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Conditioning/Competing vs Time off?

1K views 3 replies 4 participants last post by  Mikey 
#1 ·
As a follow up to the conditioning thread, how much time do you give you dog off?
 
#2 ·
Well, since I can not give any infortmation on Beau since my father trained and trialed her when I was younger I will post about Stark.

Stark is 9, almost 10 months old now.

We train daily.

Every day we do 3-4, 10-15 minute (maybe a little less) obedience lessons. This does not include our walks, meetings of other dogs and people, and everyday life where we are constantly "training".

We are even training when we play ball (recall, out, down, throw ball, repeat) so he does not see it as training. He thinks we are playing, which we are.

Formal training looks like this:

Monday:
Obedience training and some agility training depending on how much time I have after classes.
Tuesday:
Agility class which last 1 hour.

Wedensday:
Tracking which can last 20 minutes to 1 hour.
Obedience training with distractions around our neighbourhood/town/city/etc..

Thursday:
Obedience class which last 1 hour.
Tracking which can be anywhere from 20 minutes to 1 hour.
We hike and do some informal training on the trail.

Friday:
Tracking which can be anywhere from 20 minutes to 1 hour.
We hike and do some informal training on the trail.

Saturday:
Schutzhund (tracking, protection and obedience), this usually last about 2-3 hours or more, but with breaks inbetween.

Sunday:
Agility training at home or at our club, this can last anywhere from 1-2 hours with breaks inbetween and crazyness playtimes with the other dogs.. lol.

This is our formal training schedule and one that I keep to keep us both on 'track'.

If Stark is just not listening and interested in something else and I can tell he is not having fun, we stop and do something else for a while then try again. If he is still not "feeling it" we stop for the day and do some fun things that he enjoys (tug, ball, hiking, stick throwing, etc..).

My dogs "time off" is not sitting around the house, they won't do it. Yes, they do settle, but it takes a lot for that to happen. They like to be on the go, learning and "playing". They love doing things with me and so when we train (either informal or not) they are having a good time.

I am not competeting until the spring with Stark so I can only talk about our training schedule up until now. It has been increased since the time he was a puppy but we still hold the same acitivities as before, just larger amounts of time are dedicated to it now. We have also increased the difficulty.
 
#3 ·
Since we do a more formalized exercise pattern, there is built in recovery in the mini-week cycles as well as the longer periods. In practicality this means that a hard day is followed by an easy day as well as a 3 week period dedicated for recovery after competition season ends.
 
#4 ·
We don't compete in anything, but we don't really have a lot of time off either-we do the dog park for over an hour almost every day. I'd never thought about it in those terms-horses who are atheletes often get an off season. Though I suppose we have one-ten months (or so) of winter-limits how much exercise (the dog park or a walk for an hour) we can do and when it's severely cold it's quick jaunts in the yard or a bit on the treadmill.

That being said-I have seen Mikey stiff when he's totally gone bonkers and overdone it playing with friends. So then he gets a day off as much as he doesn't like it-he does need some time to repair. In those instances we also take that time to get him his bath so he can have a nice hot shower with a rub down. We also do massage on him quite a bit (light tissue).
 
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