Introduction To Safe Fitness

There seem to be two approaches to exercising puppies. There are those who do too much too soon with their pups and there are those who minimize their pups’ activity, almost wrapping them in cotton until they are nearly grown-up. So what is the right amount and type of physical activity for your puppy? What kind of exercises should you do? Can you walk, jog, or hike with your puppy?

These are all good questions! To help you find answers, leading sports medicine specialist Dr. Chris Zink and longtime breeder, Dr Gayle Watkins created the Fit For Life Puppy Program, which lays out activities puppies should and shouldn’t do from 3 weeks of age until 15 months of age.

Doing too little exercise with our pups has long-lasting effects on critical body parts, like cartilage. This can lead to issues like cruciate or knee injuries, which require expensive surgeries to correct. Do activities your pup enjoys so it will be motivated to exercise.

Doing too much or exercise has long-term detrimental effects on cartilage, bones, and tendons, which is likely to result in injury, disease, and arthritis over the pup's lifetime.

Thus, the right amount and mix of early exercise offer lifetime benefits to puppies and the young of many other animals. For our pups, these benefits include:

• healthier, stronger bones, muscles, cartilage, tendons, and joints
• lower canine hip dysplasia rates
• healthier heart and lungs
• better balance, proprioception, coordination, and muscle control, which results in fewer lifetime injuries
• healthier body weight
• improved self-confidence
• better learning
• better overall lifetime health

We also know that puppies learn best what they learn first so we want to do activities that won’t develop bad habits, like pulling on leash, running away, or obsessively sniffing the ground and eating things they find there. Instead, each of our recommendations contributes to future manners, good behavior, and better relationships with owners, as well as a stronger mind and body.

Puppy Exercise Guidelines

Download the Fit For Life Puppy book for details but here are some basic recommendations, some of which may surprise you:

• As early as 6 weeks, pups can and should go for off-leash walks over moderate terrain, meaning up and down hills, over logs, through creeks and streams. Pups can do off-leash walks daily but at a minimum, try to fit at least one in each week.
• Measure your off-leash walks by time, not distance. Most pups can go for a 45-minute stroll at their own pace by 10 weeks of age. They can go progressively longer as they mature. Take the Adventure Walk class to find out how to do these walks.
• On-leash walks are not ideal exercise for puppies. It's better to use on-leash walks for training and socialization rather than exercise. If you must walk your pup on leash for long distances or exercise, use a leash longer then 6' so your pup can move at its own pace during the walk.
• There are many simple tricks and games we can do with our pups that will get and keep them fit throughout their lives. Trick training should be a foundation piece of your pup's development. If the tricks you teach help your pup develop its body, so much the better. See Basic and Advanced Fitness Tricks for more.
• At 6 months of age, you can add strength training, like beg, to your pup's tricks.

Things You Should NOT Do With Your Pup

To protect your pup's growing body, you should not:

• Jog with your pup on a leash until it is at least 15 months old, 18 months if it is spayed or neutered. Similarly, you shouldn't do on-leash biking, rollerblading, or any other activities during which your pup can't choose its own pace.
• Allow it to jump off heights higher than its elbows (couches, beds, vehicles, porches, decks, stairs, walls) can result in serious injury and disease, like elbow dysplasia or shoulder osteochondritis dessicans. Teach your pup to wait and allow you to assist it down.
• Allow your pup leap and twist in the air or dive for balls. Games like frisbee and uncontrolled retrieving before the pup is at least a year old can cause lifetime injury.
• Allow your pup to get fat. There is no place for pudgy or chonky puppies! Keep your pup lean for a longer life!

Supplies and Gear You'll Need

You don’t need a lot for Fit For Life Puppy but the program will go better with a few items.

1. Lots of delicious, small, soft treats
2. Your pup's collar and leash
3. A non-slip floor, such as carpeting or a yoga mat
4. If you want to up your pup's fitness game, get these items:

• Wobble Board – an 18-inch human fitness or dog wobble board
• Ladder – Home extension ladder, agility ladder or a homemade ladder of PVC or pool noodles
• Plank – A 12-foot long 1 x 8 or 1 x 10 plank, elevated on bricks or cinder blocks, or an agility dog-walk plank (if you have a dog walk)
• Pick Up Sticks – Eight 5-foot-long, 3/4- to 1-inch diameter, PVC poles from Home Depot or Lowe’s or eight 5-foot jump bars

Keeping Your Puppy Lean

One of the challenges during the first year of our puppies' lives is keeping them lean. Some pups grow steadily while others grow in fits and starts. In all cases, your job is to figure out how much to feed so your pup grows well but never (NEVER!!) gets fat.

How to Tell If Your Pup is Overweight? We hate to be the bearers of bad news but too many people think their pups and dogs are at a good weight when in reality, they are not! We hear it all the time. “He’s all muscle!” No, he isn’t. “She’s just a big girl.” No, your puppy is overweight! How do you tell if your pup is fat or not?

• Looking at your dog probably won’t help you at all. Our eyes aren’t accurate assessors of increasing weight in our dogs, especially since such small increases can matter to a dog’s health. For example, a 1-pound gain in a 10-lb dog is equivalent to a 15-pound weight gain in a 150-lb person. It’s hard to comprehend that one pound matters that much but it does!
• Scales can definitely help but many of us can’t monitor our pup's weight at the vet often enough, especially in today’s environment. You’ll make more progress if you weigh your pup at home. If you have a small or medium-sized dog, simply pick it up and get on your own bathroom scale. Subtract your weight and you’ll be left with your dog’s. The bigger challenge is with large or giant dogs. Although it’s a bit of an investment, these W.C. Redman home scales are great because they are accurate, stable, and slip easily under a bed or shelf to store. They have a smaller version, too.
• Touching your dog is the most valuable way to assess its body condition. You should be able to feel between each of your pup's ribs using The Knuckle Test.

The Knuckle Test

You can use the knuckle test to monitor your pup's weight. Here’s how to do it:

1. Make a fist with your right hand.
2. Using your left hand, rub your fingers over the knuckles of your right hand. You can clearly feel each individual knuckle, with little fat between them.
3. Now open your right hand and again run your fingers over your knuckles. You can feel each bone but not as distinctly as before. Most likely, you can feel a small fat pad between the knuckles.
4. Finally, turn your right hand over and run the fingers of your left hand over the undersides of your knuckles. No longer can you feel bones and instead, you feel rounded muscles with little indentations between the fingers.
5. Now run your hand over your pup's ribcage at its broadest point.
6. Which of your hand positions does your pup feel like?

• If it feels like your knuckles on a closed fist, your dog is athletically thin. This is fine as long as your pup doesn’t get any thinner.
• If its ribs feel like the top of your open hand, your pup is at an appropriate weight but you need to make sure it doesn’t put any more weight on.
• If it feels like the underside of your hand, your pup is overweight and needs to get some weight off.

Get Started on Your Pup's Exercise

Now dig into the Basic Fitness Tricks and Advanced Fitness Tricks to develop your pup's brain and body.

References

• Avidog International (2018). Research on the Effects of Spaying and Neutering.
• Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology (2017). Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for The Early Years (0-4 Years): An Integration of Physical Activity, Sedentary Behaviour, and Sleep.
• Jones, G, K Bennell and M Cicuttini (2003). Effect of physical activity on cartilage development in healthy kids. British Journal of Sports Medicine, Oct; 37(5): 382–383.
• Krontveit, RI, A Nødtvedt, et al. (2012). Housing- and exercise-related risk factors associated with the development of hip dysplasia as determined by radiographic evaluation in a prospective cohort of Newfoundlands, Labrador Retrievers, Leonbergers, and Irish Wolfhounds in Norway. American Journal of Veterinary Research June, Vol. 73: 838-846.
• van Weeren, PR, PAJ Brama, A Barneveld (2000) Exercise at Young Age May Influence the Final Quality of the Equine Musculoskeletal System. AAEP Proceedings, Vol 46.
• World Health Organization (2018). Global Strategy for Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health: Physical activity and young people