Great article, I am a big believer in enrichment games and any other forms of activities that can help, keep your dog, calm, focused and listening to you.
The ISCP has released new research from graduate Linda Cooper on the impact of exercise on reactive dogs (view study here). The study is fairly interesting in that it recommends reducing walks and arousal increasing activities such as fetch.
The dogs in the study were sent on a “doggie” vacation where exercise was significantly reduced. The owners of the dogs were nervous of this at first given that many of the dogs that participated were also described as hyper dogs that required great amounts of exercise.
What was found instead was that with reduced physical exercise (off leash running, long walks, playtime with other dogs, ball and disc play, etc.) and increased soothing touch and mental games the dogs improved significantly in only 6 days! The study goes on to cite work that includes giving dogs a drastic change for a month to see truly improved results in…
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