitively (ie only doing agility). Twisting, braking, landing impact, and sharp turning movements are demanding on muscles, tendons, ligaments, joints and bones. A dog must be fit in order to be able to do all these things. Slow controlled core muscle exercises will help develop muscle groups that ‘fine tune’ exact movement. These muscles also help stabilise joints, and therefore protect them against excessive movement of the joints that lead to wear between the joints, or overstretching that may lead to injury of ligaments, muscle or tendon. Rest periods are just as important as exercise. It is during rest that the body rebuilds itself and becomes stronger in response to the demands of previous activities. Without adequate rest, the wear and tear of exercise would weaken rather than strengthen the body. It is also interesting to note that gentle exercise is much better for the dogs’ recovery than complete inactivity.
Action plan: Give your dog a variety of activities, with regular gentle activity days. Balance the routine of more demanding agility alternating with days of gentler walks, core-muscle strength exercises, co-ordination and balance exercises, or tricks.
5. Get into habits that prevent damage. There are a few things that are done habitually by many people that regularly cause injury (and sometimes fatal injury). Releasing a pack in an exercise area to charge off racing each other has caused many terrible accidents, as the dogs are looking at each other while they are racing, and not where they are going. It is easy to prevent a catastrophic event by getting into a habit of releasing individuals in a controlled way, either releasing them one by one over time and distance as they settle into the walk, or keeping one (or some!) on lead throughout the walk, swapping individuals from free running to lead walking if necessary. Throwing toys is another danger area. If you talk to your vet about how many injuries have been caused by sticks being thrown I doubt that you will ever throw a stick for your dog again! In fact I would not recommend throwing a toy constantly for your dog, as the concussive force and twisting caused by the dog braking and snatching at a toy that it is chasing at full speed can cause acute or chronic physical damage. If you are throwing toys and there are a number of dogs likely to chase it, the statistics of an accident happening are significantly increased!
Action plan: Manage your dogs’ daily exercise habits to prevent accidents.
6. Warm up your dog properly before training, and cool down gently after.
by Hannah Banks
Are more dogs getting injured now that jump heights are lowered? It seems far too often now that I hear of another dog that is injured. I don’t remember so many dogs getting injured five years ago, are there just more dogs doing agility now, or is there a reason why so many are getting injured? Some people have asked my for some thoughts on injury prevention, so here they are!
1. Your dog should be fit before it starts doing agility. Do not make an overweight dog do agility!
2. Every dog has an injury threshold. Agility is a high impact sport; do too much and something will eventually give way. Just how much ‘too much’ is will vary from dog to dog. Of course, our goal is to avoid injury. In human sports, top trainers warn people in training to beware the 'terrible toos' - doing too much, too soon, too fast. Every research paper and every expert agrees that this is the number one cause of sports injuries. The body needs time to adapt from training changes and jumps in duration or intensity. Muscles and joints need recovery time in order to handle more training demands. Intense muscle usage causes muscle microfiber trauma, and this activates the development of more muscle fibres, which is how (during the rest period after such activities) muscles become bigger and stronger in response to exercise. While muscles can respond to exercise in a time scale of days and weeks, it has been estimated that it takes six weeks for human ligaments to repair after injury. If you rush the training process, you could break down rather than build up. It is worth starting with a very small amount (on lowered equipment if possible) and following ‘the 10 per cent rule’ used by many sports coaches as a general guideline. This means that the weekly increase of training would never exceed 10% more than the week before (ie if the total amount of agility the first week is three ten minute session, the second week would be three eleven minute sessions.) However that does not take into account the intensity of your sessions, so if the equipment is being raised that should be taken into account as well (so reduce the total time spent training and only raise the equipment very slowly). In addition to following a hard day/easy day approach, many top athletes use a system where they scale back by 20 to 40 per cent on a regular basis, maybe once a month.
Action Plan: Increase the amount of agility you do with your dog very slowly. Keeping a detailed training log can help you gauge your balance of injury prevention with improving performance. Record your training and how your dog is behaving. Look for patterns. For instance, too much training could cause your dogs’ performance to suffer rather than improve. Try to find the perfect balance!
3. If something is not quite right with your dog, if it isn’t jumping smoothly, or starts having problems with something, if there are behavioural changes (doesn’t seem to want to ‘play’), or you just have a gut feeling that something isn’t right, then stop training! Most sports injuries don't just suddenly appear. They produce signals - aches, soreness, and eventually persistent pain – but your dog cannot tell you this in English! It's up to you to notice – and not dismiss - the signs. Get to the root of what's causing the changes that you notice, you could prevent a major injury by spotting problems early on. Regularly massaging your dog may also help you to notice sore, hot or tense spots that signal potential problem areas, and massage may also help alleviate minor problems before they develop into something more serious.
Action Plan At the first sign of atypical behaviour that might indicate pain stop training your dog and get it checked out by a professional. Follow the advise the professional gives you regarding treatment and a recovery period, then ease your dog carefully back into work, do not rush it back into doing the same amount of work as before, you may cause the same damage again, especially if your dog has lost fitness during its’ time out. When unused, muscles degenerate and after a period of time muscle wastage is apparent. (See points above!)
4. Core muscle strength can help keep your dogs body properly aligned. Healthy movement should be as symmetrical and as fluid as possible. If you don't have muscle balance, then you lose the symmetry, and that's when you start having problems. Just like human athletes, a well conditioned and muscled dog that is properly warmed up is far less likely to suffer from sprains, pulls, tears, back or joint problems. Strong muscles protect the joints and back from injury, as anyone with back problems who undertakes pilates classes will tell you. Bodies are susceptible to injury from carrying out the same movement repetitiously (resulting in what is commonly called repetitive strain injury (RSI) or overuse injuries). So a mixture of exercises (swimming, walking, trotting, long walks, free running over different types of terrain, ladder work, wobble boards, tricks and games, as well as agility) are less likely to cause injuries and more likely to build a happy, fit dog, than carrying out the same exercises repetitively (ie only doing agility). Twisting, braking, landing impact, and sharp turning movements are demanding on muscles, tendons, ligaments, joints and bones. A dog must be fit in order to be able to do all these things. Slow controlled core muscle exercises will help develop muscle groups that ‘fine tune’ exact movement. These muscles also help stabilise joints, and therefore protect them against excessive movement of the joints that lead to wear between the joints, or overstretching that may lead to injury of ligaments, muscle or tendon. Rest periods are just as important as exercise. It is during rest that the body rebuilds itself and becomes stronger in response to the demands of previous activities. Without adequate rest, the wear and tear of exercise would weaken rather than strengthen the body. It is also interesting to note that gentle exercise is much better for the dogs’ recovery than complete inactivity.
Action plan: Give your dog a variety of activities, with regular gentle activity days. Balance the routine of more demanding agility alternating with days of gentler walks, core-muscle strength exercises, co-ordination and balance exercises, or tricks.
5. Get into habits that prevent damage. There are a few things that are done habitually by many people that regularly cause injury (and sometimes fatal injury). Releasing a pack in an exercise area to charge off racing each other has caused many terrible accidents, as the dogs are looking at each other while they are racing, and not where they are going. It is easy to prevent a catastrophic event by getting into a habit of releasing individuals in a controlled way, either releasing them one by one over time and distance as they settle into the walk, or keeping one (or some!) on lead throughout the walk, swapping individuals from free running to lead walking if necessary. Throwing toys is another danger area. If you talk to your vet about how many injuries have been caused by sticks being thrown I doubt that you will ever throw a stick for your dog again! In fact I would not recommend throwing a toy constantly for your dog, as the concussive force and twisting caused by the dog braking and snatching at a toy that it is chasing at full speed can cause acute or chronic physical damage. If you are throwing toys and there are a number of dogs likely to chase it, the statistics of an accident happening are significantly increased!
Action plan: Manage your dogs’ daily exercise habits to prevent accidents.
6. Warm up your dog properly before training, and cool down gently after.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Clean Run videos on demand
Clean Run DVDs now available via Video on Demand
We've continued adding titles to our Video on Demand library --
http://www.cleanrun.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=category.display&category_ID=497
We now have 25 videos available for rental. And if you decide to buy the
DVD, you can apply a portion of your rental fee to the purchase.
We've continued adding titles to our Video on Demand library --
http://www.cleanrun.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=category.display&category_ID=497
We now have 25 videos available for rental. And if you decide to buy the
DVD, you can apply a portion of your rental fee to the purchase.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Agility club practice
Stewie and I had a good practice at club practice today. We got to work the contacts, including the teeter, and did several sets of weave poles. We had a great time!
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Sunday at Addicted to Agility Trial
Stewie started off Sunday with a spectacular jumpers run with a 1st and a Q. During Regular, he broke his start line stay and took the tunnel instead of the dogwalk. I should have taken him off, but didn't. Touch and Go we did an off course.but he had good, fast contacts.
During Chances Stewie did the distance part easily, but I didn't call him in in time, and he went over the line. I entered Stewie in Weavers for the first time in a year, and he smoked it and got a Q and a 2nd place, coming in 8 seconds under time. We finished the day with a great Tunnelers run! Stewie and I both liked the new venue and my knees in particular loved the turf.
During Chances Stewie did the distance part easily, but I didn't call him in in time, and he went over the line. I entered Stewie in Weavers for the first time in a year, and he smoked it and got a Q and a 2nd place, coming in 8 seconds under time. We finished the day with a great Tunnelers run! Stewie and I both liked the new venue and my knees in particular loved the turf.
Addicted to Agility's new venue
Stewie made it to Addicted to Agility's RI trial, no thanks to the wind storm!
Stewie and I made it to Addicted to Agility's first trial in Smithfield RI at the Wide World of Indoor Sports last on Saturday because of the wind storm and power outage. We made it just in time to walk Tunnelers, and we had a pretty good run and got a Q. Thanks to Jules for taking the video!
The last run of the day was Elite Jumpers, and we had a really awesome run. It was fast and fun! Stewie got a 1st place and a Q.
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