Team Work

The day after my last post I received the dog team equipment, 4 Harnesses, One 4 dog gangline and a shock cord. I tried the harnesses on the dogs and found out that Pepper was a little more over weight than I anticipated and her harness could have been a size larger but hopefully if this works out she will drop a few pounds. Sadie's harness was a little large which I planned on since she should grow into it very quickly. I took them out two at a time Storm with Lizzy and Pepper with Sadie. Storm and Lizzy worked out fine they are close to the same size and can move at the same speed. Storm knows the commands required to do this (left,right, go and whooa) and Izzy will follow. Later I tried other combinations like Storm and Sadie shown above.

Pepper and Sadie were another story. They are near the same size and Pepper knows all the commands however Sadie was more interested in grabbing Pepper by the harness then walking with her. I did manage to get them to go ahead of me like Storm and Lizzy did which is all I wanted to accomplish on their first outing. On our next outing I will add a weight for them to drag. I figure it will take about a week to get them used to pulling the weight.

It is now 2 days later and I am ready to try pulling some weight. I would have preferred to have them pull and old tire but since I did not have one I had to find something else. It so happened that I was raking leaves so I raked them on to a tarp and had them drag the tarp to the back of the property. I did this in teams of two, Sadie with Storm and Pepper with Lizzy. Both teams had no trouble pulling the tarp full of leaves the few hundred feet required to take them from my front yard to the compost pile in the back. I then tried them in a team of 4. This was a little more difficult but so far training them to pull has been one of the easiest things that I have taught them. They are progressing much faster than I anticipated.

Now that I know they have no trouble with the harness and no trouble pulling weight, at least in teams of two, the next step was to start increasing the distance and combining them into a team of 4. Since I still did not have anything for them to pull I took out an old plastic dog crate and hooked it up to the gangline. I had to determine what order to hook up the dogs so I decided to try it by intellegence this time. Storm and Pepper in front with Lizzy and Sadie behind. I figured that since Storm and Pepper were the most educated I could control them better. Lizzy and Sadie would just follow. Besides Storm already knew left and right and I could control him better than the others.


Well off we went. I am sure that the neighbors thought I was nuts. Here I go down the street running beside 4 dogs pulling a crate banging and scraping along the pavement. My planned layout quickly went out the window when Lizzy and Sadie took off, passed Storm and Pepper and instead of having 2 dogs in front and 2 in back I ended up with 4 dogs blocking the whole street with Lizzy and Sadie pulling the crate by them selves while Strom and Pepper ran beside them. Back to the drawing board.

Next time Field Trip

Sadie's Exercise Program Part 2

Hopefully by now I have convinced you of the importance of exercise now all I have to do is figure out how to fit it into my daily schedule. My daily workout takes me about an hour, after all if I don't stay healthy I won't be around to take care of my dogs. I also believe that each of my dogs should get an hour workout. That's 5 hours a day. Now if I add too that 1 hour a day for grooming and 1 hour for training that's 7 hours a day just to maintain the dogs. Where do we get the time?

Years ago this was not a problem leash laws were not what they are now and I could go for a cross country run and take my dogs with me. We could all get a good workout together. Some of my fondest memory's are of getting up at 5am and going for a 10 mile run with my first German Shepherd Heidi, but she is long gone and so is my ability to put my knees through a 10 mile run. I used to be an avid runner, running at my peek as much as 109 miles in 4 and a half days. Then last year I blew out my knees while, of all things, running with my dogs. The doctor said that the cartilage is going in my knees and if I want to avoid surgery no more running.

Even though I miss the running I can replace it with rowing, biking or some other aerobic sport but what about my dogs? I had to find a way to keep them in shape as well. I am still trying to work this out and it is not easy. I have had to sacrifice some of my workouts so that I have time to take the dogs out on the bike. I can not combine their work out with mine because if I go slow enough to take them on the bike it is not fast enough to give me a work out. Right now I have reduced my trips from 4 to 3 by hooking Pepper & Lizzy together and taking them at the same time. Later I will be hooking Sadie and Storm together reducing the number of trips to 2. Sadie is just learning to run with the bike so I still have to take her by her self. She is also only up to 3/4 of a mile and Storm can go on all day. Then there is the problem with the weather.

Winter is just around the corner and I can't ride my bike in the snow. Originally I was going to go to the gym and workout indoors in bad weather but then again what about the dogs. I thought about training them on a treadmill but I know how boring that is for me let alone for the dogs so I had to come up with another idea. Which I did. Cross-country Skiing.

Cross-County Skiing is a very good aerobic workout, it is done outdoors, and I can take the dogs with me. As long as my knees can take it I have decided to give it a try. I used to to down hill skiing but have never done cross-county let alone with 4 dogs. My only misgiving is that I will get lazy and let the dogs pull me and loose out on my workout, again.

Here is the plan. I have just order the equipment for the dogs, 4 harnesses, and a gangline for 4 dogs. Once I receive the equipment I will start training the dogs. Fortunately I live right next to the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath (http://www.canalwayohio.com/) which runs from Cleveland South to Zoar Ohio. This is where I normally go biking and the path is only about 8 feet wide with vegetation on both sides so unless the dogs decide to take off into the woods dragging me behind I should have no problem training them to stay on the path. By the time I teach them to pull me either on a cart or on my bike we should have some snow and they will be ready for the true test. The way I see it the worst case is that they pull me the whole way and I will still have to come home and get on the stationary bike to get my workout. But in any case we should all have a good time and they will get a good aerobic workout along with the pulling motion required to build up their chest and the tendons in their legs for future shows.

Next time Team Work

Sadie's Exercise Program Part 1

Watch and Learn. . . . . . . . . . . . . .That's a girl

Get up there. . . . . . . . . . . . . OK OK I'm trying

Almost there. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . This isn't so bad

Watch out you'll knock me off. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ta Daaaa

As you can see I have been having some problems getting Sadie to jump on the trampoline for exercise. Even with Storms help I am having a problem getting her motivated. All kidding aside in my opinion exercise is one of the most important parts of your dogs daily routine.

I can not over emphasize how important exercise is to your dogs longevity. The worst thing about owning a dog is that for most of you your best friend will only be with you for 15 years or so and if they do not get enough exercise a large amount of that time will be spent in pain. It has only been in recent history that our dogs started getting things like Cancer, Arthritis, and other degenerative diseases . When I was young I don't remember knowing anyone that lost a dog to any of these aliments. And lets face it dogs in the wild don't get any of these things.

There are two causes for this problem, the chemicals in their food and water and lack of exercise. We can take care of the nutritional part of the problem by feeding a good holistic dog food with plenty of protein and only letting them drink untreated water. That means no city tap water. Exercise, on the other hand, takes much more time and effort on our part than just choosing the correct food and in my opinion has a more profound effect on our dogs health than the food does.

Genetically our dogs and their ancestors, like humans and our ancestors were hunters. That is our dogs have been genetically engineered to spend most of the day moving and tracking game and as a result their bodies have been engineered to move. I am not going to get into the science of it here but in general each muscle, bone and tendon is designed to be used, exerted and then decay only to be replaced with new cells. The cue for all this to happen is exercise, day in day out exercise. If your dog does not get daily exercise its body will think that there is no game to hunt and as a result gives a signal to its cellular structure that it had better conserve energy and get ready for a tough winter or drought because game is scarce. The result is that after only a couple of days without exercise their bodies start to shut down. No new cells are built and they will just lay around and start to decay allowing the old unused un-replaced cells to begin to deteriorate. All the food they eat is stored as fat and is no longer converted to energy. No new cell growth takes place and the cells start to decay. They become more susceptible to decease and our dogs get things like cancer and arthritis making their later years not only painful but much shorter than they need to be.

We have done this to our dogs and to ourselves by taking an out door creature whose genetic structure demands that they move to survive by hunting, and placing them in an environment that is contrary to their genetic makeup. We stick them in crates, pens, small apartments, tie them to trees and maybe if they are lucky they get a slow leisurely walk a few times a week. To compensate for putting them in this position we let them lay on the couch, sleep in our beds and feed them junk food. We keep them in a vegetative state just so we can be greeted at the door by a friendly face with a wagging tail. We spend thousands of dollars on veterinary care trying either to save our dogs life or make them more comfortable with drugs. We treat their symptoms but do nothing to get at the root cause. Lack of exercise.

However, like the commercial says "But wait I have some good news!" and its not that you can save money on your insurance it is that you can save your dogs life and help it live a longer and more productive pain free life with daily exercise. With daily exercise decaying cells are expelled from their bodies and replace with new healthy vibrant ones. Their senses are sharpened and minds kept active. With just a small investment of time on your part you can help your dog live a longer more productive life. Now I am not talking about letting your dog out into the back yard in the hopes that he will move around enough to stay healthy. It takes much more than that. It takes keeping your dog moving for an hour or so each and every day at 50 to 75% of its capacity.

At this point the first thing that comes to mind is. That's all well and good but how can I spend and hour a day exercising my dogs, an hour grooming them, an hour training them, work a full time job, and still have a life? That's a good question. You should have ask it before you took on the reasonability of a dog. I still struggle with that question myself but I have found some things that work for me and will share them with you in my next installment.

Next time Sadie's Exercise Program Part 2.