Exercises For Dogs At Rest

Dogs need to exercise to burn the calories they eat, but when it comes to a dog that needs rest, whether due to illness or injury, the situation gets more complicated.

However, if our pet remains motionless for several weeks, eating the same amount of food, it is very likely that he will gain a lot of weight in a short time. What can we do to help dogs that are at rest?

Of course, we’re not talking about forcing the sick or broken puppy to do strenuous physical activity, but there are some lighter exercises that can help your pet recover and also help keep its muscles from atrophying.

Let’s talk, for example, about dogs resting because of a healed fracture.

What kind of exercise can resting dogs do?

Remember that the exercises below are only for dogs with healed fractures. An animal with a recent fracture, even if it is in a cast or immobilized, will not be able to perform them.

Steps

A good exercise is to have the dog go up or down the stairs, because he supports a different part of his body each time. Thus, we will get it to work the bones, joints and muscles, helping to strengthen the body and increasing the animal’s mobility.

Hind limbs

If the fractures already healed in dogs at rest are in the posterior part of the body, a good exercise is to push their paws with our hands and keep them like that for a few seconds, releasing them afterwards.

This will help move and strengthen the animal’s muscles.

Another way to help our pet is to lift its front and make it walk with us with its hind legs, always at its own pace and without forcing it.

bend the ends

Lay the dog down on the healthy side of the body and pick up the broken part. With your hand, begin to bend the region, first gently and, little by little, more forcefully. This is an excellent rehabilitation exercise for resting dogs.

Other activities for resting dogs

In addition to physical exercises, we can take advantage of the period of convalescence to exercise the animal’s mind and teach it new things.

Self control

Use some of the animal’s feed or food to teach it self-control. Put some food in your hand and bring your closed fist closer to the animal so that it sniffs the food. He’ll start scratching your hand and pushing it with his snout. Take the opportunity to say no to him. As the dog learns that it cannot take food without your permission, open your hand, but do not allow it to eat.

It won’t happen overnight, but he’ll learn that he should only eat when you tell him to, not when he wants to.

Commands

If your puppy already knows how to obey the orders of “come”, “release” or “take”, you can take advantage of the animal’s rest period to teach some new tricks.

If the animal can barely move, for example, you can make it learn to touch objects, your hand or other things with its snout. The order could be “touch”.

If he’s not very mobile, but can walk a little, you can teach him to walk beside you, to go under your legs, or anything else you want.

With a little effort to teach your pet new things and help it to recover, you will have incredible results. After all, for the dog this will be like a game and he will be entertained and not feel so alone. Everyone wins.