Building Your Dog’s Muscles Through Hill Walking

 Are you looking for a way to build your dog’s muscles through exercise? Hill walking strengthens muscles and improves a dog’s body awareness which is essential for reducing muscle strain. The good thing about hill walking is that it is suitable for most canine conditioning situations including:

• conditioning for running, jumping, and swimming
• rehabilitation
• keeping older dogs mobile
• strengthening supporting muscles to help prevent chronic conditions

Let’s talk about how hill walking benefits dogs. By walking downhill, uphill, sideways across a hill, and backwards up a hill, your dog can get close to a full body workout!

Uphill walking – This exercise extends and flexes the hip joints which strengthens the muscles supporting the hip.

Downhill walking – This exercise requires the dog to brake with the muscles in the shoulders and elbows thereby strengthening these muscles as well as the muscles of the dog’s thigh.

Diagonal walking – This exercise focuses on the muscles on the inside of the thigh and shoulder to keep the limbs positioned under the joints.

Backward walking – This is an exercise that you can try with agile dogs. It strengthens the hamstring muscles and aids body awareness and coordination.

You must set yourself up for success and effective hill walking conditioning. You need to make sure that your dog walks. Keep them on their leash to begin the process. At the walking gait, the dog is in the stance phase and weight bearing for the longest period. Be sure to reward your dog for maintaining a walking gait and not hopping or trotting. Start out with short, gentle slopes that provide good friction but not too much resistance. As your dog shows progression and gets stronger, you may increase the distance and include. It would also be best to increase the difficulty of the terrain and build your dog up to uneven surfaces like sand or grass.