00:00:02 Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Foundation's podcast. I'm your host Tony Peterson. Today's episode is all about how fit our dogs really are, how we can know how fit they are, and what we should be aware of when it comes to thinking of our dogs as athletes. Their early seasons are here. Some of us are hunting teal or other puddle ducks. Some of us are chasing doves. Maybe you're out west somewhere chasing Sharpie's. You know, pretty soon rough grouse and woodcock and pheasants and quail and a whole host of waterfowl are going to be on the menu. And it's pretty awesome. Because of this, we will ask a lot of our dogs, though, and they might deliver, or they might stall out, and we might wonder why this is natural, because we often think of our dogs as super athletes. But it's not so simple. And the more that you understand about this, the better you can treat your pup, which is what this episode is all about. The thing that's pretty crazy about the proliferation of smartphones is that humanity is documenting itself in a way that's just bonkers. There are more pictures taken by the minute and video footage shot by the hour than previously in all of our history. This means there's a hell of a lot of stills and videos of people's pets and meals in the sunsets, and you know, the fish they caught and selfies they took wherever, on and on. This also means there's a hell of a lot of videos of people, and by that I mean men doing really dumb stuff, including getting into fistfights. Alcohol and egos are the best boxing coaches out there, or I probably guess I should say they're the best hype men. And boy are there a lot of videos of dudes figuring out that they aren't qualified to step into the octagon and go five rounds with the middleweight champion if you know what I mean. The amount of dudes you can watch go from conscious to unconscious and often probably brain damaged is unreal. I am convinced that most men have a delusional sense of self when it comes to how tough we are, how attractive we are, and how smart and capable we are. Now, I can't speak for women here, so it might be a human thing, but I get the impression us why chromosome owners might not have a monopoly on delusional self imagery. We definitely have sort of cornered the market, and this extends beyond us as well. When was the last time you met a dude who has a working or a sporting dog who hasn't mostly had NonStop praise for that dog. Not to be fair, women do this too, but in a different way. A lot of times where this can be a real problem is when it comes to canine athleticism and what we believe our dogs are kind of capable of right now versus what they really are actually capable of. Now, Before I get into what your dog is actually capable of, I think it is a good idea to explore what some dogs have been proven to be capable of because they have the potential to be super athletes. All of them do well, maybe not Chihuahwas or dash ounds mind you. Oh, I guess I can't say that with certainty, and that might come from personal bias any huski. The researchers out there who have studied this stuff have found quite a bit of interesting things about certain breeds in certain situations that's just kind of fascinating about how good of athletes dogs can be. Take Vo two Max as an example. Simply put, this is a measure of maximal oxygen consumption, which reflects respiratory, cardiovascular, and muscular efficiency during serious physical activity. It's measured in millimeters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute. The higher the VO two max, the better a creature can deliver oxygen to its muscles, which directly translates to better endurance and performance. The average thirty five year old man, for example, has a VO two max around forty five millimeters per minute, while world class endurance athletes like the folks who dominate sports like cycling or cross country skiing can get up to around ninety. The top score so far is held by a cyclist named Oscar Spensen, who, as you probably guessed, is from Norway. His VO two max was measured at ninety seven point five. Now compare that with Alaskan huskies or sled dogs, which have been shown to reach as high as two forty in some extreme cases. How do they do this well? As you can imagine, generations of breeding the best of the best have certainly helped steer huskies in the endurance athlete direction. Compared to other breeds. They have oversized hearts and lungs, at least relative to their overall size. They have high mitochondrial density in their muscles, which directly translates to the production of ATP in their cells. ATP is the molecule that power cells, particularly during times of exercise. Now, high mitochondrial synthesis helps prevent fatigue, improves recos and supports endurance and stamina. Huskies are literally built to run long distances at relatively high speeds. Labrador retrievers in German short hairs not so much. There's not to say that labs and gsps aren't better athletes than your average weekend warrior pheasant hunter, because they certainly are. They just aren't quite the super athletes we want to think they are, although they are capable of a hell of a lot, which is where things get a little bit tricky. This hit home with me a couple of years ago when I had to watch my brother in law's yellow lab LENNI is by all accounts, a dog who looks like she's built to run. This didn't mean much to me until I was working with her in my young lab Sadie, and I saw Lenny take off like a cheetah on fire. It was bonkers, and she might literally be the fastest hunting dog I've ever seen in my life. I was blown away until about five retrieves into it, when Sadie started to outrun her to the bumper every single toss. While Lenny is naturally fast as hell, she was so deconditioned then that it didn't take more than a few minutes of messing around at a local park before she needed to lay down and take a rest. Now here's what I know about a dog like her. She looks the part, she acts the part. She will make you believe that she con pheasant hunt all day without missing a beat, But she can't. And I've seen that last part in action with her too. Just like the dudes who have never thrown a real punch suddenly squaring up outside the bar with someone who has and who enjoys it, the sporting dog that has only taken on walks and then asked a pheasant hunt all day is just going to suffer. Now, I've talked about the dangers of this enough, especially in consideration with the early season and the conditions that are so common then, so I'm not going to get into that. But instead I want to address how we can recognize that our dogs aren't up to snuff and what we should do about it. This is easiest to understand by comparing hunting a do into shape by thinking about going elk hunting in the mountains as a way for us to get in shape. Given a long enough timeline, either could absolutely work, but the opportunity for injury is way higher than sticking to some level of exercise all year long. Our dogs need that too, and we often convince ourselves that we are giving them enough when we are barely scratching the surface. Think about this in terms of step count or distance travel during the day in the crp fields and pheasants slews, you know, out of curiosity, my hunting buddies and I usually check the stats at the end of the day just to see how far we've gone. I've had a couple of days for pheasants and a couple more for western species like sharpies and prairie chickens that topped out at just over thirty thousand steps in a day. The distance there generally correlates too close to half marathon distance, So you know, a shade over thirteen miles somewhere around there. Now, how accurate smartphones and smart watches are on measuring this as anyone's guests. But I know on the back end of any one of those days, I had no trouble falling asleep, and neither did my dogs, who without question ran farther than I walked. Quite a few hunters have strapped a GPS enabled collar to their dogs and have gone a step further with this data, and it seems like a general rule of thumb is that, depending on breed and conditions, our hunting dogs will easily two or three x our daily mileage, and they do this while being a hell of a lot shorter, moving a hell of a lot faster mostly, and often doing it in a hell of a lot worse cover than we walk. That's all great for framing up generalities, but what about specifics. I did a whole episode on this two weeks ago about general breed traits and beliefs versus what our own individuals are and what they are capable. But it also matters in this context as well. Our neighbors have two huskies and they never get to go outside of their yard. I've maybe seen those dogs get taken out on a walk two or maybe three times in the last two years. Now, if you hooked either one of those dogs up to a sled and had them start pulling, their hearts would explode from exertion before the scenery ever changed for the musher. They aren't conditioned for the task, even though it's entirely possible that they could be. Or I guess I should say they could be better suited to endurance than they currently are. No, of course, the key to canine conditioning is the key to our conditioning consistency. Now, I probably have to say this since I literally started this podcast out by showing why Alaskan huskies are the undisputed kings and queens of endurance athleticism. But here we go. They are bred for the job, and a lot of them are very good at it. They have a gene deep advantage, and that matters. It matters with us too, although we often get this wrong in an attempt to excuse ourselves from not being in better shape. You know, it's pretty common to hear people cite their own metabolism as an excuse for not being in good shape. But I have yet to meet anyone who's gone to the doctor for a true metabolism test. We just make it up as an excuse, and it's more comfortable to believe that we can put on weight by merely looking at cake than it is to count calories and realize we drink the equivalent of a slice of cake in calories every few hours when we are awake. The power of the mind to protect ourselves from our true selves is bananas. And we do this with our dogs too. So what does all this mean for your English Setter or your Monster Lander or your Golden Retriever or whatever. Well, keep them in good shape for real. It's not enough to keep them just at a healthy weight, although that is a huge step in the right direction. In fact, it's a necessary component to the whole thing. A dog that has the body shape of a potato needs fewer calories in conjunction with a proper exercise plan. The dog that is lean, has a nice cutback by the hips, and is by all accounts of very healthy weight has a huge start. But not being overweight is also not necessarily proof that a dog is conditioned well. Dogs need to run and swim, and they need to do this consistently throughout the year, otherwise they just won't be conditioned that well. The key to this is to find the old balance between underdoing it exercise wise and overdoing it during any given session or hunt. Most dogs aren't in a lot of danger of being exercised too hard in the offseason, which is the big problem during the actual hunting season, because that's the easiest scenario for us to push it too far with them and for them to be all about overdoing it until it has been overdone, because that's their nature. Now, this is not something that is static over a dog's life either. You poppy owners out there know how young dogs go from zero to one hundred and then back to zero in short fits and spurts. That is the nature of young dogs. They play hard and then they rest hard. Middle aged dogs are a different thing, though, and they are much better at preserving their energy and managing their output. The exercise needs of a twenty week old puppy won't look anything like the needs of a six year old dog. What will be somewhat the same is that at least a few sessions of physical activity a day over the course of many many days will shape them into well conditioned dogs that have all kinds of health benefits going for them. Now, if you take your lab out twice a day every day to chase down a bumper and work on retrieves, you'll have a dog that is more conditioned than your average shitsu. We also have a dog that is conditioned to a specific type of exercise. That dog might tear up the game farm pheasants in the preseason, but still crash out two hours into a wild bird hunt, or it might get into real trouble the first time you go from the soccer fields to the duck boat. The birds are flying low and slow, and your dogs really only used to running a bunch on grass, and now it has all the excitement of a duck hunt to deal with while also dealing with the reality of having to periodically swim and pursuit of wounded green heads. Just like with human athletes, too much of one type of exercise can lead to a plateau adaptive complacency, which is testament to how well our bodies can function, to the point where the same type of exertion for too long can start to lose some of its benefits. Because our bodies learn how to be super efficient in that regard. That shit works for dogs too. This is why there has always been an emphasis on aerobic and anaerobic workouts when it comes to people getting into really good shape. Cardio and weightlifting compliment each other and allow for us to keep tricking our bodies into making progress. Crossfitters, as annoying as they can be on social media, are generally overall more fit than strict long distance runners, although in one category the long distance runners will win every time, but overall fitness is different. With dogs, adaptive complacency comes with some extra danger because we might look at our dogs and you know the fact that they can run three miles a day behind our side by sides as we go for an evening drive and think, well, that is a dog that is primed and in shape sort of. But that's also a dog that is highly conditioned for one type of exercise, which may or may not closely prepare them for an actual style of hunting. You can think about this like you can think about just about any training drill you might set up for your dog. Maybe you just want your dog to learn a step in a bigger process, like steadiness at the front end of a retrieving drill. That's great, we also want to tie that into a real world skill that is necessary in the field. In that instance, a dog that is steady while a bumper spins through the air and thumps on the ground is a dog that is being trained to be a good dove dog or a good duck dog. In addition to the fact that steadiness is just a solid trait for all working dogs. Now to contrast that never making a dog weight when you're tossing a backyard bumper means you're preparing a dog to run at the first whim that tickles its smooth brain, including when you flush non target birds like hen pheasants or some ducks fly by that aren't on the menu and the gravity is a little bit too much for your dog and he goes for a swim just in case you shoot one. Anyway, conditioning our dogs in general is great, but it's also a good idea to think about conditioning them specifically for the physical aspects of the kinds of hunts they'll actually be asked to participate in. Just like if you do draw that elk take you could get into some type of better shape on an elliptical machine, but you might also want to think about putting a backpack on, filling it with something heavy and then hitting up the stair climber because when you get to the mountains, you're going to need that training. I'll take away on this is this, our dogs are incredible athletes that are capable of more than most of us can imagine. They don't come out of the box that way, though. They need to be molded into real athletes, and the biggest part of that that most of us make a mistake on is assuming our dogs are in way better shape than they actually are throughout most of the year. So maybe appropriate way to think about this is we often view our dogs as being in good enough shape, kind of like we do with ourselves. It's a great mindset to have if you never need to prove it with them or yourself, But the illusion on both ends can crumble pretty quickly four hours into a slog through the frozen cattails or out in the rolling sandhills where they are about four sharpies per square mile of grass. Pay attention to your dogs as you hit up these early season opportunities, and don't forget to address their exercise needs in the off days when you aren't in the field. This is a habit that matters to their overall health. And it will result in more birds game bag. It's just something that you should stick to, you know, not only throughout the season, but after the closing bell, so your dog doesn't ever get too out of shape because you just don't want them deconditioned, because we can fool ourselves into thinking that they're in good shape. Leads to all kinds of problems. So just think about that as you get out there for whatever you're gonna hunt right now, think about it throughout the year, and then think about this. Think about coming back in two weeks because I'm going to talk about force free training styles and balance training styles and how their adherence to both camps, but really diving into only one style of training might not be the best option for you and your dog. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been The Houndation's podcast, which is such a fun project for me because you guys have shown up and you've supported me like crazy with this, you know, Cal and I really appreciate this. It's so fun to see the dog lovers who are also media your fans come out of the woodwork. It's been great, So thank you so much for that. If you want some more. You know, dog training content. Maybe you're gonna hunt some deer this fall with the family, head out on a road trip for something. Whatever, the mediater dot com has you covered. We drop new articles, we drop new recipes, we drop new films, We drop a ton of podcasts. Our podcast network is huge, so many good shows on there for entertainment, education. All of it can be found at the mediater dot com. Go check it out and thank you once again.