In a world where pet obesity is rampant and reactivity is seemingly everywhere, a pet owner’s mantra has bubbled up: “good dogs are tired dogs.” While this holds some measure of truth, it doesn’t paint a complete picture and I want to unpack exercise versus training. After all there are only so many hours in a day available to do “Dog Things” and if our goal is having a well-behaved dog living his best life, then it’s important to spend those hours wisely.
Exercise and training create a feedback loop - one doesn’t work without the other
Not regularly exercising your dog can manifest in anxious behaviors, but not all behavioral issues are solvable via exercise. There’s the idea (especially in working breeds) that they need endless exercise to be content but past a point it’s “man with a hammer syndrome”. It’s totally possible to have a dog that’s physically in great shape, with horrible behavior problems.
Don’t get me wrong, exercise is important. The mind and body are not separate - the mental state flows from the physical. Under-exercised dogs are put in the position where their actions are only so much their fault. But bad habits can stick around and need to be fixed even if we up the activity levels.
We cannot out-exercise a training problem.
There must be a balance. Exercise creates the conditions for positive change. If a dog is mentally stable, mild-tempered, and reasonably well trained, then exercise solves many problems. But it’s not a magic bullet.
Mindful Exercise
There’s a lot of ways to get anything done, and exercising a dog is among them. The dog owners I feel most for are the folks who want to do everything right, and are willing to put in the work. But providing adequate exercise can be tough if issues like reactivity, leash pulling, and failure to recall make every outing miserable.
If limited space is an issue, then I like interactive/engagement related play and work to get ourselves moving - any small available space like a hallway, bedroom, or a patch of grass becomes fair game for getting some time in with my dog. Ice storm? You’ll catch me pushing the living room couch back to play some tug.
Longer walks and outings are a great chance to tailor your experience of your time with your dog - and it doesn’t need to be the same every day. Some days can be about decompressing and spending time together. Some are opportunities to train. Some are about getting some hard exercise done. Be mindful, not mindless - take a look at what your dog needs today.
For the vast majority of dogs (big or small), 45 minutes of leash-walking per day is the bare minimum. From there, the sky is the limit - everything from off leash hiking to classes to dog sports exists.
Training vs Exercise
While exercise is important, it’s just one part of the picture. If the dog fence fights, has no impulse control, can’t settle down, or blows off their recall, physical exhaustion doesn’t fix it - it just spackles over the problem. You need to TRAIN.
Positive manifestation is very powerful - create a picture in your mind of what I’d love to have in a perfect world. What does your ideal dog look like? What is the gap from where you are to that ideal? This is opposite of the notion of stopping behavior - focus less on what you want to stop and more on what you.
Its not that I want my dog to stop pacing in the house - I want them to learn to self-settle. I want them to experience most thresholds as places where self control is the default. I want their recall to be quick and cheerful.
Socializing towards Neutrality
There are places the idea of “exercise” can go wrong and actually make things worse. Places like dog parks teach the dog that leaving the house should cue arousal, bad leash manners, screaming, and jumping.
Here in the real world, the easiest way to get through life with a dog is to have one that isn’t overly surprised by much. When we socialize dogs, we’re introducing the dog to the world much as we would a child. We encourage good manners, learning to mind your own business - we expand their universe to include the things they might run into. We want the idea of new things to be all by itself so normal that when something unexpected happens, the dog absorbs it with experienced eyes. Experience breeds reliability.
A dog that is consistently socialized to the real world, with real-world expectations learns to value downtime in deep and profound ways.
They had a busy day with a lot they had to get done, same as the rest of us and they are happy to rest. So the feedback loop of behavior means that how we approach Outside the House impacts what we get Inside the House.
It’s All One Dog
What we do with our dog in one place loops back into all their other behaviors - behavior is not an island. A dog that gets adequate exercise for their needs, spends a lot of time being rewarded for impulse control, and is engaged in their handler is going to be in the right mental state to into those behaviors as default when in doubt. The things we encourage feed into one another and striking the right balance to meet the needs of each dog requires building a relationship and a little intuition.