Like people, dogs need exercise to stay healthy. The amount of exercise your dog needs varies according to breed, size, natural activity level, age, and other factors. If you have physical limitations, either temporarily or permanently, how can you provide your dog with a healthy level of exercise? One basic rule will help you.
Exercise the Mind Along with the Body
Dogs are smart animals, and using their brains helps them adapt to human society. It also helps them to use their bodies wisely, to exercise with less risk of injury.
Start building your dog’s ability to think as soon as you get the dog. Groom or massage your dog for a few minutes each day to help the dog develop composure, the ability to calmly accept handling, and other good qualities including a bond with you. A dog who’s wildly reacting to everything in the environment is not able to think.
Practice sit-stay and down-stay with your dog daily for your first several months together. These exercises develop your leadership with your dog in a nonconfrontational way, and further build the dog’s capacity to stop and think before acting.
Pet and cuddle your dog in ways the dog enjoys, and involve other people in this activity. When your dog is showing a calm, happy attitude to people, have them give the dog small treats.
Don’t give treats when the dog is showing tension because that tends to increase tension in future. You want the treats to be associated in the dog’s mind with happy acceptance of people. This is important so that other people can handle your dog when you’re not physically up to doing so, and for routine care at the veterinary office.
Treats also help your dog’s thinking ability when you use them to reward behavior that you like. Reward the dog for eliminating in the proper place, for looking into your eyes when you say the dog’s name, and for coming when called.
If your dog needs a little persuasion at first to learn to enjoy grooming and toenail trimming, guess what you can do to help? You bet—rewards! Remember to reward the exact behavior you want, not the behavior you don’t want that occurs just after the right behavior. The treats must be given at the right moments. Use treats as rewards, kept out of sight until it’s time to give one, not as bribes you dangle while you plead with the dog to do as you ask!
Every dog deserves training. Research to find the method you want. If you’re able, attend weekly training classes with your dog. Many class instructors can help you adjust the exercises to your physical limitations. If this is not feasible for you, take private lessons. Since you get more attention in a private lesson, you may find you can take them a bit less often than weekly after you get a good start.
To explore your options for training your dog in spite of any disability you might have, read the two volumes “Teamwork” and “Teamwork II,” by Stewart Nordensson and Lydia Kelley. You’ll find methods, things you and your dog can learn together, and a great deal of inspiration in these books. Dog training has become so advanced that there are many ways to work around our disabilities.
Continue formal classes or lessons until your dog’s good behavior and your handling skills are solid. This makes for greater security that you and your dog will stay together for the dog’s whole life, and for a happier dog. Dogs love knowing what we want from them. Training builds wonderful communication. This is the foundation for you to easily exercise your dog even if you have physical limitations.
Create a structured life for the dog. You don’t have to do everything at the exact same time every day—that could get as boring for the dog as for you. But make sure your dog is fed at least two meals a day, has adequate opportunities to eliminate, physical touching, time to “be a dog,” and other basic needs solidly met every day.
Don’t put your dog in the position of worrying whether someone will remember to provide a meal. Be sure the dog has adequate (plus at least one extra just in case) opportunities to eliminate so the dog won’t worry about that. Dogs whose schedules get too disrupted often develop separation anxiety, which is miserable for them as well as difficult for their families to manage.
If your limitations are such that at times you cannot provide your dog’s care, make arrangements for someone else to do so. You will likely find that a strong desire to take care of your dog helps you cope better with your physical problems and the depression that can accompany physical ills. Pushing yourself enough to get up and care for the dog can keep you going when perhaps few other things would. This is thought to be one reason people with dogs live longer and enjoy better health.
Teach your dog to chew dog toys in preference to other things. This training is accomplished by patiently redirecting the dog to the dog toys over and over, until the dog automatically makes the right choice.
Until your dog reliably chews dog toys and eliminates in the proper places, you’ll need to confine the dog to a safe place such as a crate when you cannot supervise. Supervise—and teach!—the dog outside the confinement area as much as possible, though. The dog isn’t learning anything in the crate, and also is not exercising either mind or body. It’s just a place to rest and stay safe.
Whenever you use a crate or other confinement (such as a small room with a baby gate across the doorway), how you release the dog from confinement is important. At first when the dog’s need to potty may be urgent due to lack of good physical control, you may find it’s a mad rush to the potty area from the crate.
But as soon as possible, s-l-o-w things down. Have the dog sit and wait when you open the crate door or baby gate, until you give permission for the dog to exit. Use a calm voice for that permission. Take the dog to eliminate soon, but not in a mad rush. Delay meals or playtimes for a few minutes after the release. Don’t let the release from confinement become an “explosion”! It’s safer for you and for you dog to form this habit of coming calmly out of confinement.
The proper chewing choices and other training for safe behavior in the house will eventually enable you to give your dog more indoor freedom. This allows the dog more exercise padding around the house pursuing doggy passions, than if the dog had to be crated to stay out of trouble. Be sure to dog-proof your house by keeping harmful and valuable things out reach.
Activities
Exercising a dog doesn’t have to be an athletic event for the human. Many people use a dog park for exercise, but that is an effort, since you have to take the dog to the park, jump in and break up any altercations with other dogs, take the dog home, and clean the dog up afterward. Dog parks are not clean places. If your dog picks up illnesses, parasites, or injuries there, that’s more work and expense on you, too. So let’s explore other exercise options:
1. Teach your dog to retrieve. There must be 50 methods for teaching a dog to retrieve, truly something for everyone. Retrieving is natural for dogs—how else could they carry anything? Teach your dog to retrieve, and you’ll be able to build a lot of other activities from that great behavior.
2. Searching tasks. Once your dog learns to retrieve, you can walk through your house or yard (change your shoes or take them off, so the scent will be different from the other times you’ve walked there on the same day), drop a toy or other article, and then put your dog on the trail. Before you walk the track, put the dog where curious canine eyes can’t memorize the hiding place. The first few times, show the dog the item before you put the dog into the holding area.
You can do this game with something of yours that you want the dog to learn to locate for you, such as your keys. Until your dog has learned to retrieve, you can play the search game with a treat.
3. Teach tricks for treats. Follow the time-honored tradition of rewarding your dog with treats for learning and performing tricks. This can be any silly thing you and the dog both enjoy, and ideas abound online and in books. You can do this with or without a clicker. Learning tricks together prepares you and your dog to move into more serious tasks.
4. Find dinner. Hiding your dog’s dinner around the house or yard makes for exercise at mealtime. It can also improve the picky eater’s appetite.
5. Put food in toys. The Buster Cube and the Kong were some of the first food-container toys available for dogs, but there are many choices. A puzzle, a workout and a treat all in one, these items can exercise and entertain at the same time.
6. Provide interactive toys, and vary the toys. Toys that make funny noises, move in jerky motions, and interact with the dog in other ways are more and more available. These toys interest dogs more if they’re not constantly available. People whose dogs have big toy collections often find it helps to rotate the toys, so that every few days the dog gets to play with things that haven’t been out recently.
Keep in mind that no toy is safe for all dogs, and that multiple dogs in the same house may fight over toys that are “too” exciting. Separate your multiple dogs when they’re enjoying such items, and monitor your dog’s use of any toy.
7. Teach your dog to assist you. Whether it’s picking up socks you drop on the way to the laundry or learning to return anything you drop right back to your hand, a retrieving dog can be a wonderful helper. You don’t have to be disabled to benefit from this kind of help, and let’s face it, all of us get disabled temporarily once in awhile. A sprained ankle, a broken wrist, a sore back—it doesn’t take much, and it usually happens with no warning.
Besides having a dog who can assist you, the dog will enjoy life more, too. Dogs love to feel useful. Just be realistic. It takes an extraordinary dog to pick a dropped steak up off the floor and hand it back to you unmolested! So teach your retrieving dog to “leave it” on cue.
If what you’ve dropped is food—especially food toxic to dogs—or broken glass or other item you don’t want the dog to touch, you’ll need “leave it.” Don’t be harsh with “leave it,” or your dog will be afraid to retrieve anything. This clear and flexible communication is why you learn to train with your dog.
8. Go for a walk. Even a short walk can be a great mental lift for both you and the dog. If you’re not able to do this, consider letting a trusted friend take the dog for walks. Speed and distance aren’t as important as the dog having a positive experience away from the house.
Even an outing in your car with neither you nor the dog getting out of the car is good mental and social exercise for the dog. There’s physical exercise to it, too: getting in and out of the car, looking out the windows, balancing as the car moves, and maybe mooching a treat at the bank’s drive-through window. Certainly it gets the dog’s heart beating faster.
9. Have a play date with a compatible dog. If your dog is up to hard exercise, a play date with a dog of similar size, opposite sex and a friendly nature can provide that. You’ll need a safe location, preferably a clean, fenced back yard. All other things being equal, it can be more peaceful to take the female dog to the male’s house until they’re easy-going pals. One-on-one, the dogs can form a relationship more safely than the melee of a dog park.
Don’t get another dog as a playmate for your dog if it would be too much of a strain on your time, energy or finances to give good care to each of them as individuals. If resources are not a problem, wait until you’ve had your first dog at least two years and gone through solid training and adjustment to each other. Then adding another dog of the opposite sex and similar size can work well. You may realize at that point, though, that your dog is perfectly happy not having to share your home with another dog.
Lots to Do!
You can exercise your dog’s body and mind in plenty of ways in spite of physical limitations on your part. In the process, you and your dog can have a good life together.