Welcome to Canine Conditioning
Canine Conditioning Fitness is practiced in pursuit of peak performance, injury prevention, coordination, flexibility, and rehabilitation. It addresses the five fitness components (flexibility, balance, stamina, coordination, strength).
Canine Conditioning Has an Importance for all Dogs
Through specific exercises we can improve body awareness, flexibility, balance, speed, mobility and muscular strength – which overall improves our dog’s performance and reduces their risk of injury. As well, conditioning increases our dog’s ability to carry load on their muscles. This is important as injuries occur when muscles experience excessive lengthening and stretching that are unprepared for such a load. Another factor in injuries is fatigue in the muscles which causes our dogs to lose their ability to maintain position or cause stumbles and falls. While exercise like long walks or running in the back yard are good for maintaining large muscle groups the deeper muscles which activate when our dog loses balance or tries to avoid slipping are often neglected and are often the areas, we see greater injury in.
Conditioning exercises not only have physical benefits to dogs but also mental ones! We will tailor each pup’s Canine Conditioning Class to their specific needs, which will be comprised of these selected elements:
- Proper warm up and cool down
- Balance exercises
- Core and small stabilizer muscle strengthening
- Body awareness
- Flexibility
- Front and hind end strengthening
- Lateral strengthening
- Plyometric exercises