Front Matter

Chapter 10 Conditioning and Retraining the Canine Athlete 251

flexibility (Zakas et  al., 2006), and propriocep­
tion (Magalhaes et  al., 2010). Appropriate
warm‐ups before sports are also thought to
reduce the incidence and severity of injuries
(Bien, 2011; Samukawa et al., 2011), although it
is also clear that not all warm‐ups are helpful
(Stojanovic & Ostojic, 2011). Warm‐ups should
include movements that recapitulate what the
athlete will do when performing, so warm‐ups
should be different for dogs with different
performance expectations or jobs (Amiri‐
Khorasani et al., 2011). In a large meta‐study of
dynamic (in which the body is moved through the
motions that will occur during the sport or job)

versus static (in which the limbs are passively

moved into a stretched position) stretching in

human athletes, it was concluded that static

stretching should be avoided as the sole activity in

a warm‐up routine (Simic et al., 2012). In another

study, dynamic stretching was shown to be supe­

rior to static stretching for improving athletic per­

formance in sports that involved flexibility and

jumping (Perrier et al., 2011).

A good warm‐up for dogs preparing to par­

ticipate in events requiring jumping and active

movements, such as agility, flyball, retrieving,

and so on, might include the following: 2–3 min­

utes of walking then trotting, some dodging

Figure 10.33 One of the best and most deceptively simple body awareness exercises is to have the client walk the dog
over a ladder placed on the ground.

Figure 10.34 By stepping over randomly oriented poles on the ground, dogs can improve the awareness of foot
placement (proprioception).