A powerful dog, playing with its muscles and pacing proudly next to its owner, attracts everyone's attention and makes a figure. When you see a clumsy young dog, striking out with its paws, you can hardly believe that someday, it is going to become this powerful animal, just like its parents.

You should consider your dog's constitution while training. You could work with your dog all days long, but it will only get withy.

Before you start training you should define your goal. There are not much variants: to develop muscles or to enhance the dog's stamina. At the first glance you can easily combine these two goals in one. But later on you will see that the stamina oriented training differs from the other kind of training a little bit.

Exercises

It is up to you, what kind of exercises you choose, depending on your dog's temperament and its fancies. Some like running, some like pulling or swimming and so on.

You should deal with the load carefully, increasing it gradually, as an overload can cause injury of joints and muscles. You shouldn't either start or quit doing exercises abruptly, start with a warming-up and finish with a series of calming exercises. You should also make sure, water is available to your dog while training, especially in summer.

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Running: jogging, running after bike, fetching objects, fetching on a hill. You should better train on an unsurfaced road (soil, rubber carpet strips or soft gravel). Walking on gravel is especially needed by dogs with enlarged paw fingers, as the stones get in between them, which makes the dog put its fingers together.

For little puppies, it is better to start with pace, then switch to quick pace and after that - on jogging. But there will be no use in your exercises, if you drag your puppy on a leash after you. It must be its own will to to the exercises. You should also extend the time you walk with your dog bit by bit. Overloading young dogs can cause bones contortion.

Running after bike means considerable load, so make sure your dog is ready for it. The speed must be appropriate for the dog, most of the time it must run at a trot, galop is possible only for a little while. This kind of exercise forms beautiful posture, it is often used to prepare the dog for a show. The dog's point looks much more natural after these exercises, and what is more - the dog makes it by itself.
Fetching an object If the exercise is done right, the dog runs at a galop, so it shouldn't last too long or the dog must be physically fit. Otherwise the dog will tire and run at a trot, so it will be you, who messes up good and quick object fetching. If your dog needs much time to do this exercise (i.e. runs at a trot), you can traing long enough, until the dog gets bored.

To be continued...