Episode 67: Canine Conditioning with Kristin Sandstede and Dixie Rae Sick

Laura is joined by a couple of canine fitness coaches, Kristin Sandstede and Dixie Rae Sick, to discuss some fitness games and exercises that are great to do indoors.

Kristin is a professional dog trainer and owns Big Moose Dog Training. When people think of dog exercises, their minds often go to cardio-focused activities such as running, playing fetch, agility, and so on. While high-cardio exercise is important for dogs, it’s important to spend time on mental exercises. Whether it’s obedience or learning new tricks, mental exercises can tire out your dog just as well (if not better) than physical exercises.

A great way to exercise your dog’s brain is to use food puzzles during meal time. This will keep the dog occupied while you can multitask on other things, while also stimulating your dog’s brain. There are lots of other interactive toys that are great at exercising your dogs; try some out and see what your dog likes!

Kristin goes on to talk about different ways you can condition your dog to keep them physically fit. By regularly having your dog perform certain stretches and exercises, you can decrease the risk of injury.

Next, Laura chats with Dixie to get some ideas on effective exercises we can do with our dogs. The first idea that comes to mind for most people is walking. Walking your dog on a gentle incline is great at working certain groups of muscles - going both uphill and downhill. Another idea is to train your dog in going from a stand to a down, and from a down to a stand. This works the dog’s core which helps with balance and can prevent future injuries.

Listen to the full episode to get some more exercise ideas from Dixie!

Transcript

Laura Reeves [0:40] Alright, guys: today we are wrapping up back-to-school month with some great ideas for canine conditioning and fitness, so I’ve pulled together a couple of interviews with canine fitness coaches Kristin Sandstede and Dixie Rae Sick. And they are going to give you guys some amazing training and exercise plans as we all head into the dreary winter weather ahead. These are almost all workouts and games that are ideal for indoors, on days the weather outside is frightful, as they say. First up, Kristin has some outstanding suggestions for getting your dog’s brain engaged to help tire out the body. 

LR [1:29] Welcome, Kristin!

Kristin Sandstede [1:30] Thank you so much for having me! I’m super excited to be here.

LR [1:33] I’m super excited for you to talk to people. You’ve got some great stuff.

KS [1:37] I am a certified professional dog trainer. I am one of five in the state of Nebraska, and only 2 of us have had our skills assessed. I am also an Association of Professional Dog Trainers—not only a member, but a trainer that is able to teach and test for their Canine Life and Social Skills program, as well as the AKC Canine Good Citizen. And I just got back this fall from Kyra Sundance’s Canine Conditioning seminar, and I am now a Canine Conditioning coach as well. Super fun and exciting stuff.

LR [2:11] Perfect! And that’s what we’re going to talk about: this canine conditioning, right?

KS [2:15] I hope so! Among other things. Just ways that people can help meet their dogs exercise needs, because one of the biggest reasons bad behavior happens is because dogs are bored. Bored dogs cause more trouble and drama and headache than any other dog.

LR [2:33] And they wind up getting rehomed and going to shelters, and it’s a bad scene, right?

KS [2:38] Exactly. The average dog has 3-5 homes over the course of their life, and I think those numbers are way too high. My goal for anybody who comes in contact with me as a client or as a pet owner is just to reduce those numbers. I think that’s just ridiculous. Ridiculous numbers! Education, education, education, and teaching people how to do better and how to have dogs fit into the homes that they live in, and fit well. 

LR [3:07] I love that!

KS [3:08] One of the things people think of when they think of exercise is they think of just straight-up cardio. I’m also a triathlete. So when people think of exercising and exercising their dogs, they think swimming, biking, running, playing fetch for an hour—those types of repetitive, high-cardio workouts. And they overlook the benefits of mental exercise, whether it be obedience or shaping tricks: getting those dogs to use their brains for thinking instead of OCD “Get the ball, get the ball, get the ball! Bite the frisbee! Bite the frisbee!” Those types of OCD things. You can get your dog twice as tired in half the amount of time using mental exercise.

LR [3:52] I love that. 

KS [3:53] I think it’s overlooked.

LR [3:55] I think it’s totally overlooked! Let’s start with nose work. Give us some ideas of really concrete things people can do to get their dogs using their brains and their noses and not have to go outside.

KS [4:05] Absolutely. Fantastic. One of the things that I heard somebody talking about: “I got a new puppy,” a trainer. And was like, “I didn’t use a food bowl to feed my puppy for the first 6 months I had them.” And I thought wow! Fantastic goals. I did not make it that far with my Wirehaired. Sometimes you just need the ease of dumping the food in the dish, serving it up like a maître d’ and getting to the next thing on your to-do list. However, there’s lots of ways to use meal time for brain time. So there are a million food puzzle toys out on the market. Instead of just serving up that food in a dish, make your dog actually work for their food. I stress that really highly in the winter months when nobody is playing outside. I also push it really, really hard in August and September when the kids go back to school. Suddenly morning is mayhem. We’re trying to get everybody out the door, to the bus, and the dog isn’t getting the exercise that they got in the summer. My two favorite food toys are the Boggle Ball or a Buster Cube. One looks like a giant dice, and the other one is actually a hard plastic ball. You measure the food out, pour it in, and the dog has to push it around and 3-5 kibbles kick out depending on where it is in the rotation. Not a toy to do during movie night because it’s a hard plastic toy. 

LR [5:34] Makes a lot of noise. 

KS [5:35] A lot, a lot of noise. However, it was awesome when I had a 5-month-old Wirehaired puppy because I could babygate her in the kitchen, throw down her Boggle Ball, and I could hear where she was in the kitchen. Rattle, rattle, rattle, WHAM! Rattle, rattle, rattle, WHAM! And I could kind of keep tabs on her when I was in the other room getting ready for my day. 

LR [5:55] I’m just hearing this in my head. It’s fabulous! 

KS [5:59] Linoleum floors! Banging into the walls and cupboards! But I could keep tabs on my dog and exercise her and slow down her eating. I’m all about multitasking. The other one that I love is—you know you’re a dog geek when people get you dog toys for your birthday. So I got a SmellyMat. First of all, I have SniffyMats, where you make them with fleece, tied in knots. So I have two of those. And they’re like 12 inches by 12 inches. I got this SmellyMat. It was purchased off of Amazon. I have pictures of it on my Big Moose Facebook and Instagram. But it is huge. It’s probably almost 2 feet in diameter. It looks like the shape of a rose. I haven’t even used all of the extra stuff that comes with it because you have all these pull-out toys that also hold food. I can put 2 cups of dog food in this thing. I timed it one day. It took my Wirehaired 30 minutes to get all of her breakfast down. Because there’s so many pockets and envelopes and pull-outs. They’ve got books. All these removable open-up-able pieces. And I’m just really, really, really impressed. It has 7 different pull-out pieces, plus the actual mat that lays on the floor that each piece of the rose has space for food to be hidden in between and inside, which was awesome.

LR [7:31] Can I just interrupt here for a minute? Because I have your dog’s siblings and relatives, and I can see some frustration where it’s just a shredded rose by the time…

KS [7:42] Yes! With some of these canvas pull-out pieces, I thought that’s where we were going with that, so I really helped the first few times. When she started chewing on it, I’m like, “But look! Wait! Here!” And I would open it up so she could get her face in. And then the lightbulb clicked on, and she was like, “Oh! I don’t have to eat through it. I can open it up.” 

LR [8:06] So this is an interactive toy. This is not “throw your dog in the dog crate with its SnuffleMat and let it go at it.” 

KS [8:14] Right. Okay, so the first few times it was interactive. Now I can leave her unsupervised. Now would I leave it in her crate all day? No, probably not. Because there’s a lot of fleece, chew-up-able stuff, and I really like it. But yes. The way our dogs are designed—their nose smells so much more than our noses do. And it lights up more of their brain for them because of that than it does for us. So if you want lazy ways to exercise your dog, call me. I have a hundred thousand lazy ways to exercise your dog.

LR [8:53] Which is a little funny coming from a triathlete, Kristin! I’m just going to say that! 

KS [8:58] I know! People are very surprised to learn that I’m incredibly lazy. I’ll put up a 3-hour bike ride, 50 miles, but I’m lazy. I’ll do a 3-hour race, but I’m lazy! So I have a million ways to exercise your dog without having to work very hard.

LR [9:15] Love it. 

KS [9:16] Because after a race, I don’t want to be out walking. That’s recovery. 

LR [9:21] One of my favorites is to throw the toy to the bottom of the stairs, make them run down and get it and bring it back up. That’s my lazy solution. 

KS [9:29] Exactly. I use that all the time. We actually just used the stairs for this week’s Canine Cardio Workout, focused all on core. Because the best way to prevent injury, whether you’re a human or a dog, is to have a strong core. If our back muscles are weak, it’s really easy to throw out a disc or to hurt yourself, things like that. We actually used the stairs in almost slow-motion movement to get our dogs to slowly go down the stairs and stand in that decline or incline position, instead of just ramming up full tilt and jamming down 100 miles an hour, hitting 4 out of the 14 stairs. Stairs are fantastic. You can use them for a million different things. 

LR [10:20] What if you don’t have stairs? What’s my next project?

KS [10:22] If you don’t have stairs, we’ll just transition into more canine cardio, since I brought it up. There’s a lot of things that you can use in your house to help strengthen your dog’s muscles and to help them be at a better fitness level than they are right now. Whether it be you have a young, gangly teenage dog who’s growing faster than they can control their limbs, or whether you have an adult dog who—obviously dock-diving season is over. Or a senior dog. My English Setter is in double-digits now. Keeping those dogs at the best fitness level that they can be! Some of the props that we used for our Month of Canine Cardio is we used a step-stool to get our dogs to step up. And then we used cookies to have them stretch their neck, so look right till your nose touches your ribs, look left till your nose touches your ribs, look down without bending down, and look straight up. Stretching those neck muscles (which is really easy to tweak, the neck; we’ve all done it). The dogs are cooped up, so they’re ramming and jamming inside and they either get T-boned or they’re playing tug and they whip the toy too hard. So we use just a kitchen step-stool. We used stairs. We used our couches as well. We used couch cushions. Because while I am in the dog training business, and I’ve got a lot of awesome fit dog equipment, not everybody has that. Use what you’ve got. Having your dog stand with their rear legs on a couch cushion, that has more movement than rear legs on the floor, so they have to balance to manage that movement. We also used some stuff that some people will have, like an exercise ball. We got the dog’s front legs up on the exercise ball and had them moving their legs forward and backward, which is a really great, low-impact workout for your giant dogs: Great Danes, Wolfhounds. If they’ve got a sore shoulder, having them stand on their hind legs, when you start moving that ball, there’s less weight on that front end because the rears are supporting it. That was a nice lower-impact, working on leg mobility. The next prop that we used was actually a step riser, like if you were going to take a step aerobics class. We had the dogs sidestep down the length of the step riser, down and back. We’re all really great about having our dogs move forward—running, running, running, those same repetitive movements. But we don’t have our dogs do any kind of lateral motion, so using a step riser to side-step was one of the props that we used as well. We also used the kitchen stair step. But sometimes we needed a little bit lower, just to give our dogs an object to hold their front feet on. A phone book! Having your dog step up on a phone book because nobody uses phone books anymore, right? We just google search and hit call. Getting that phone book out, having your dog step up on it on their front feet, and then using your cookies so that they pivot. Imagine the front feet stay on, and the rear feet go in a circle, going clockwise and counterclockwise. Again, that lateral motion helps use the muscles in a different way. We also had the dogs going in reverse. So, again, instead of forward, forward, forward—having our dogs back up. In order to “teach” that, I just had people pull either their couch or their dog crate away from the wall. Drop a treat in that end where the crate’s butted up against the wall, so the dog goes in there, grabs their treat, but there’s not enough room to turn around, so they have to back out. Just getting our dogs to back up.

LR [14:35] We teach that all the time with conformation, right? I teach my dogs to back up when they’re free-stacking. I use a cookie, and I walk towards them, and they back up. They have to back up in order to get the cookie. 

KS [14:46] Exactly. So teaching our dogs to use their muscles in a different way. Yes, we had an exercise ball. We had a stair stepper. We used the stairs in your house. We used the kitchen step stool. We used—

LR [15:00] A phone book! 

KS [15:02] Anything you’ve got, we can put to good use. A lot of the things, quite honestly, that I use in my Canine Cardio and Puppy Parkour class, I got off of Amazon, off the human exercises section of Amazon, because it works just the same for all of your dogs. Get them to use those muscles. Again, they have to think about: “What am I doing? Where am I moving?” Again, that’s using that thinking part of their brain. We also did—the horse people call it...

LR [15:38] Cavalettis!

KS [15:39] Thank you. I always mess that word up.

LR [15:41] I love cavalettis. We teach cavalettis a lot here. The problem that I have till this remodel gets done: I don’t have room in my house to put cavalettis, but cavalettis are wonderful. Basement.

KS [15:54] Again, that’s something you can use your Amazon boxes for. Line them up and use your cookie to get them to step in and out of those different heighted boxes. Different heights is actually good because then they really have to think: “I don’t always have to raise my foot to the same height.” They actually have to be mindful of where they put those feet.

LR [16:14] Okay, so you’re using it for cardio in a very different way. We use it to get dogs to think about where they put their feet when they’re moving, so if you have a young dog that’s got all legs and doesn’t know where to put his legs, we use the cavalettis to teach them proper foot timing. 

KS [16:29] I slow it down. I don’t use it necessarily in a gait pattern. I use it to slow it down to teach them to be aware of where they’re putting their feet. Rear foot awareness. So I have these little fit paws jumps that I use in class. Unless you have a toy breed, nobody really has to jump the highest setting. It’s at ankle height for almost everybody, but I notice a lot of times dogs will kick it over with their back feet in class. What I have noticed is the dogs who are stressed are the ones who kick it over in class. I think that’s because when we are under stress, we lose our fine motor skills. Part of that has to do with how hard or soft your dog takes treats and I think with dogs, since they have 4 feet instead of 2, they forget they have those back feet. The front feet go over, and they’re a little stressed, and they knock it over with their back feet. I’ll use the cavalettis boxes as well for side-stepping, with both the front feet and the rear feet. Just the rears, to side-step down and back. 

LR [17:41] See, I think this is good! We’ve got all kinds of stuff we can do where we’re repurposing some of the same equipment, right?

KS [17:50] Absolutely. Make my money go further! Here’s the thing: for pet dog owners, they don’t want to have to invest a million dollars to have stuff to do stuff with their dogs. I like to find ways so that people can engage more with their dogs with whatever house/furniture they have. Use what you’ve got to make the most of what you have. A lot of these fine muscle things also help for people who are doing competitive obedience as well. Getting those dogs rear leg awareness so that they can slide in—

LR [18:29] Agility. 

KS [18:30] When they do their finish left and finish right. Absolutely. You don’t need a bunch of fancy jumps to work your agility dog in the winter. Having low jumps and having them in a sit very close to the jump—and it’s very, very low—so when they’re in a sit and then you ask them to jump over something, they’re actually having to power off those rear legs instead of bunny-hopping with all 4 over the jump. We used it in Canine Cardio on leg week to have our dogs focus on those rear legs jumping. But that’s something that the agility people can help practice. We used a can of corn, a bar stool, to teach our dogs to get around, which means just go out and around an object and come back to me. By doing that, that stretches your obliques on the outside and you’re actually doing a crunch on the inside. If you have senior dogs who are starting to have some degenerative disc and spine, Canine Cardio isn’t going to solve that problem, but the stronger your muscles are around the spine, the more it’s going to help prevent injury and reduce pain. Even senior dogs who are—we all kind of fall apart as we get older…

LR [19:48] Don’t even talk to me about it.

LR [19:52] Alright, guys! Don’t forget that all Good Dog Breeder Members can use the email breederofficehours@gooddog.com to ask specific questions or discuss a sensitive topic. Send your email by Monday and get your response in Susan Patterson’s “Straight From the Whelping Box” column by Thursday. Awesome! And Avidog’s “Your Litter A–Z” course is available to all Good Dog Breeder Members. Just log into your Good Dog account and then go to the Good Breeder Center, where you’ll find A–Z, as well as “Savvy Socialization” courses created by Gayle Watkins just for you. Next up: Dixie’s bringing us some really, really manageable physical fitness exercises that we can all do to keep our dogs strong and healthy over the course of their lives.

LR [20:53] Welcome, Dixie! 

Dixie Rae Sick [20:53] Hi, Laura! Thanks for inviting me. 

LR [20:57] Give us some ideas. Give us your top 3, top 5 suggestions for exercises.

DRS [21:02] Okay, one is good old-fashioned walking, but walking on an incline. This is a 15-45% incline at a very slow walk. It makes them drive off that rear and really use their muscles. It helps them when they’re doing it uphill. The iliopsoas, which is a flexor muscle in the hind-end, in the loin—it really strengthens this and gets them to use their rear muscles. People always want to do this at a trot or a run. A slow walk is going to work those muscles more for that deep-down drive. And then you get to turn around and walk back downhill at a very, very slow walk. And then they use their centric muscles, which will tighten up their front. It’s a different type of exercise for their front ends. They can go downhill really slow.

LR [21:54] So are you recommending they do this on the treadmill or you’re recommending they go outside and actually walk with their dog?

DRS [22:01] Actually go outside and walk your dog! It benefits you. It benefits your dog. It doesn’t have to be much of an incline. You don’t want it to be an extreme incline. And it is a very slow walk. You can do this up and down, 100 feet, 10 times. 

LR [22:18] Excellent. And another exercise that you like?

DRS [22:20] My favorite: down to stand and stand to down. 

LR [22:25] Okay, good.

DRS [22:26] Core is very, very important for every part of this dog. Core strengthen the dog, which is your lower abdominal muscles. 

LR [22:33] Same like us.

DRS [22:34] Exactly. It’s your core that gives you your balance. It’s a very easy exercise to teach. It’s, to me, accordion down. I don’t teach down from the sit. It does nothing for the core. A dog sits and lies down is just a plop. They’re not using any muscle. Stand your dog up. Take your bait between their nose, bring it down to the front paws, and get them to accordion down. And then you just take your bait and pull them back up to a stand. Once they learn what you prefer, they do this without moving any of their feet. This is a down to a stand, a stand to a down. And it’s very core-strengthening.

LR [23:14] How many repetitions, if you will, will you do with that?

DRS [23:17] I would start with 10. It’s not so much repetition as it is the quality of what you’re doing. First is just getting the dog to do this. And then getting the dog to do it 10 times in a row. It’s not a fast-type thing. You want them to do all this in a slow motion down to stand so that it uses more muscles to do this. Then you can go 10 times and take a 30-second break, a minute break, and do another set. Eventually you can work up to 3 sets of these, of doing 10 in each set.

LR [23:46] So your recommendation is you’re putting the dog through the same kind of exercise program that you would put yourself through. You’re taking the dog to the gym. 

DRS [23:55] Exactly. Another one of my favorites is the same static stand on a hard surface. When they stand still, you take your cookie or whatever and you get them just to lift their head up. With the cookie, bring their nose up. You can watch their lumbar area contract. Just with the head lift! That alone will help strengthen a top loin. 

LR [24:16] So they’re standing flat on the floor, and you’re having them move their head, lift their chin, if you will.

DRS [24:24] Yes, lift their chin. If you watch (you can’t always see on a coated dog; I love using one of my Terriers to demonstrate this), all of a sudden, you’ll see that lumbar area contract. The lower back.

LR [24:34] Do you do this again in repetition or how do we work that exercise?

DRS [24:38] Yes! You can do that 10 times a day. What my trainer encourages me to do is in the morning, take your kibble (those that eat kibble) and take 10 pieces of kibble. Get them to stand and get them to lift their head up and down, up and down. And then you can go from there to bringing their head down between their front legs and side to side. Just using kibble, a fun little exercise in the morning. It’s a time issue, but it’s not that much time. It takes less than 10-15 minutes a day to exercise the dog.

LR [25:05] Excellent! Next on our list? We’ve got one more exercise that’s a good one to do.

DRS [25:09] Another great one to do is side-stepping. You’re going to put your dog pretty much face-into-a-wall. The dog is going to be perpendicular to the wall. You’re just going to put a little body pressure on the dog, with maybe a cookie in front of its nose, and teach it to go sideways. 

LR [25:29] This sounds more complicated.

DRS [25:32] This is a little more complicated. Try teaching a horse to sidestep. Just going to put pressure on the rear with the cookie in the front, and you’re going to teach them to step one over the other, sideways. 

LR [25:43] And what are we building with that?

DRS [25:44] That is your adduction and adduction muscles in both your front and rear. Those are just, again, stabilizers to balance the body. Teaching them to bow in the front till their elbows are basically on the floor. Take the nose between the front legs and bring it down till they’re bowing. A lot of dogs will bow naturally. But bring them down to where, from their elbows forward, are on the ground. You do this slowly and hold it down there, and then bring them back up. 

LR [26:16] Very good. Say you only have one dog. And you’re going to go through these exercises each morning before you go to work. How long do you think the whole thing is going to take you?

DRS [26:25] Once you’ve learned it and the dog has learned it, 15-20 minutes. 

LR [26:29] Perfect. Alright, everybody. Thanks for taking us with you today. If you’re not a member of Good Dog’s community and you’re interested in more information like this (as well as gaining access to our exclusive benefits), you can apply to join today at gooddog.com/join. That’s gooddog.com/join.