COACH4PAWS

Having been a distributor of canine fitness products for over 10 years as well as a consumer, I have a pretty good sense now of what products I will find useful in my program and what products will just be novel and sit on my shelf in my fitness room. To help you avoid the latter, we continually give product reviews to hopefully help you make wise purchases. If your budget is limited, this article will also feature DIY equipment and objects I have adapted for canine use.

In this review, we will look at the new Flexiness Flexblox.  This product appealed to me for several reasons. Worth noting, we don’t have any affiliation with Flexiness, but I have numerous products from them and find the company to be innovative in developing canine centric products. Products made specifically with dogs in mind increase safety, versatility, and functionality and reduce the need to “adapt” products for canine use or be limited in its function/use. Increased safety,...

As a follow up to the last blog post I got a few questions about the updated Flexiness Twindisc.  Based on these questions, I wanted to further take a moment to discuss/demonstrate what is meant by “stable” instability. It seems to be an oxymoron right?

When shopping for canine fitness equipment, it’s important to understand that they are not all created equal. Certain pieces of instability equipment are more stable or unstable than others.  The more unstable, the more advanced it is for the dog.  Advanced equipment is intended for dogs with a more advanced level of fitness and/or excellent body awareness and thoughtfulness. Understanding the differences in equipment can help guide you to the equipment that is right for your dog depending on their fitness level, arousal state around equipment, or special conditions.  Working with a certified fitness professional can help guide you on what is right for your particular dog, but we will give a...

As some of you may have seen, FitPaws has rolled out two “new” products, the Duo Disc and their mat version.  These products may look familiar if you follow Flexiness products and or FitPaws.  Flexiness debuted the Twindisc several years ago as well as their SensiMat via a partnership with FitPaws to sell both these products from Flexiness.  In recent years, Flexiness updated the TwinDisc design to what it is today.

We will dive into both of these products (the new updated Flexiness TwinDisc is pictured above on the left and the old Flexiness TwinDisc is on the right similar/same to the Duo Disc ) and examine the pro and cons if you are looking to invest in new canine fitness products.  We have no affiliation with either company so this will be based on my personal experiences owning both of these TwinDisc models as well as the SensiMat and therefore will be unbiased. As with any new equipment we want to give you the 411 so you don’t waste your...

The old adage "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" can be true when speaking of our dog's physical condition. Have you noticed something being off with your dog, but not sure how to assess if your dog is in pain? Would you be able to determine if your dog had muscle tightness? Have you noticed slight behavior changes in your dog, or noticed changes with your sport dog's performance? 

For the new year, we are providing for a short time, a free canine condition assessment ebook. All dog owners should be able to generally assess your dog's physical condition, understand if your dog is overweight or underweight, know the signs of pain and how to palpate your dog to determine subtle signs of discomfort, how to perform a range of motion evaluation, how to perform a gait baseline video, how to evaluate posture and establish a posture baseline, and be able to perform a general strength test to detect any significant weakness.  It's good practice to have a...

Are you interested in canine fitness but find yourself overwhelmed of where to start? It looks like so much fun, right?  All those social media pictures and videos of people and their canine partners doing fitness exercises on bright colored inflatable bones, discs and peanuts looks like a lot of fun to do with your dog.  But what equipment do you buy? Which piece of equipment is right for your dog? How do you teach THAT fancy exercise to your dog? Where do you begin?  It can be overwhelming for someone new to canine fitness and they can tend to focus on elements of fitness rather than seeing the overall big picture.

Can we share a secret to canine fitness that may help you focus on what is the most important factor to improving the fitness and health of your dog? You do not need hundreds of dollars in inflatable equipment or expert dog training skills.  To have meaningful fitness results for your dog, you need a commitment to a consistent and balanced program. A...

Maggie was my first sheltie. She was one of 10 puppies, and when I met her at 8 weeks, she was full of spunk and sass which I loved about her. We played fetch in the yard which she loved, I took her for walks, but none of that seemed to satisfy or tire her out. It seemed she could play fetch for hours and never want to stop the game. When I came home from work, she would be bouncing off the walls. She literally would eat the drywall and chew the baseboards. She also had a bad habit of eating other things she shouldn’t, chewing up toys and once ate the stuffing of a toy and had to be hospitalized. Apart from immediately buying a crate, making sure toys were bulletproof and watching her like a hawk, I had to find a way to curb her destructive behavior as well as incessant barking.

At my wit’s end, I joined a puppy obedience class when she was eight months old to see if they could help me. She loved learning new behaviors. The teacher I met later became one of my good...