CANINE FITNESS

and Sport Specific Conditioning

Why canine fitness is quickly becoming popular

Canine conditioning is not just for canine athletes. All dogs benefit from it! Whether they chase squirrels in the yard, or enjoy neighborhood walks, compete in agility, hunt with their owner, keeping the streets safe, do search and rescue or compete in protection sports –all dogs deserve the best care and treatment to help maximize their enjoyment in life.

Let’s talk again about many physical and mental benefits of exercise for dogs on regular basis, some are obvious and some may surprise you!

- It’s mentally stimulating and it often solves behavioral problems. Our dogs have a need for a job they were bred to do, and to fulfill this need they become distractive with all sorts of behaviors. An old saying that a good puppy is a tired puppy applies well. A sure way to tire your pup out is to make him learn something new that is complex. Balance and coordination exercises require concentration and focus and create new neuromuscular pathways while working out the brain!

- It increases focus and attention span.

- It’s fun and quality time together. It improves your communication skills with each other and strengthens the bond, being rewarding for both, you and your dog.

- It reduces anxiety. Exercise produces hormones that reduce stress and anxiety. In addition, the basic foundation fitness moves are always handy to distract a nervous dog from his “scary” environment and redirect into a fun positive successful exercises that require thinking for coordination!

- It reduces the risk of injury. Flexibility and body awareness are 2 components of fitness programs. A dog that knows at all times where his feet are is able to control his movement better at all times. And shall the inevitable happen, the post injury recovery is faster for well conditioned dogs

- It strengthens muscles and bones and helps with keeping healthy weight. Remember building muscles burns fat and increases metabolic rate

- It reduces the risk of many diseases simply by staying mobile and healthy

- It slows the aging process

Basic Canine Fitness is fun and simple exercises. Done just 5-10 minutes daily they will change your dog around and you will see the results for yourself! AKC now offers FIT DOG TITLES. We will be glad to help your dog achieve them or to simply show you the basics and teach you the ropes at our canine gym for dogs of all ages and sizes!

All The Tools To Unleash Your Dog's Potential

All dogs can benefit from canine fitness. A couch potato, a senior dog, a puppy, a competition dog, really any type of dog! Canine fitness is fun for dogs, and it can help increase your dogs confidence, improve their mobility, help with hyper activity and anxiety, and promote their physical and mental well-being from puppyhood well into the senior years!

Our canine fitness center is equipped with dog treadmills, strength and balance building equipment and are working on adding a pool! We work with dogs of all ages and all breeds and can help you design a fitness program to fit into your lifestyle.

Watch puppy Bravo having fun with an IGP warm-up

Olga has been researching and learning canine genetics, breed health issues, puppy imprinting and upbringing, training techniques, raw nutrition, maintenance and conditioning for 25+ years.

She believes a true winner is a dog who is genetically strong and sound, and who is fulfilled on the deepest levels both mentally and physically.

Olga started in Schutzhund in 1995 and has been competing in dog sports for over 20 years. Over the years she dabbled in Obedience, Conformation, Agility and Schutzhund with a firm belief that stability, structure and drive are all equally important for our highly intelligent, super intuitive, active and athletic dogs. Of all sports, IGP/Schutzhund became her true passion, and she loves all 3 phases of the sport!

IGP is a contact sport and our dogs are athletes throwing themselves on the field without hesitation, being prone to injuries. Most veterinarians or canine physical therapists lack experience of working with sports dogs. Often when they hear IGP/Schutzhund they are afraid to even touch the dog without a muzzle. So many handlers don't practice safety and injury prevention and try to condition their dogs either intuitively or by trial and error simply because they don't know or think about it until it is too late.

Lots of injuries can be prevented with proper conditioning, warm up and cooling down. Olga has committed to raising awareness and bringing more information into our IGP community on safety and injury prevention since 2019, when she became a Certified Canine Athlete Specialist, currently the only program available with focus on the working dogs and protection dog sports.

Olga is passionate in helping handlers raise their high drive IGP puppies to become balanced healthy dogs and well rounded best friends. Our sport is demanding and it requires a well rounded balanced strong stable athletic driven dog. To succeed, best training has to be supplemented with overall well being, both physical and mental, and the right emotions of the dog and a good handler-dog relationship. It is a breathtaking picture when all of it comes together and shines!

The IGP specific conditioning program gives you an extra edge, that little something extra that makes a difference in competition! To build it, you have to KNOW THE SPORT!!!

Olga broke down all the fitness elements and applied them to specific IGP exercises. She created the only online IGP Specific fitness course in the world. She can help you and your dog in person, online or both to develop your own individual program and give you the skills to fine tune it for your dogs competition needs and progress so they can shine brighter, be faster, stronger, look more intense and explosive on the field!

Together with a good friend Kandis Hall,CCFT,FP-MT, we developed an online course for puppies and beginners. It's super easy for you to follow at home to build foundations and to have fun, no matter what age and your shape your best friend is!