E240: 페트라 포드(Petra Ford) - 스포츠 독을 위한 피트니스

Something like dock diving, a lot of people think is pretty innocuous. But the dogs are, in essence, doing really hard sprints and doing a huge acceleration and push off the end of the dock. So that muscle group is something that they're going to really need to target more than perhaps someone in a different sport. But the thing all sports have alike is that they all need to have good flexibility. They all need to have a strong core. They all need to have a little bit of an underlying base of fitness. And then after that, we can hone in on some areas that to target very specifically, either for that dog's sport or for that specific dog based on their structure and where they're kind of inherently weak. So let's drill in a little bit on what you just said there around there being some main things that like all dogs should probably have. Can you just talk about that a little more? Kind of the exercises or like the types of things that we're talking about? Yeah. So I think all dogs need a strong core because if you think of every human athlete, regardless of their sport and their sports can be vastly different, but they all need to have a strong core because the core, everything stems from there. The problem with that is that a lot of people think they're working on their dog's core. But if the form is not perfect, then they're not. And they could actually be causing their dog some harm inadvertently. So it's just like with humans. If I were to watch you do an exercise and I would say, no, no, you have to sit up tall, suck in your stomach. And then you would feel a huge difference. You would feel, oh, yeah. OK, now I can feel those muscles engaging. So we can't actually say that to the dog. So we need to use food to lure them into that position and keep them there. And that's the piece where there's a huge disconnect because it's not always taught correctly or taught at all. So I'm pretty fanatical about that. I think a lot of people that do dog sports think that the sport is giving their dog exercise versus thinking that I need to exercise my dog separately so that my dog can excel and perform at their peak and for a long time without injury in their sport. So something as simple as power leash walks work extremely well for people doing some simple core exercises, some simple exercises you can do at home, which is kind of what this course is about. It's about keeping it simple, right? Because if it's too complex, people aren't going to have the time to do it. They're not going to have the motivation to do it.

So if we keep it nice and simple, but the form is good and we target some very specific areas, then that's helpful for all dogs. You mentioned power leash walks. What is that? Walk next to your dog as fast as you can. Fair enough. I just, so it's not a potty. It's power walking. Yeah. So I just take my dogs next to me. You know, I just put them on a, I wouldn't, on a loose leash walking command, which my definition is it's not like at the end of the flexi, it's the dog's walks next to me and then the dog's already pottied and we just walk as fast as I can for a sustained period of time. Right. So my dogs love it. They know the drill. They just, we just go, go, go. They look around, that's fine, but they don't go to sniff or anything like that because I'm considering it, this, an exercise walk versus just let's, you know, go out, you can, let's go out and let you do whatever you want. This is very specifically to give you exercise. So I usually start dogs at 15 to 20 minutes and then assuming there's no underlying issues, the dog is perfectly healthy. Then we increase that up to an hour or more if people want. But even an hour, three times a week for maintenance has a pretty big impact on dogs. So I looked at your syllabus while prepping some questions and noticed that you talk a little bit about motor skills, kind of what they are, how to break them down based on sports. And that's something I know next to nothing about. So can you just tell me a little bit about what you mean? Yeah. So everything that dog does that we ask them to do, that's a skill. So if you take something like healing, right, the way I would like my dogs to heal, I don't want an exaggerated head position, but I want my dog's heads up in the sense that I want them looking at me. So that's not natural. Dogs don't walk like that. So then I have to deconstruct that. So in order to heal like that, my dog needs to shift their weight back towards their hind end. So that's one tiny piece of the skill, right? And he has to do that while maintaining his head up. So my dog has to learn to do that. Then my dog has to be able to push slightly more off their back end than their front end in motion. So that's a separate piece. My dog has to have a strong core because if it doesn't have a strong core, the core can't maintain that weight shift back and the dog's going to compensate. And so then my dog has to learn how to do that first at a slow pace, then at a trot. And then when I add in turns, now they have to use their body in a completely different way.

So it's kind of like if you're learning to dance or if you've never done agility and you're learning agility or you have to do footwork for obedience, when I teach that to a human, you need to break it down into tiny little pieces so the body can learn how to do each piece. And then your body has to learn to take those pieces and put them together. So those are motor skills, motor patterns that humans or dogs learn. It makes a lot of sense. And it totally makes sense kind of based on that, that then you would need to look at those things to choose the best conditioning exercises or skills to build out for your specific sport. Well, and it's a good thing to break down because sometimes a dog's what appears to be, you could be trying to, so let's say you're doing tri-ball and you want the dog to go around the right side and cut in behind the balls. If the dog's always having trouble doing it to the right side, you may think like, oh, it's a training thing, but maybe the dog is more left-handed than right-handed and it just has trouble turning to the right. So if you break that down into little pieces, you might see, oh, as soon as he starts to turn right, he's not on the correct lead or he's not shifting back or he's doing something odd. And then if you just teach them that piece, right, like a motor skill, like a physical skill, then when you go put it back in, oh, look, he can turn to the right much better now. So we talked a little bit about how the sport influences things. What about the dog's own structure, like their specific structure? How does that influence the conditioning work that they'll need to, you know, kind of for optimal performance? The structure is always most important. So if someone says to me, can you put together a program for my fill-in-the-blank sport dog, I would never do it without seeing the dog first, right? Because the dog's structure is the most important and the most significant piece. Because, and I look at structure for function, which is huge because people always think of it in terms of the breed ring. So they'll have a dog that is a breed champion or a grand champion. And yes, and their structure may be perfect for their breed standard, but it could not be at all that great when you look at function at working. So my evaluation isn't super complex. It's relatively basic, but there are certain key things that I look at. And then based on those things, I pull out what piece I was going to say is the most weak, which is really bad. So, for example, if my dog is very long-bodied and it's pretty significant, if they're much longer than tall,

I already know that their core is inherently weak. So I need to really build that up because where a dog is structurally weak is almost always, barring some, you know, major catastrophe, where they get hurt first. So if I have a dog that's longer than tall and it doesn't have any other major structural issues, all things being equal, my dog's going to get hurt there first, regardless of their sport, actually. So that's the most important thing. What are you looking at? How are you evaluating that? So I look at their angle, their shoulder angle and their hind leg angle. It's hard to say in words, but I look at the angles. Too much angle is instability, not enough angle. They tend to have issues because they don't have enough. Without angle, they're not absorbing the shock. So the muscles have, you know, take up all the extra shock and get very tight. I look at balance. So the dog could have a lot of angle in the front and not in the rear. Now they're out of balance or vice versa. I look definitely at length versus height, which is becoming more and more prevalent over the years in all breeds. I think that in the confirmation ring, they're asking for that more. So we're seeing more of that. I look at, obviously, size, how much bone they have, because that impacts how much weight is going through, shock is going through their joints. And I also look at kind of their front assembly, which is their shoulders and how far forward they are, because if they're too far forward, they're not supported by the rib cage. But mainly those are the things I look at. So I'm not doing like a full-on every single joint head to toe or anything like the breed ring does. But that's pretty much enough information to hone in on what we need to work on with that specific dog. When a team is kind of adding a fitness program into their training routine, would you recommend like taking those fitness pieces and kind of integrating them with whatever your normal training session looks like? Or do you recommend kind of breaking fitness out, having it be its own sessions and kind of training it for some sessions and training their sport for other sessions? How do you approach that? I think it depends on where in the scale of conditioning you are. Like if you're just doing some maintenance, then a lot of the stretches you just incorporate into their warmup. So that's already done, right? And then you can just do some conditioning. Again, depending on your sport, if it's a lower impact sport, you could do them in the morning in your sport in the afternoon. If it's a higher impact sport, I'd spread it out.

The other thing people really need to look at is rest. And that's like a horrible, terrible word. I work in rehab dogs and it's like the worst word on the planet, right? People are horrified. But their bodies have to rest. So if you think about yourself, if you're working out most days and then you're doing an active sport most days, like every professional athlete, it's built into their program rest, meaning doing nothing. Because the body has to repair. If you're never letting the body repair, all you're doing is tearing it down and inevitably the dog's going to get hurt. When we do sports, we're kind of addicted. We are ourselves addicted, right? We go to this class. We go to that class. We go to this trial. And people lose track and don't even realize how much they're doing. So that's a big part of it is in general, making sure you're not doing too much between the conditioning and all the training and the trialing and the off-leash running and et cetera. Et cetera, that you're doing. So you have to, I, what I do with my clients is I have them print out two months of an empty calendar and I have them fill in the month before and fill in the upcoming month. And I say, take home and do it. And every single time, every time they come back, they look at me, it's like hidden behind their back. And they're like, I already know what you're going to say. I'm doing too much. So they don't even realize it until they write it all down. So I find that's a really good thing to do because then people kind of get, gain perspective and go, oh, all right. Well, I need to shift things around so my dog can have some rest. And so that's kind of with the conditioning program, you have to figure out a way to put it in there without, you know, just making it something that tips the scales into the dogs just way doing too much. So how much time do you kind of recommend people budget for fitness or how, you know, how much should people be doing? Maintenance, just exercises that I teach them to do. If they do that three times a week, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, that's perfectly fine. You know, my leash walks to me, I see that as also as exercise, but I don't feel like I'm taking extra time to do that because it's good for me. It's good for them. But just in terms of, you know, exercises using food, doing equipment or just exercises even with no equipment for maintenance purposes, once your dog's in good shape, three, two, three times a week, just quality over quantity is more than enough. So it's, it's really pretty doable.

I know a few folks who mentioned that they worry about doing conditioning or fitness work with their dog because they're, they're definitely concerned that they're going to do it wrong and they're going to cause more problems than they're going to solve. And I know you kind of mentioned that at the beginning, that poor form is a bad thing. So how can handlers avoid that? How can they, you know, feel confident in what they're doing and make sure they're doing it correctly? Correct. Correct. They should be worried because if you're not, I've had it happen where people come to my clinic and they're like, I just want you to kind of look at my dog and give me a baseline. But they say to me, but I know the dog's in really good shape. And as soon as they walk in, I can already see the dog's got a problem. And they're, they're shocked because they've been doing all this work with them, but they've been doing it incorrectly. So I think it's super important to find someone, which I think is easier now with online stuff, that has a very strong sports background. And if at all possible, a certified canine rehab person, because there are programs out there that certify the average Joe to kind of do exercises with dogs and they get some initials. And I'm not trying to bash people, but they don't necessarily have the background in anatomy that people that are, someone is fully certified in canine rehab. It should be a vet, a veterinarian or a physical therapist. Vet techs get certifications, but they're supposed to work underneath someone that's a vet or a PT that's certified. And that's for a reason it's because those people already have a background in anatomy and physiology. And so then the doggy rehab builds on that. So they have a really good grasp for what is safe and what is not safe. So it's just important to see, you know, what are the person's credentials and do they have a lot of experience working with performance dogs? Because if someone's working primarily with pet dogs, let me tell you, it's a huge difference. Performance dogs are super unique and not everyone really and truly understands what their job entails, right? How difficult it is physically on the dogs, how much repetition they do. They don't always have that understanding. So just do some research, but then when you find someone, work with them and then you'll know that you're doing everything correctly. Anything else you kind of want to share about the class or kind of who should consider it and sign up? The dogs love it. All my dogs love demoing.

All my students, my clients always say their dogs love it because really it's just, it's relaxed, it's fun. They're getting lots and lots of treats and they're doing a variety of activities. The owners tend to like it. Why? Because the dogs like it, right? And you can see some pretty significant results within a relatively short amount of time, two, four, six weeks. You can already see a difference and you'll see the difference in their sport. And I think it's pretty empowering. There are so many things with our dog's health that we have no control over and their lives are pretty short, shorter than any of us would like them to be. So this is something that we absolutely have control over. So it's kind of empowering to be able to get in there and do something to help your dog. And I also think when I watch different dogs doing different sports, it's very hard for me because I'll see so many dogs that are hurt, but the dogs will work anyway. And people aren't even aware and they shouldn't be because that's not their job necessarily, right? And dogs are tough. They'll just do it. So I think to get involved in a program, if there is something going on, it'll be identified. You can nip it in the bud, make your dog more comfortable, prevent it from getting any worse. And then your dog will perform better as well. So to kind of round out our chat with one last question, if you were to kind of drill down what we talked about today and pull out, you know, one takeaway or one key piece of information you really want everybody to understand, what would that be? Core, core, core. That's where in the rehab clinic with performance dogs, massive percentage. I would even go as far as saying 85 to 90% of the injuries I see stemmed if they don't involve the core directly at that moment, they stemmed from not having a strong core. So what I think. Yeah, so core is of primary importance and making sure it's strong and keeping it strong. And it's not super difficult to do that if you have the right information. Actually, as a little bonus, I have my three foundation core exercises are for free on my website for everybody to see under free posture videos. And then obviously you have to build on those. So, yeah, it's all about the core. Do you want to mention the website addresses so folks can go look at that? It's patrasdogresourcecenter.com. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Petra. I know we kind of scheduled this in last minute to try and get it in, but I appreciate you being flexible and making it work. That's okay. No problem. Thank you, as always, for having me.

Always a pleasure. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We will be back next week to talk about training the atypical dog with Sharon Carroll. If you haven't already, subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice. Do our next episode automatically download it to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by benson.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in. And happy training. Thank you.