Exercise and being too fit isn’t the reason your dog can’t settle
🌟 “Don’t keep exercising the dog, you’ll just create a super fit athlete who needs more and more to settle!” 🌟
This advice is well meaning, but it’s also a bit inaccurate. The thing that generally prevents dogs from being able to settle is NOT about being too physically fit. It’s the mental state being attached to that exercise, and life in general.
Unless you’re a mega fit athlete yourself, your working pet dog can probably outrun you any day of the week already - the average pet dog owner isn’t going to walk or run their dog into a mega fit machine. Typically I see the opposite issue, with chronically under-exercised pet dogs whose behaviour would be much improved if they were given far more exercise than what they’re currently getting.
Typically the overarching problem is more that the exercise these dogs ARE getting is mostly the high arousal type, as seen by the dog park free for alls with a bunch of other rarked up dogs, or the back and forward run until you can’t anymore ball thrower style. This is frequently amplified by the fact that this is the only real opportunity to get their energy out in a day, and they’re so damn desperate by that point - that desperation from deprivation is like rocket fuel. The dogs are getting high, they’re staying high and they’re not learning to moderate it.
It’s not an issue of some accidental mega fitness, it’s an issue of:
💚 Lacking clear boundaries around when we are playing a high excitement game, and when it’s over and we need to settle back down.
💚 Lacking calm steady exercise in nature that soothes rather than aggravates.
💚 Lacking truly biologically fulfilling work.
💚 Lacking practice of chilling the fuck out - at home and out and about.
So please, go give your healthy adult dog a decent run or hike. It’s an important part of creating a behaviourally sound and happy dog, and for most of us mere mortals the chances of accidentally exercising them into super athletes is about the same as one of us accidentally became a marathon runner without a structured plan. Hasn’t happened to me yet!!
But don’t forget the rest of it either. If they can’t settle when well exercised, it’s not because of some amazing level of fitness you’ve accidentally created - it’s the rest of the picture that you need to work on.
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This post was inspired by a recent facebook story from Training School for Dogs well as a podcast by The Cognitive Canine, LLC
