E46: 로리 스티븐스(Lori Stevens) - "카나인 피트니스로 즐거움 누리기"

the cross-training because they'll come in and basically say something like, you know, my dog keeps hitting bars. I think we need to improve something. And when we start doing some cross-training or strengthening the core or strengthening the legs that are involved in a jump, all those things, we see improvement in performance, surprise, surprise. So I think a lot of times in sports, the training is going to classes, practicing the sport, but sometimes you need to do one more level of fitness to get that extra little bit. There's so many benefits in canine fitness. Things like, you know, strengthens muscles is obvious, but it really strengthens and helps the dog know when and how to engage their core muscles. I mean, that would happen automatically. It's not like they think, okay, it's time to engage my core muscles, but we do exercises where we start engaging them a lot and then it becomes more natural. You know, you build better joint support through stronger muscles, improving flexibility, improve alignment and posture, balance and stability improve. And with that, what you get is fewer injuries. You get more confidence. You get more body awareness. And so dogs, when they're faced with a quick decision or a quick body move, they're more prepared and more confident to make that move and stronger in that movement than they might be if they were just doing the regular training of the sport. It improves gait, movement. I mean, I just think it's fantastic. But another part of it, which I think we often leave out, is that it's a behavior changer. I have worked with fearful dogs that that was the way that I broke through to them. That confidence they get with suddenly doing things with their body that they've never done before, like hind leg targeting. I think that's just a huge, huge exercise for dogs' awareness of where their back end is, their confidence. It seems to be a game changer, really, in terms of behavior, I have found. It's all the stuff you would naturally think of with fitness, but it also does a lot in terms of confidence, body awareness, and building trust even. I mean, really being able to build trust through doing something joyful that doesn't have the pressure of competition in it. So I think that for a lot of people, when they kind of talk about fitness, they think about their own experiences, right? And I mean, I don't know about you, but for me, at least, the gym is not my favorite place to be. So how does that kind of compare to how dogs generally feel about fitness? And, you know, kind of what's the difference there? I hate the gym. Can I just say that? I really hate the gym.

Absolutely. I have a personal trainer now. I love my trainer. And so maybe that's more like working with your dog. So, you know, what pops to mind when I think of going to the gym is a sweaty place that doesn't smell great and has a lot of grunting. Canine fitness, what pops to mind when I think about it is joy, joy, joy. Okay. That's what my canine gym is, my canine gym room. Doing fitness together is just a blast. I have to say that every dog I've ever worked with loves it. And that's why it's my, that's, it's my sport. I'm calling it my sport because I don't have another sport, but to me, it really is. I mean, it's truly a fun activity and it's all about the joy. So they are not, they aren't really comparable. Fair enough. And I guess if somebody was sitting there feeding us cookies for everything we did at the gym, we might, we might enjoy it a little more too. Yeah. True. So I think the other place that our concepts about kind of our own fitness struggles sometimes hold us back is with the expectations around how much time we have to put into it. So most people probably think about spending, you know, an hour or more maybe at the gym each time they go. Based on the upcoming course name, I'm going to guess the canine fitness differs there too. So how much time should people really be spending on canine fitness? You know, that five is five hours. No, I'm just kidding. Five minutes. You know, that goes for people too. Like, you know, when you're out walking your dog and you're, you know, out in the woods or on a trail or in the park, you know, it's okay if it takes an hour, but when you're in your house with your dog and you want to do some focused exercises, you want to stop and do a little training, so you might as well do a little fitness. Five minutes is plenty. I, you know, I do believe in warming up and cooling down and the five minutes is the strengthening part. But if you wanted to turn that into two minutes of strengthening and a couple minutes of warm up and a short cool down, that's fine too. So I actually think with people, they don't need to do an hour workout either. I mean, if I stop and do five to 10 minutes of working out, that's better than if I don't do any at all. So the time thing I think often gets in the way. And I also think we can overtrain our dogs. So I have a 12 and a half year old and I set a timer. I set it for five minutes of training. I, it takes, you know, if I, if she's cold, like if she's been sleeping for a few hours, then, then, you know, I wake her up. I set my timer for five minutes and we do five minutes of warmup. And then we do, I set it again.

We do five minutes of strengthening. And then we do a few minutes of cool down, usually around five of cool down. So I just set my timer. I think I got that idea of five, five and five from Leslie Ida, a rehabilitation vet in our area. And she also teaches fitness work. I think she's done some for Fendi. I think the thing is, is that it's important to warm up a bit and cool down a bit, but you really don't have to spend that much time doing it. And so all of the workouts that people are going to develop in my class are going to be five minute workouts. We don't have to overthink this. You know, we can be creative. We just don't want to work the same muscles every day to fatigue. So we just want to be careful on that side of things. How much do fitness behaviors, you know, maybe including or maybe not including the warm up and cool down stuff, I'll leave that up to you. But how much do those skills or those behaviors kind of differ from other skills and behaviors we teach our dog, you know, for our sport or just for daily life? Okay, well, it's all behavior. So how does it differ? Well, I think the way it differs is that we need to be safe. So we need to pay attention to alignment. We need to start on the ground. And what I mean by that is we really need to build a foundation, just like with any sport. You know, you're not going to get past the foundation stuff. You don't put your dog directly on a peanut and start doing things. Okay. I mean, one of my goals in teaching fitness is to really teach people how to be wonderful, incredibly sharp-eyed observers and teach them what to look for when they're doing fitness and how to start on the ground and build up. And so, you know, all these exercises that we do as foundation exercises, they're all going to get harder. And because we're going to be doing them on the ground first, then a stable platform, then unstable platform, unstable equipment. So, you know, training fitness is not training for competitive sports. So the pressure isn't the same, but you still have to have a good foundation for it. Just like with agility, you don't go in and start running courses. You teach the dogs how to get on the equipment, how to exit the equipment, how to use the equipment safely. This is all a good thing in my view. And that's why I can call it my sport because there are a bunch of nuances. But it's also a very joyful thing to do, not to say sports isn't joyful. Most people do it because it's a blast. But precision is important in fitness training, just like it's important in competitive sports.

It's just different in the sense that it's something you can do year-round. You might change your focus based on what you see in your dog. And all of it is about teaching behavior. So the better you are at training and timing, the better your fitness work will look. It will be. So you mentioned in there kind of the idea of equipment. Do people need special equipment to do canine fitness? Well, I think people like an excuse to buy equipment. Fair enough. But I really do. I mean, I do think they like that. But let's just say they can't afford it or they don't like it. There's a lot of things you can build. You can use things around the house. I mean, do you have to have fancy cones? No, you can use potted plants. Do you have to have fancy Cavaletti set with cones with poles through it? No, you can use your mops and brooms and put them on cans and use painter's tape. Do you have to buy fancy platforms or an aerobic platform? No, you can use books and bind them with duct tape and put anti-slip material around them. You can use air mattresses and pillows for unstable equipment. So I'm betting most people will want to buy a piece of equipment or two, but you don't have to. And let me just add that the outdoors, you know, when you go for a walk in a park, it is full of exercise equipment. So I'm going to give you yesterday's example. We haven't gone for a walk today yet. But yesterday's example was we went to the park and Cassie wanted to jump on every park bench. So she sees the bench and she starts targeting for the bench and she wants to go on every single bench. She could put her front legs up to work her hind legs or she can push up all the way to do a little jump. Then we do uphill sprints because, you know, I'm in Seattle, so there's a lot of hills. So we do uphill recalls and she sprints up the hills. We hind leg target curbs on our way to the park. And we were walking across a bridge and I noticed it was this little shelf, like a little curb-like thing that you could step up on. And so we did ipsilateral work. I better say what that is. We did targeting with same side legs on the little raised part of the bridge. And so we turned around at the other side and I took the photo of it. So we learned that in the class, how to do ipsilateral work. And we ended with nose work in the park, followed by walking up a very steep hill. And I did a workout with her that day too. But this was a really good workout, just, you know, utilizing wheat. There's often a big rock she likes to jump up on and there's all sorts of logs that are a little slippery right now because it rains here nonstop for ages.

But there's exercise equipment everywhere. Maybe I should do a class someday on just outdoor equipment. That would certainly be cool. It would be interesting. Yeah. For those people who are interested in buying, you know, a couple pieces of equipment, are there specific pieces you usually recommend for getting started or good places to kind of get their feet wet? Okay. So first, the caveat. You're talking to someone who has a ridiculous amount of equipment. So maybe I shouldn't really be allowed to answer this question. So older dogs do really well with a balance pad. And you don't have to buy it. You can get a balance pad on Amazon for people and it's not very expensive. So you can do a lot of things with a balance pad. I like for people to have a fit bone or two or a couple of 14-inch discs. Those pieces of equipment. So either one, you know, either a fit bone and a 14-inch disc or two fit bones or two 14-inch discs. You know, you can do a lot with those. Platforms are super useful. Where do you buy a platform, right? Well, a lot of people have been making their platforms recently. And so there's a lot of how-tos on that. But anyway, you asked me about buying. An aerobic step bench is actually a useful platform. Michelle Puglio has a place that she links to that builds platforms according to her specifications. So I've got a couple of those. Okay. And then paw pods. They're inexpensive and they're a blast. You just have to make sure you get the ones that are nice and soft. So I get the foot paws ones. But they're really fun because then you can target one paw at a time. And target all four and do turns and do sidesteps onto them and all sorts of things. So back onto them, back onto all four. You know, there's a million things you can do with the paw pods. Okay, I'll stop. Is that just a couple pieces? No, that's excellent. Yeah, paw pods are kind of fascinating. I've never taught a dog to use them. But just in general, like I've seen some stuff done with them. And they're pretty cool. And they require a real awareness of where all four of your feet are. Exactly. And it is just fun. It's fun to teach and it's fun to do them. So I know that you have, you mentioned this earlier too, kind of this idea of fitness foundation behaviors. And I know it's part of what's on your syllabus. So I wanted to ask you kind of what you mean by that. And what are some examples of something that counts as a fitness foundation behavior? Well, okay. So one isn't even a fitness behavior, but having a good nose to hand touch where your dog can, so targeting is a big one, right? So first a nose to hand touch.

And that's super useful for positioning. Having an easy go-to default behavior they can do when you just ask them to do something and they don't do it, you can just say touch. And, you know, so if you practice that in all sorts of ways and moving them into position with your nose to hand targeting, then you've got something that you can use during fitness training that gets them to a certain place, gets them on something, gets them off of something. Getting off of equipment sometimes can be challenging for some people. So just to continue with the targeting, being able to target with one paw, target something, right? Your hand with each of your four paws, not your four paws, but your dog's four paws. So targeting with one paw, two paws up, four paws up is a useful foundation skill. Hind leg targeting is, in my opinion, hind leg targeting is a useful skill for all dogs, period. So, you know, being able to hind leg target something is really important, but then of course it's a foundation behavior when you're just teaching a dog, you know, the hind leg target a mat, but it becomes more skillful and more of a fitness behavior when you're targeting something unstable and higher up and asking them to hold that position and maybe do shoulder exercises with their hind end up. So, you know, these things that we start on the ground that don't seem like that big a deal, they build and become more difficult, more challenging fitness exercises or strengthening exercises. Backing up, sidestepping, both of those are foundation exercises, but sidestepping on unstable equipment is a different thing than sidestepping with all four feet on the ground. So I call them foundations because you're giving the dog the idea of what is sidestepping and what is backing up before asking them to do it on something difficult. What are some of the, you know, basic exercises that you teach most often, what do those look like and what are kind of the benefits of doing some of them? Well, let me just start with the simplest concept. And that is when you put two front feet up on something, your dog is usually, not always, but, you know, you can help them shift their weight to their back legs. So the further they're standing up, the less likely it is they have all their weight on their front legs. So the benefit of putting two paws up on something and holding is that the hind legs are being used more. If the hind legs are up, then the weight is more down on the front legs. So you're building front leg muscles. Things like tuck sits and sphinx downs require more core work.

You know, there's something that is often said in physical therapy. And that is you stabilize, you strengthen the proximal, which is the core, which is the trunk to get better distal mobility from a strengthened position. So it's important to be able to have the strength of that stability in your trunk and in your core, your stabilization muscles, your multifidi, your transverse abdominus muscles. It's important to be able to automatically engage those, your serratus, in order to do some of these other exercises. So the benefits of the core work is to be able to do things, more difficult things safely. And then the benefits of some of the other exercises we work on, like, let's just say crawling. Crawling, you know, you're down in a sphinx down position, and then you're moving forward on the ground. So, you know, you're working the back muscles. You're utilizing all four limbs, and those limbs, like, especially the back legs really have to work the rotation of the hip. So, I mean, the benefits of these exercises are pretty amazing. Another example would be just, you know, with the dog standing on all four legs, if you lift the left front leg, you're going to put more weight on the right back leg. So, if you've got a dog that's in a habit of just sort of standing to the side because maybe they hurt their right knee two years ago, so they just got in a habit of unloading that leg. Well, lifting the front left paw loads that leg and starts, they start in their body, they start getting the muscle memory back of, oh, yeah, I can use that leg like I used it before. It doesn't hurt at all. And let me just add that I still think it's important that everybody who does fitness is checked out by a veterinarian. And if they've had any sort of problems, that they're cleared for the exercises first. But anyway, there's a lot of benefits that come from doing this work that sometimes people don't even see until they start doing it. It's pretty cool. And then there's the behavior benefits, like I said earlier, the body awareness, the bonding that occurs, the trust and joy. And did you know that some dogs, some of the agility dogs I work with have never slowed down and they're like, ha, ha, ha, my dog will never slow down and walk over those Cavaletti poles. But slowing down helps dogs go faster. Because in slowing down, they really get to know their bodies better. And they get to know where they're not just pushing through and, you know, being the little masters of muscle compensation that they are. They're not just, you know, when you're moving slowly, it all stands out, right?

You have to know what muscles you're using. You have to know where your feet are in a different sort of way. And so the slow work doesn't slow your dog down on the course. It helps your dog because they're even more confident and more aware, I think. So I wanted to ask if there are differences in the behaviors you'd recommend for daily fitness versus those you use kind of to warm up and cool down or whether the behaviors are kind of multifunctional. And maybe you could just talk to all that a little bit. So yeah, the exercises are multifunctional. Or at least some of them are. So in my warm up, I might do a few tuck sits, a few tuck sits to stand. I might do some short recalls. I might do some targeting, some spins, some bows, some Cavaletti work. But I'm not going to do 10 tuck sits to stand, three sets, you know, with feet up on a fit bone is my warm up. So the concept of the exercise is, you know, the exercise might be the same, but I might just do two or three of them in a warm up versus 10 of them really hard, three sets. So I want the dogs as they're warming up to go through the different movements. I want them to back up and sidestep it. All that's on the ground during a warm up, really. I often just come in from a walk. Like, you know, I walk Cassie for however long. Usually we walk at least 30 minutes. And we walk in the house and she's pretty warmed up. So we just do a few exercises right after that. But spins and turns, you know, to get the, or spins right each direction, sorry. You know, it's good lateral, lateral flexion for the spine. So it warms up, you know, the spine, muscles. Cavaletti work is a nice warm up exercise when you're trotting across them. But I'm not going to raise them real high and have a dog do high steps or sidestepping or backing up over Cavaletti poles with a warm up because that's taking it a little bit further. So they're multifunctional, but they're done in the simplest way during warm ups and cool downs. So I probably made that into something longer than it needed to be. But in cool downs, I'm even going to go lighter and do less in a cool down than I would in a warm up. So you talk, you talk, you mentioned this word earlier and you, you talk about a little bit in your syllabus, kind of this concept of alignment. And I wanted to ask what you mean by that. And if you can kind of talk a little bit about why it's important. Yeah. Well, it's super important. And why it's important has to do with the muscles that are engaging. So I'm an alignment geek, I, I admit. Um, if a dog sits with a leg shooting out to the side or, you know, just a super sloppy

sit to the side, you know, first thing I want to know is, you know, why that's happening and let's change it. Um, if a back is roached up or humped up, you know, I want to know is something wrong, hunched up, back roached. I don't know. I don't know how you'd say that as a roaching, but hopefully people know what that is. Um, when, you know, sometimes what I see is a dog can stand with their feet under them perfectly fine. But as soon as they step up on a platform, their back feet go really wide or their front feet go really wide. Um, have you ever, have you ever seen people that are standing with their legs really wide? Um, they're not using their core. They're just, they're creating this super broad base so they don't have to use any muscles. I mean, you have to use muscles to stand, but it's a, it's a rather lazy, non-core way of standing. Sorry if I'm making you, you're thinking I do that all the time. Um, so, you know, what I'm, what I'm looking for is that dogs are using the muscles I expect. They have nice long spines, neutral necks, um, their tail is not tucked. You know, if the dog's tail's tucked, some, some dogs tuck their tails a lot, but if, if the dog's tail is really tucked and their legs are wide, then I think, you know, either they're not comfortable standing like this. Maybe we're standing on something a little bit too high. Um, maybe, you know, they're for one reason or another, you know, they might or might not be hurting. It's really hard to tell cause you can't ask. Um, so, you know, I want to see if we can change their position, um, in a way that puts them in better alignment and if they're comfortable doing that. Now, if the dog regularly really goes wide in the back, I'm, I, I know how to, um, encourage them to have their legs under them. But, um, if I all of a sudden started doing the exercise with their legs in, they might be using muscles they aren't, have never used before. So I have to really be careful with not just bringing their legs in and then doing a million exercises, right? Because the dog needs to get used to using those new muscles. So anyway, alignment is a, is a really, really big deal. It's just safe. It's safer. There's no reason to do things with, um, improper alignment. It's the same thing in human training as well. Let you talk a little more about the class specifically. I know it's called Helping Dogs Thrive Fitness in 5 and it's in February. So lots of Fs. But what does it entail? What is it going to look like? You know, um, do you want to just talk us through a little bit? It's going to be fun. It's going to be educational.

It'll benefit your dog at home and in sports. Okay. So at the end of, so every week, I think at this time I'm going to release everything the first day of the week. And so you'll have lectures, um, that'll tell you a bit about why I want things to go a certain way or things to keep in mind or learning about fitness. Um, so now I'll have lectures. Then I'll have exercises and, um, and I'll say how to get the behaviors, what they're good for, um, you know, I'll say the setup, what you need in your environment, um, the instructions, the number of repetitions and sets. Um, I'll have video, I have the exercise. And, uh, so we'll do that. And then at the end of every week, I'm going to have something called the five minute workout. Well, it's just called five minute workout. And I'm not going to create the five minute workouts. However, I'm going to give everybody the tools to create their own five minute workout. So you can imagine what the homework will be. Well, you know, the homework will be showing the exercises or for sure, you know, showing videos of the exercises that you're having trouble teaching, but also I'm going to want to see parts of the five minute workout. And, and, you know, the first week, you're not really, you're learning how to do a five minute workout. You're not, you know, all of a sudden here's my five minute workout. So it's going to build, um, across the weeks and every week, you know, your, your five minute workout can incorporate, like, let's just say we're in week three, uh, your five minute workout can, uh, include the exercises from week three, two, and one. And so we can get more creative and more mixing and matching. And, um, anyway, that's, that's basically, uh, how the class is laid out. And, um, you know, I'm going to have lectures on things like raising criteria. Um, uh, I'll talk about the benefits, the planes of movement, some anatomical terminology, um, like what is cranial and what's caudal and what's lateral and what's medial. Um, I'll talk about exercise frequency, repetitions, durations, and sets. Um, I'll talk about, um, physiological issues, muscle actions. So, you know, there's like things I'll just talk about, but then there's the exercises. So people will have both. They'll learn about fitness and they will learn the exercises. They'll learn both the whys and the hows. Yeah. I think you hit on the things that people are most likely to have questions about, right? Like, I feel like anytime people talk about this stuff, it's like, okay, but how much do I do and how long do I do it? And, and kind of all those pieces. So. Yeah. Right. Exactly.

And it's really different from the aging dogs class. Um, so, you know, uh, in the aging dogs class, um, depending on the age of the dog, for sure. But, you know, I'm not always as picky about everything is I'm likely to be a little bit more picky about alignment and how we're doing with the exercise that I'm in the aging dogs class. It all depends on the dog, right? But, you know, when you're working with a 16 year old dog, um, teaching him fitness exercises, you're going to go really slowly, give that dog the time to learn them. And, and you're not going to, you know, be super picky about, I mean, you're going to be as picky as you can be about alignment, but it's different. You kind of hit on something there and I, I didn't tell you, I was going to ask you this, but you brought it up and I, and I kind of want, I think it makes sense to, to maybe talk about it for just a quick second. Is there a type of dog that's a really good fit for the class or that maybe isn't as good of a fit for the class? I would say if it, if it's a dog that, um, okay, first of all, if it's a puppy, um, and the growth plates aren't closed yet, then, um, puppies probably should not take the class because, um, all the thing, everything about repetitions and sets aren't going to apply to the puppy puppy. Somebody could take it. If they have a puppy, I'd recommend they audit it. And then when their growth, when their dog's growth plates close, then they can, um, start applying it. Um, or they can take it again later. It's a lot of material. So you could audit it and then take it later and still go, oh, I don't remember doing this. Um, okay. And so if your dog's coming off a pretty serious injury and you've got, um, uh, contra indications, uh, you know, things you really shouldn't be doing, you know, maybe don't take it at gold, maybe just audit it, check with your vet. Um, I, you know, it's different if you're coming here and you've been released from the rehab vet to come to me to do exercises. But if you are, you know, taking this as a fitness class, I'm going to assume your dog is pretty healthy. Um, so other than that, pretty much all dogs can, can take it for sure. The dogs that are pretty mobile that have been in my aging dogs class, they can take it. Um, they may not be able to do everything, but they, you know, the ones that are pretty mobile, there's some, you know, I have in mind that could definitely take it. Um, but if you've got a dog that can hardly move, this will be challenging. Um, it's my guess, but there's always, there's always something, you know, there's, I mean,

there, I have to do some harder exercises for the dogs that are more, um, performance dogs, you know, they're, they're strong and they're used to doing things. And then, um, you know, you can always just stick with the basics and build really, really gradually until you're ready to go up a level. So it really depends. If people have questions, they can, they can message you, right? So if they're not sure. Several people have. Okay. Yeah, no, I think, I think it's going to be a well-attended class, um, based on the interest I've seen so far. So I hope, um, you know, it should be really fun. It's a, um, it should be a very positive experience for the dogs and the people. Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Lori. This was fun to learn a little more about this stuff. And, and I feel like every time we talk about it, I'm like, Hmm, I should really be doing that. So yeah, no, thank you for coming back on, for talking through this with me. And thank you to all of our wonderful listeners out there for, for tuning in. We'll be back next week. This time with Chrissy Schrantz to talk about building reinforcers and recall training. And if you haven't already, I hope you'll subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice. So our next episode will automatically download 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 bensound.com. Track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.