Physical and mental exercise for dogs is so very important for your pup’s overall health. We get a lot of both at our house, but you don’t have to be a dog sports person to keep your dog properly exercised. Each form of exercise has its own benefits.
This is the last of my four part series on keeping your dog at an ideal, healthy weight. If you missed any of the previous posts, you can click below to get to them:
- What is the ideal weight for your dog
- What’s in your dog’s food bowl, do you know
- Remember dog treats are snacks, not meals
Physical Exercise For Dogs
Physical exercise for dogs is the kind of exercise most people think if when they think of exercising their dog. Walking is most likely the top choice for canine exercise. Walking is easy to do, good for you and your dog, and carries little risk. Dogs of all sizes and ages are suitable for walking. One does need to take age and health condition into account before starting a walking routine. Remember, if your dog doesn’t usually walk, start with shorter walks and work up to long ones. As with humans, we need to strengthen our muscles too.
Running is a favorite way to exercise at our house. Mom says running with dogs is so much more fun than running alone. Not all dogs are suitable as jogging partners, though. Make sure to check with your veterinarian before starting a running program with your dog. Puppies should never go running with you as their growth plates are not closed and running can cause permanent damage to their joints.
Playing games with your dog counts as exercise too! If you have a dog who loves a game of fetch or Frisbee, get outside and start playing. Remember, we don’t know when to stop, so use good judgement to determine how long your dog can safely play.
Keep in mind, just because you have a yard and your dog goes out in the yard during the day, this is not exercise. Unless you have more then one dog so they can play together, or you are out with your dog, she will just hang out and not really get any exercise. Think about it…what would you do if you were out in the yard for a half hour by yourself? Probably not much, maybe take a nap? A yard itself does not mean an automatically exercised dog!
Mental Exercise For Dogs
Mental exercise for dogs is a great tool for so many reasons! For one, we love it, and for two, it totally wears us out mentally. Mom will tell you how we almost always sleep on the way home from our sniffing classes. Most of our dog sports are full of mental exercise, but you don’t need dog sports to get your dog’s brain working.
Nose work, scent work, barn hunt, and tracking are all good mental stimulation for dogs. If you are interested in some mental exercise for fun at home, there are several easy games to play.
- Hide your dog’s favorite toy and have her search for it.
- Try hiding some healthy treats around a room and let her search for them. Start out easy and then hide them better and better.
- Food puzzles are a great way to slow down your dog’s meals and get them thinking about how to get their food out of the puzzle.
- Outdoors you can also hide treats around your yard for your dog to find.
- A game of hide and seek is always fun, with you being the one always hiding.
Physical and mental exercise for dogs is not only a big part of a dog’s overall health, but it is super fun for us. Do you have any tips we didn’t think of?
My GBGV Life is happy, so we’re joining Comedy Plus for Happy Tuesday!
We love walking and playing in the backyard. My brother has run with mom a few times. He is pretty good at that! Great post. Mom needs to think about adding more mental games for us! Have a good day. your friend Lilly
Mental games are super easy for the humans to set up and pretty quick for us dogs. It doesn’t have to be a long game, just some small puzzles to make us think. Every dog loves to find stuff.
Puffin and I are good weights, and we do play both in the house and out in the yard. I used to play fetch with my mommy., and then Puffin arrived and now plays interference. She really is a diva and everything is hers! Mom is out walking with her walker
Maybe when she graduates from the Walker she will take us out for walkies. Puffin knows some cute trick ,can’t I can tell time for my dinner and my nighttime treat! XOXO, Sparkle
Glad your mom is getting moving some. She has to take is slow and that will pay off in better healing. You two just have to be gentle with her. Our mom would be in a real mess with us because we can be pretty wild!
Y’all sure are smart, all that mental exercise sure pays off sweeties!
It does. We sleep really well after using our noses and brains.
ooooh we do that efurry day now with our mama… that she becomes fit for da upcomig events O)
LOL! I’m sure you do keep her on her toes for upcoming events.
I love hide and seek with my tennis ball. Mom hides it every day and hopes that I don’t find it. haha
We love your hat in the first picture, Bailie!
Thank you. Lots of our sniffing trials use tennis balls as distractors. We love that because we could care less about a ball, but so many dogs get so excited it causes problems for them. Glad you love finding your ball.
When we lived with Dougie Dog, he would endlessly want to play catch with his tennis ball, and yes: he knew not when to stop! It was hard to bring the game to an end. Now we have little June, in our small apartment, encouraging her “zoomies” and wand play for jumping are the biggest exercises, but just today we wrote about “mentally” challenging her with non-toy things which she seems to really enjoy a great deal. A bit harder I think with cats than with dogs …
Sometimes it is like cats are a whole different animal! Cats too need both types of exercise and it is much more difficult, but it can be done.
Great advice!
Thank you.
All great advice here. They need the same attention as everyone else. I know you care for your babies very well. We did the same.
Thank you for joining the Happy Tuesday Blog Hop.
Have a fabulous Happy Tuesday. Scritches to the pups. ♥
A healthy lifestyle is important for people and for pets.
Cinnamon says that her walks are important to give Mom the cardio she needs! She LOVES her 3 times a day walks, especially if they run into Baby Grrl and Lil Boy, then the ball throwing stick gets double duty as Baby Grrl and Cinnamon chase balls! She also plays ball in the house and she purrticularly LOVES her treat ball that she has to roll around to get the crunchies out! What is your favorite inside game? Have a marvellously Happy Day!
We all love our walks and runs on our daily schedule, and really love it when we have an extra walk somewhere else. We practice our nose work a lot and that is our mental challenge. We also go to our classes which are mentally exhausting, but we just love it all. Glad you get your exercise in too.
Great advice for cats too! We take Lucy for walks in good weather and inside the house we play with her! She gets lots of excercise and then she takes a nap! Cheers!
We could use someone to exercise our cats for us. They are not huge dog fans so a game of chase in the house gives them some exercise, and hunting for them gives us dogs some mental work. Sophie doesn’t go outside and Bert always tries to run away from home, so mom would never walk him as he needs to stay a house cat. We do know cats that go walking and it works for them.
You always have the best ideas.
Thank you.
We love our walks! Mom and Dad throw our toys and Bentley plays laser light inside.
We can’t play the laser game because it is like shadows outside and it can ruin our searches in nose work, especially with Bailie. She used to play a lot, but no more. You boys can play an extra round for us!