Cavaletti Dog Exercises - Don’t Trip up!
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by Diane, Online Dog Coach
Your dog has 4 paws to keep track of and when you start a dog exercise or sports program like canine freestyle dance with your dog you may notice that they have a hard time knowing where their feet are. In training dog agility jumps, for example, you may find that your dog’s hind feet are knocking off the cross bar. You can start “cavaletti” exercises to help your dog with foot placement.
A “cavaletti“ is simply a bar laying across the ground or propped slightly off the ground. In case you haven’t noticed by now, people doing dog agility training or dog games in their own back yard use a lot of PVC pipe from their local home improvement center. It’s cheap, light-weight, and easy to cut for making dog agility equipment. Using five cavalettis in a ladder formation is a fundamental dog exercise to be taught in the early stages of agility dog training or canine freestyle.
For small dogs, the bars can be laid on the ground or raised slightly by placing them on crushed soda cans. Larger breeds can step over a bar jump at the height of one-half the distance from the ground to their hock. When setting up your cavalettis, vary the height slightly so your dog has to pay attention to each bar. The distance between the bars should be equal to the height of your dog’s withers or shoulders. For example, if your dog measures 20 inches to the top of his shoulder, place the cavalettis 20 inches apart.
Walk your dog through the cavalettis then turn around and go back to the starting point. Do this five to ten times in one session. As with any dog exercise program, start with the cavalettis low and when you have done 5-10 repetitions five times in a week you can raise the height slightly, but never over the hock height. You don’t want your dog jumping the bar, but rather stepping or reaching over it. To keep your dog at a walk or trot, try doing this exercise on a leash.
Walking your dog through an extension ladder laid on the ground can also help her think about what her back end is doing. Please make sure the ladder rungs are at least 12 inches wide and WALK, don’t RUN through the ladder.
Use of these drills is a great way to help your dog create awareness of his rear legs, increase confidence, and improve balance and coordination. The exercise should be part of any dog sport and especially dog agility training. So get out there and have fun training your dog!
About the Author
Diane has professionally trained dogs in obedience, agility, and freestyle dog dancing for more than 20 years in Florida and Colorado. Her dogs have competed and have earned titles in AKC and NADAC agility, Obedience, and Flyball.