Treadmills!

Ok-Go, Here It Goes Again


There's been a lot of chatter going on about conditioning workouts with our dogs, so I've come to the conclusion that we need to share our knowledge regarding the subject. I'll start off this discussion with my treadmill experiences...

I have trained two of my dogs to walk on our treadmill, each in diferent ways. Our machine goes up to 10 miles per hour. My dogs and myself, however, do not. The fastest setting to date that we've gone is a 5.3mph jog. My dogs also have diferent feelings for this activity; Molly absolutely despises it and will only use it if I walk with her on the machine and feed her every few minutes as a reward. Hank, on the other hand, finds the activity itself rewarding and will run at any speed with any distraction with me standing idly by his side. (This has also greatly improved his heeling, but that's a different issue.)




This is probably how Molly feels when I run her... Caged in. This is one method you could use to train your dog to walk on a treadmill, or you could just leash your dog up and walk them with you as I do with Molly. My goal is to run Hank on the treadmill at at least a trot for two laps every morning, and two more when I get home when the golf season's over.


Here are some treadmill related Dog-Links:
http://www.jogadog.com/
http://www.pitbulllovers.com/training-articles/training-your-pit-bull-for-treadmill-work.html