Episodes
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In this episode of the Unleashed podcast, we sit down with Rachel Pohl, the artist behind our latest collection. We dive into the inspiration behind the vibrant colors, intricate patterns, and unique artwork that define her designs. Rachel also shares stories about her life with dogs in the stunning landscapes of Lofoten, Norway.Through this podcast, we want to inspire you to live an active lifestyle with your dog by talking to experts and asking how-to questions about various topics. Let us know in the comments what topics you want us to cover!
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In this episode of the Unleashed podcast, we answer YOUR questions about canicross with a canicross World Champion, Tessa Philippaerts.
Do you want to now:
- Does your dog have to pull all the time?
- At what point can you try racing?
- How to train on trails with a lot of wildlife?
- Can you train on concrete roads?
- How to start with canicross?
- Can you try canicross with small dog?
- Does the bungee length matter?
- And many many more...Through this podcast, we want to inspire you to live an active lifestyle with your dog by talking to experts and asking how-to questions about various topics. Let us know in the comments what topics you want us to cover!
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Episodes manquant?
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In this episode of the Unleashed podcast, we talk about passing training with a 25-time World Champion Lena Boysen-Hillestad.
Do you want to know:
- Why is it important to train passings with your dog?- How do you start training passings?- How the passing looks like when the dog knows it?- What commands do you use when passing a scary things near the road?- What can you do after your dog has had a negative experience passing another dog?- What do you do when your dog stops pulling after we pass the dog in the front?- Is a passing done automatically by the dog, or do you always use a command?- Do you announce to people that you will pass them?- Is there a specific side you have to pass on?
- Pro tip
Through this podcast, we want to inspire you to live an active lifestyle with your dog by talking to experts and asking how-to questions about various topics. Let us know in the comments what topics you want us to cover!
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In this episode of the Unleashed podcast, we talk about line-out training and being calm before the start with Andre Boysen-Hillestad.
Do you want to know:
- What is line-out?- Is the line or a bungee tight when standing in line-out?- Do you have a preference if the dog should stand, sit or lay on the start line?- How to teach a puppy to do line-out?- How to teach an older do to do line-out?- What advantage does teaching your dog line-out give?- Do you see any disadvantages?- Do you ever get impatient and let the dogs just run without waiting for them to be calm?- Do your dogs act the same on the competition day as they do at home?- Do you feel that connection with your dog got better after teaching them to do line-out?- Do you have any tips when the dog is not standing still in the line-out?- When do you start the line-out training with your dog?- Is it better to train this with other people or alone?- How long did it take your dogs to go from crazy to calm in line-out?- Do you need to have some basic obedience with your dogs to do line-out?- How are you going from the car to the starting line?- Did you get any tips from others before you started to teach your dogs the line-out?
- Pro tip
Through this podcast, we want to inspire you to live an active lifestyle with your dog by talking to experts and asking how-to questions about various topics. Let us know in the comments what topics you want us to cover!
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Dog photographer - Sophia Hutchinson shares her experiences with travelling with dogs.
Do you want to know:
- Why did you start travelling with your dogs?- Can you travel with high-energy dogs?- Does your dog find it challenging to be in new places and experience all the change?- Did you ever get in a situation where you had to change plans or resign from it because of the dogs?- When travelling in the UK, do you also use a campervan, or do you use your own car?- What type of accommodation do you choose when travelling with dogs?- Do you have any special way to prepare to sleep in a new place with dogs?- Do dogs get used to travelling?- How to find adventures in your local area?- How do you balance the safety of the routine when you're travelling?- How to travell with dogs in summer?- Extra tip
Through this podcast, we want to inspire you to an active lifestyle with your dog by talking to experts and asking how-to questions about various topics.
Let us know what topics you want us to cover! -
In this episode of the Unleashed podcast, we talk about habits with World Champion Tessa Philippaerts.
Do you want to know:
- What is a habit for you?- Do you think it's easier to stick to something if it's a habit?- Are there any habits you consider necessary for successful canicross training?
- How do you build up a habit for yourself?- How to get back to a lost habit?
- What can you do when you can't go out training with your dogs?
- How to stay motivated in colder, darker months?
- a pro tip from a World Champion?
Through this podcast, we want to inspire you to an active lifestyle with your dog by talking to experts and asking how-to questions about various topics.
Let us know what topics you want us to cover! -
In this episode of the Unleashed podcast, we talk about obstacle racing with a K9 biathlon Champion!Do you want to know:- What dog equipment do you need for the obstacle race?- What shoes should I use for the obstacle race?- What do you do with water obstacles when your dog doesn't like water?- How can you prepare?- Do you use specific commands?- Is it okay to start with a dog that's reactive or shy- Are there any dogs you don't recommend trying obstacle racing with?- How can you get better at obstacle races?- Are the obstacles usually the same every year?- Does one always get this dirty?- Taking treats and toys with you from the race- Is there anything a dog should know before starting with the obstacle racing?- a pro tip from a K9biathlon Champion?
Through this podcast, we want to inspire you to an active lifestyle with your dog by talking to experts and asking how-to questions about various topics. Let us know what topics you want us to cover!
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In this episode of the Unleashed podcast, we talk about your dog's summer training with 25-time World Champion Lena Boysen Hillestad!
Do you want to know:
- what do you do for summer training?
- how long breaks do you normally take after a season?
- how do you transition from season to off-season?
- what's the maximum temperature you can train with your dog?
- what are the signs of heat exhaustion in dogs?
- when do you start training after the summer break?
- why is humidity an important factor to consider when training your dog?
- do you have the same routine for all the dogs?
- is there any way to prepare your dog for warmer days?
- a pro tip from a World Champion?
Through this podcast, we want to inspire you to an active lifestyle with your dog by talking to experts and asking how-to questions about various topics. Let us know what topics you want us to cover!
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With this episode, we're launching the new season of our Unleashed podcast!
Through this podcast, we want to inspire you to an active lifestyle with your dog by talking to experts and asking how-to questions about various topics. Let us know what topics you want us to cover!
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JEANETTE: Nearly 40,000 people are following the adventures of today’s guest and her husky, Finn. They have traveled to eight countries together, and today she will share her best tips on trail running with her dog. Elisa Deutschmann from Germany, welcome.
ELISA: Thank you, thank you. Nice to be here.
JEANETTE: Yes, we’re very happy to have you here. You are an influencer?
ELISA: Yeah, that’s right.
JEANETTE: You and your dog, Finn. Can you tell us a bit more about yourselves?
ELISA: My name is Elisa, as you already have heard. I’m living together with my husky, Finn, normally in Germany. I think for two years, I started to share all my photos and adventures which I and my dog are doing to Instagram. I uploaded pictures and videos about my life, about all the sports we are doing together, and yeah, it started to get more and more popular, and I think people like it and love to see what we’re doing. That’s why we’re always out and having fun. It’s nice to see that people get motivated about it. I think it’s nice. It’s a little bit more about how everything works with him, because it’s always important to do something together.
JEANETTE: And you really are an outdoor person, and so is your dog. Can you tell us a bit more about Finn?
ELISA: It’s my first dog ever. Before I got him, I knew I need a dog which was really robust so he can do everything I do and I don’t have to bring him warm jackets or so that he’s safe and ready for adventure. So I chose a Siberian husky. I got him when he was 8 weeks old, and now he’s already five and a half. We’ve made a lot of adventures together, and it works really well. So that was the point – that was when I said, okay, I need a Siberian husky. After five and a half years, I really know it was the right decision, and we’re a really good team together. I can’t think of a life without the dog.
JEANETTE: Can you tell us a bit about the adventures you’ve had so far? You’ve visited many countries and you have been on top of mountains, you have been running down mountains together, winter, summer, everything.
ELISA: That’s true. I’m traveling a lot with my dog. To be honest, the first holidays or adventures, I was not that prepared how to do everything with a dog because it was my first dog. The first holidays we made were to some really hot countries like Albania and stuff like that. If I’m thinking right now about it, it was not that nice because it was way too hot. But I think that’s the way you learn and how you can prepare everything better for your next adventures.
After all that experience, I focused my holidays more on like Norway, countries which are colder or whatever, Netherlands, things like that. Right now it works really well. I was before really into the mountain stuff, but through my dog I became more and more into it. As you may know, we started to get into trail running and all that kind of stuff.
Of course, if you have a dog, I think your life changes a little bit. It’s not like you go to the Bahamas and make holidays there. After that, we’re doing a lot of that stuff, but for both, it’s our passion and we love to be in the mountains. It’s insane.
JEANETTE: Do you have any advice if you plan to go to a totally different country with your dog? You don’t know how it is when it comes to temperature, where to go, where the nice trails are. How do you navigate when you do research before your trips?
ELISA: After a while, I really know my dog really well and I know what fits him and what doesn’t. If we’re going to a really warm place because we have to go or something like that, then I know that my dog loves to swim. That’s a really good point, because I always can put him in the water and he can cool a little bit down.
But if it’s maybe too hot, I always search for shadows and stuff like that. I think it’s really important that you know your dog really well. That’s how I prepare it, and I think we’re a really good team, so we can figure everything out together and everything works quite well.
JEANETTE: When it comes to water, how do you do it when you’re on the mountaintop and there might be no lakes or small rivers, or you don’t have any extra water with you?
ELISA: That’s a really good question. Normally when I know where to go and I know there are a lot of rivers and mountains, then it’s no problem for us drinking the water. But I already had it once where I was really far up in the mountain, and I expanded my trip. It was not that long a plan, but I said, “Okay, it’s fine. We will find some water.” Then we were at the top and I saw Finn needed some water and we had nothing.
Then I just picked up my bottle and gave him all my water. I think it’s always important to have enough water for you, of course, but also more for your dog. It’s really important to think about it. But it was good that I still had some water.
But normally, as I said, I always plan it, and when I know I’m going to areas which have no water, I bring – I’m not sure how they call these dog bottles, where you can fill them with water – and bring that for him. It works quite well. I also know how much he needs. Of course, it depends on the temperature, shadow, all this stuff. But that’s how we can figure it out. I always try to be a really good dog mom. [laughs]
JEANETTE: When you go hiking and running, how do you prepare your dog for this?
ELISA: I start to train a lot. For a month I did my first real race, trail run race, and for that we trained half a year or something like that. When it’s hot I always go out really early in the morning or really late so that the dog is not starting to get too hot. The last race was 22 kilometers and 1,200 meters high, so I know it’s a long way.
We started with some shorter uphill runs, like 5k, stuff like that. It was really cold, but after a while, we also started to run more at lunchtime, stuff like that, because I knew the race would be at the same time. So I looked at when it is and that my dog feels really comfortable doing the race and it’s not something new. He was really used to the long distances and everything after the half year. I think that’s really important. It’s not like you take your dog and say “Okay, now we are going for a 20k run,” because he’s not known to that. It’s super important that you train your dog for that and that you do it step by step.
Also, during the race, I made some breaks. He got some water, and I was always looking for him. That’s also not that easy because if you’re going for a race with a dog, it’s not only about you that you have to take care of. It’s also about your dog. When the race started, it was a little bit too warm, so the first 5k I was really afraid and took it super slow and had a look at him.
But after a while it starts to rain, and then the temperature goes down. Then I also saw on him that he was really into it and feeling good. I think it’s important that you really have a good connection to your dog. It’s not only a dog, it’s my best friend, my everything, and I really can see when he’s doing well or when he’s doing not well, when he needs water, a break. That’s important, and that’s how I prepare everything for it.
JEANETTE: What kind of equipment do you need for doing this?
ELISA: I’m always using Freemotion harness for Finn because it fits him really, really well, and he’s been using it already for 4 years, so I know it works. I don’t change it so much because I think that it fits good is really important, that he can breathe and run really good. Then I’m using the running line, super simple, and the running belt. Everything is super light and comfortable, and that’s really important if you go for long, long trails.
But he’s not always running on the leash, because when I’m up on the mountain and running down, it’s super important that he’s not pulling too much for me, because otherwise my knees or other stuff are destroyed after a while. So he has to run behind me. That’s also something which I trained really, really early with him. Because it’s a Siberian husky, it’s not like a border collie, which is doing everything you want. So we had to train a lot for it. After a while it worked, and now he’s running behind me and sometimes I put the leash away.
JEANETTE: Can you tell us a bit more on how you trained him to walk behind you? Did you use a treat behind your back? What did you do?
ELISA: It was quite hard at the beginning. I was not used to how to do it. [laughs] I tried everything, but after a while I recognized that a pole is really good, because I’m always running with poles uphill. I just used the pole and said the German word “run behind me.” In English, it means that.
So I used it and I put my hand to the back, and the pole was in the back, and then he had to have the distance between me and that. That’s really important because I’ll also be out a lot on skis in the winter, and there I also use it so that he is not coming too close to the skis. That works really well. I just can say that’s a good way to use the poles, and always try it so he’s a little bit away.
JEANETTE: When you’re out running in the mountains, sometimes you can meet some animals. Not all animals are just as nice. Cows, for example. How do you handle them?
ELISA: Cows. [laughs] I’m really afraid about cows because in Germany we have so many on the mountains. They’re all running free. Especially when they have small baby cows, then they start to get really angry if they see a dog. When I see cows, Finn is always on the leash. That’s super important. But I had one time a problem that a cow was too close, which was attacking me. Then I let him loose, of course, because otherwise we were both in trouble.
But another really good thing which helps is that cows are afraid of noises. I use my poles and throw them through the track or whatever, and if they hear a noise, they go away. That’s maybe a good point. But always be careful because if they have small cows and they see a dog, they’re not that friendly anymore. [laughs]
JEANETTE: Are there other challenges people might face when they’re running with a dog?
ELISA: I think there are always some challenges which you never know. For example, trees which fall on the track or other dogs. My dog is super happy with other dogs, but of course, it’s not always a good connection. And as I already said, you always have to think about two, so that’s also maybe a point. You have to think about it.
JEANETTE: And you also have nature. Things get stuck to your dog’s fur, or maybe insects as well? I don’t know, do you have experience on this?
ELISA: Yeah, that’s true. I had it. It was in Albania. Finn was laying a lot in the sand, and there had been some – I’m not sure how they’re called, but some super small horrible things. They were stuck everywhere in his fur, and we had to pull them out of his fur. He started to bleed and everything, so it was not that nice.
But I think all what happens, you get more and more prepared for everything that comes. It’s a good way to do it. [laughs] Or not a good way, but a way, and you learn about everything. That’s good.
JEANETTE: For the summer and the future, what are your plans?
ELISA: For this summer, we want to make some longer trips, Finn and me. For that, we have to prepare a little bit, go for longer hikes, and also prepare what to pack and how much food and how much water is there. I really love to be out with the dog. Being outside on the mountaintop is just amazing. Also, Finn really likes it. But for that, we have to train and have to think how much food, stuff like that. I just can say it’s amazing to be out with a dog, and maybe everyone should do it. Sleeping over on a mountaintop, stuff like that, and connect really more to your dog.
JEANETTE: What does it mean for you to have a dog on all these adventures? I guess it would be cool doing it by yourself, but having a dog, what extra joy does it give you?
ELISA: I think it’s so nice. I really like to be sometimes alone in the mountains, but with a dog, you’re never alone alone. That’s super nice because you never feel alone, and it’s just nice to have something and someone with you. We have made so many adventures and such nice memories, I can’t think – or if I think if I had done it without anyone or without my dog, it would not be the same. I’m really happy about it.
JEANETTE: Does it make you feel extra safe? Or is it like if I go camping with my dog and it’s dark and they start barking, maybe I would get a bit scared as well. [laughs]
ELISA: [laughs] Yeah, maybe. But I think it’s just nice to have him with me. Of course, if I’m sleeping outside, I know that he always will wake up if something happens. It’s not like I’m alone and whatever, a cow is coming. He feels earlier than I can feel something. Also when the weather is changing. He’s super
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JEANETTE: If you like biking, you will probably like this episode as well, as today’s guest is the World Champion, European Champions, and Norwegian Champion in bikejoring. He also competes in scooter and Nordic with skijoring, pulka, and 4-dog sled. Viktor Sinding Larsen, welcome.
VIKTOR: Thank you.
JEANETTE: You have achieved some impressive results throughout many years, so of course we want to know: how are you training yourself and your dogs? Now it’s offseason.
VIKTOR: It is. We just finished the winter season. Every year, we give the dogs an 8-week offseason period where we do other things, like not competition-specific training. We try to build up their strength, so we do some power training, a lot of core training. But in general, fewer hours than what we normally do. If some of the dogs come out of the season with small injuries that we do not see, these 2 months normally will heal all kinds of small potential injuries so that when we start again in 2 months, we know that they’re ready for a new year of training and competition.
JEANETTE: How do you build your training throughout the rest of the year?
VIKTOR: When the offseason period is over, we start very, very light. Only short trainings, maybe 1-2 kilometers in the beginning. Then we build up. Normally when the weather gets colder, it’s possible to do longer trainings. We start 1-2 kilometers and we try to end when the dryland competition is getting closer. We build up so that we are on 9-10 kilometer trainings.
Then we prepare for the dryland competitions, and when the dryland competitions are done, we have a lack of time, trying to prepare for the winter season, trying to catch up. All the Nordic guys have been training huge amounts through the fall, so then we have to program the dogs for longer distances, train big amounts in November/December, preparing for competition.
JEANETTE: You divide your training into light, medium, and hard weeks. What’s the difference between these weeks?
VIKTOR: We try to have these light, medium, and hard weeks. In general we do a lot of pulling. In the light week, maybe two or three times of pulling. The main purpose of this week is to recover. The medium week is a bit harder, maybe three to four times a week pulling. Then we end up with the hard week, five to six times pulling, and we also try to combine it with some core training or just free running in the garden.
JEANETTE: You’re living in Oslo, and that’s a city where it could be hard to have your dogs free running, but you solve this by training them in many other different ways.
VIKTOR: Yes, that’s true. We live in Oslo, and it’s a little bit challenging to train as much free running as we might like to do for the capacity of the dogs. But I like swimming a lot. It’s a very good, gentle way of training both capacity and strength. So during summer, we try to swim as much as possible.
JEANETTE: Swimming is also a very gentle way to train the dogs to avoid injuries.
VIKTOR: It is. I always spend quite a lot of energy on avoiding injuries for our dogs. Especially when we got our first greysters, they were really, really good dogs, Siri and Sagan. Because they were such amazing dogs, it was very important for us to get them to the starting line without having any injuries. It was better to compromise a little bit on the capacity training and more focus on having them without any injuries. Therefore, we train a lot of power, core, swimming, and not that much free running as maybe others do.
Of course, we don’t get the same capacity, but a healthy dog normally has good enough capacity for bikejoring anyway. It’s more important that it is without any kind of injuries.
JEANETTE: At the European Championships this winter, you started with seven dogs. Every dog was healthy.
VIKTOR: Yeah. Even though it was a very challenging winter with a lot of ice and it was really hard to train, we managed to bring all our seven dogs without any kind of injuries to the starting line. That’s something I’m very, very proud of.
The brain behind keeping the dogs free of injuries is my wife. She’s a physical therapist for both humans and our dogs, and she’s very good at observing. She spends a lot of time looking for any kind of injuries, if they walk in special ways. She spends a lot of time observing the dogs to see if there is anything wrong. This also affects the way we train. We say we try to be better safe than sorry. If there’s any kind of risk involved in the plans we have or the conditions, etc., we try to drop it just to make sure that we avoid any injuries.
JEANETTE: Even if it’s competition?
VIKTOR: Yeah, even if it’s competition. I think this has changed a little bit. When we started racing and for many years, we were in the middle of the list. It was quite a gap to the best ones, especially on the Nordic part. Then the feeling was much stronger to come up with something a little bit fancier, involving a little bit more risk, to close this gap.
But when you continue training like this and try to build the gap in a fast way, it’s normally not possible. The coach of Karsten Warholm says that they build in millimeters, but things can be destroyed in meters, meaning you cannot do something fancy in one training, which means that you need continuity in your training. Every day you train, you become a little bit better. But if you do one mistake, you can ruin everything just in one training. So it’s better to take one step at a time, being careful, instead of having to risk ruining everything and putting you many steps back.
I think also it’s important to think about what’s going on besides training. We train maybe 1 or 2 hours a day, and the rest of the 22-23 hours, it’s important to be careful. Most injuries happen during that time.
JEANETTE: Do you train with both bike and scooter?
VIKTOR: I train 99% of the time on bike. I think with a bike, it’s much easier to find the right speed. You can help them upwards, and especially at the end of the training session, you can help them in a much better way to control and find the right speed that you want for the dogs. Especially where we live, it’s very hilly. It’s up and down. Especially at the end of
the training when they’re a little bit weaker, it’s super nice to go on a bike, and you can help them find exactly the speed that you want.
JEANETTE: How do you know what speed is the right speed?
VIKTOR: In general, we train very, very slow downwards. I think this is very important for them to build up the trust for going slowly downwards so that the dogs have the feeling that they want to run faster. When you do that all the time, they really put themselves in a nice way into the harness. They really push downwards, and it’s like they want to go faster. So when competitions come and we pick the speed up, then it’s something they want.
When it’s going upwards, then we train very differently. Sometimes we want to do it heavy; sometimes we want to do it light. But by using a bike, you can adjust it just the way you want.
In general, I think we train very slow. I get many questions from people following me on Strava for example. They can follow each of our dog trainings, and they ask why we go so slow. I think for me, it’s important just to find a good rhythm where the dog is like flying in a comfortable speed.
If the goal for us is to reach, for example, 10K during this training, I try to find a speed, up, down, and on the flat, that will bring us to this 10K as easily as possible, a speed that they will roll or fly in the most efficient way. Then we have to brake downwards, trying not to have it too high on maximum speed, trying to find a good average speed, a good flow, so that we as efficiently as possible reach the kilometers that we want. By doing that, we can gain a lot of kilometers where the regeneration or restitution time is as low as possible.
My theory is that if I bring the speed up too much, the gain or the effect is very small, but they need much more time to regenerate and they don’t manage to run as many kilometers as if you find the right rhythm, the right flow, where they can fly away, gaining as many kilometers as possible.
JEANETTE: That theory seems to be correct because you’ve done quite well. [laughs]
VIKTOR: Yeah. It seems like this is working. I have many different dogs; they’re all running quite well.
JEANETTE: After a training session like this, how tired are the dogs?
VIKTOR: I always try to vary that as well, but in general I’m very fond of having short trainings. Very often, I end the training before they are very tired. By doing that quite often, they always want to push harder.
It’s a very important key in having the progression during the year. We start with just 1 or 2 kilometers, but I know the dogs can run two or three times as much. But by doing this many, many times, maybe five times a week, they will push harder and harder because they know, “This training is going to be short; I’ll spend as much energy as I can on these 3 kilometers.” By doing this, then we can slowly add one more and one more kilometer and still have a lot of power, building up towards 10K.
JEANETTE: Is it only in competition that you’re really pushing it to the maximum?
VIKTOR: Yeah. Only one time a year, I push 100%. I say that every competition or exercise is like putting money into the bank, and it’s only the European Championship or the World Championship where we go 100%. Even the Norwegian Championship or small competitions, I just do about 90-95%. I’m saving everything for the big championships because if you push your dog as hard as you can, even the strongest dog cannot do this very often.
That’s my theory. Maybe I’m a little bit soft, but I think that even such a short distance cannot take out money from the bank every time. You’ve got to save it. By doing this holding back a little bit all the time, I think I have much more money in the bank when the championship is coming that I can take out.
JEANETTE: During a competition, you are also working hard yourself. How much are you training yourself without the dogs?
VIKTOR: I train as much as I can. It’s a busy life now with plenty of dogs. They need a lot of training. But when I train the dogs, I don’t see this as an exercise myself. I put on warm clothes, and the dogs are doing the job.
I ride a bike almost every day. Two or three times I have an interval per week, and we’re also working with my coach on building up my leg power. I try to, especially during winter, have three power workouts with my legs. So I train as much as I can. The total load of dogs and the work and everything is quite high.
But in bike training, it’s also like as long as you reach a certain level, I think the dog gets very, very important. You need a super dog to win. You cannot win just with legs. I know that now I’m really lucky, having a super good bikejoring dog, and I have some young dogs that I think will be good as well. But without these super dogs, I have no chance.
That’s why we changed our focus a little bit during the years and now we have more dogs than we used to have, just to be a little bit less vulnerable, to make sure that when Siri, my super dog, is getting too old, I have some new dogs coming up. And of course, having four, five, six dogs in training takes a lot of energy. It affects my own cycling capacity, which I know can be improved a lot. But as long as I have one of those super dogs, I think my cycling capacity now is good enough.
JEANETTE: How do you see the difference between a good dog and this super dog?
VIKTOR: There are some super dogs that have a high speed, but there’s a lot of dogs with high speed at the moment. I think the super dogs also have stamina. They can just run and run. If the track is 4K, 5K, 6K, it doesn’t matter. They just keep on. That’s also the most amazing feeling, and maybe what motivates me. When you go for a race and you come towards the finish line and there’s still power and speed in front of you, this feeling is amazing.
JEANETTE: What do you focus on during a race?
VIKTOR: A bikejoring race is very tight. You need full speed from the beginning, and normally you don’t have to think much. Just full speed. But sometimes the track is longer. When it’s more than let’s say 5K, then you need to maybe start to think a little bit.
My goal during a race is always to have as high an average speed as possible, but as low maximum speed. I always compare my Strava race with my wife, just to see who has had the lowest maximum speed and the highest average speed. When it’s going downwards, this is where you can control the race.
If you’re nervous if your dog is going to manage to have full speed all the way to the finish line, this is where you can save energy, by using your brake. Don’t push the maximum speed as high as possible because every dog can run fast downward. It just makes it possible. But not all dogs can manage to the finish line if they are pushed too hard when going downwards. If you’re nervous, if you don’t know if you’ll manage al
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JEANETTE: I see a lot of questions on social media about what distances a puppy can walk, when they can start pulling or carrying a backpack, or whether they should walk on stairs or not. Today’s guest has worked with physical therapy for 20 years, and she can help find answers to these questions. Line Østerhagen, welcome.
LINE: Thank you.
JEANETTE: Your goal is to make life better for dogs by spreading knowledge about how their bodies are working and how we can take care of them in the best way possible. Therefore, you have been working on a book for the past year.
LINE: Yes, during 20 years of work and contact with dog owners, I found out that many courses and many places where they teach normal dog training, they actually don’t teach training physiology. So there is a lot of myths and wrong information out there, and I wanted to create a book with all the things that I think are missing from all the ordinary courses and all the important knowledge to all the dog owners so they can take good care of the body of their dog.
My book is about training exercise, but also about making a well-balanced program for the dog, how to train strength, endurance, and core muscles, and also how to put all these training methods together. But it’s also about how to train a dog according to their age, because there are certain practices that you need to take care of when maybe you’re training a puppy or training a grown dog. But it’s also a little bit about rehabilitation, harness, and how to actually do an easy physical checkup routine for your own dog and a little bit of stretching and massage. I think my book can help a lot of dog owners out there.
JEANETTE: The beginning of the dog’s life is very important. As a puppy, how do you prepare it for an active life?
LINE: There are so many misunderstandings, so many myths. Many people say that you have to keep the puppy quiet, don’t do any physical activities, be careful about exaggerating their training. But actually, it’s more like if you don’t do any exercises with your puppy, it will not be prepared for the exercise it’s going to do later in life.
In the beginning, when a puppy is born, it is really important that we let the puppy experience a lot of different stuff and a lot of different stimulation to the body because the body will develop to manage the things that we tell it it has to manage. And if you don’t tell it to manage anything, the puppy might easily get injured.
Actually, in the United States, in the military, they start stimulating the puppies when they are 10 weeks old. They have had quite good results with that. I’m not saying that you should exaggerate. You shouldn’t do anything that the puppy doesn’t actually manage to do by itself. But the puppy has to be in activity. You are not going to stop the puppy from any normal activities. For example, walking on stairs. Puppies can easily walk on stairs. It’s actually just if the puppy is so small that it cannot manage the stairs that you might wait a little bit with it. But if you make small stairs, even a small puppy will manage to do that.
So when they’re old enough to manage it all by themselves, they can do anything. You shouldn’t stop the puppy from anything. But I recommend that you don’t have a tired puppy. If you’re walking, for example, in the woods, you should notice if the puppy is tired. Maybe you should take a break. But the puppy should be in activity.
Of course, as it grows, it should be in more and more activity, and you should present to it more and more different kinds of stuff.
JEANETTE: Does this include jumping, different surfaces, and everything?
LINE: Yes. Surfaces are really important to teach the body how to control itself on different surfaces. Also, of course, mentally so that a puppy is not afraid of anything. A body that is afraid of a surface will also have a very tense body, and a tense body will easily get injured. I believe there are many factors that make it important to present all kinds of stuff, actually.
JEANETTE: I know one question many have is: for how long can I walk my puppy?
LINE: I wrote a blog about this, the 5-minute rule. Here in Norway we have something called the 5-minute rule that says that the puppy should increase with 5 minutes of walking every day. Actually, that makes maybe a six-month-old puppy say that it should only walk for half an hour. As I have border collies, I can tell you that if I kept my puppy from walking or moving more than 30 minutes a day when she was six months old, she would go crazy. After a trip in the woods, she would run hours in the garden.
I think that the puppy must decide itself. As long as it’s not human-driven exercise, they should move as much as they want. And as long as you take breaks when you go into the woods, I believe it’s totally okay. I think it’s really different walking a small chihuahua to walking, for example, an Alaskan husky. You cannot use the 5-minute rule for both of those two. A chihuahua will walk maybe twice or three times as many steps as the other dog when they’re in the woods.
It also depends on how well-prepared their body is at that stage. If the puppy has been in normal activities since it was small, then it will also be able to walk further. But of course, if you keep a puppy from walking and then start later on, then you have to start more carefully because the body is not built up to manage that kind of exercise.
I would not let a puppy jump all the time as exercise, but normal jumping in the garden, jumping over trees in the woods and everything, of course they can do that. As long as they physically manage it by themselves, then they can do it.
JEANETTE: How do I know if my puppy is tired? What signs should I look for? If it’s my first dog, it could be difficult to know if the puppy is tired or not.
LINE: Yes. The most normal sign, of course, is that it maybe walks a little bit slower, wants to sit down. Maybe it doesn’t manage its movement as well anymore. But actually, a puppy can also be overtired and get even more active than it normally does. Of course, it’s important to learn this from the beginning and to know their signs before you go on a long trip. I would recommend all people get knowledge about this because every dog is a little bit different as well, so it is really important that you know your puppy.
JEANETTE: A lot of our listeners have sports dogs. Many of them are doing pulling sports like bike drawing or canicross. One important question for them is: when can the puppy start pulling, and how do you start?
LINE: We recommend that a young dog learns how to do everything with only its own body first. So they build up their muscles, they build up their movements in maybe their first and second year. At approximately two years of age, a young dog can start to pull something or carry a backpack. But of course, this is also relative because the dog has to be prepared for the work. It doesn’t matter if the dog is two years old if it just laid on the sofa for that long. It needs to be prepared for every work that it’s going to do. If it’s well-prepared, then about two years of age.
You have to remember that we have to carefully build their body up progressively from the beginning. Those rules, for example, in agility, it says that as long as the dog is approximately one year old, it can participate in training. But of course, the dog has to be prepared in their body, so it doesn’t help to be the right age if they have not done the right preparation.
Actually, I have a kickbike, and although my dog is one year old this year, one of my dogs, she is walking beside the kickbike. She has a harness on, but she doesn’t actually pull. But I teach her techniques and I teach her commands and I teach her to be safer on the kickbike and everything. She also goes on the trip, but without pulling.
So I believe it’s really important that we prepare the dogs. That is what it’s all about with a puppy as well because it’s really a big difference if the dog is maybe three months old until it’s a year. We have to very gradually increase the exercise. Also, when the dog is maybe about a year, maybe eight months – depends on what it’s going to do – I would also start to prepare it for the sport or the thing that we want it to do later in life so the body gets the right preparation.
JEANETTE: Do you start with easy weight and not very long sessions? How do you build it up?
LINE: Yes. Actually, many times I start with no weight or no pull. As I told you, with my puppy, she’s just joining the trip, learning the technique, but she’s not pulling. I have also with my own dogs started to make them comfortable with carrying the backpack without anything in it in the beginning. Then we start with a really easy weight. For normal training, I recommend that you use the body weight of the dog and train with approximately 10%.
I know that there are certain dogs doing a lot heavier than that, and for short trips and if it’s really well-trained for it, of course it can carry more. But for normal weekly training, we recommend that.
There are also some contraindications. For example, a dog with weak carpus, I would never make those carry a backpack. So you should really know what you’re doing when you’re putting external weight or pull on the dog, that your dog is capable in every way.
JEANETTE: Maybe get a checkup from the vet before you start training?
LINE: Yes, I believe that’s a good idea. Also maybe read about it. Get help to make a good training program so that the body will build itself up to the thing that you want your dog to do.
JEANETTE: What benefits can it have for a dog to pull or to carry a backpack?
LINE: I believe it has many benefits. We use pulling also for strengthening the side of the thighs. For example, if a dog needs to have more strength in their shoulder muscles, a backpack can be a good thing. But it depends a little bit on the way we train them. It depends a little bit on what the goal is. But if it is to get stronger in the body, it’s really great for building up certain parts of the body.
We also use the backpack in rehabilitation. There, the goal is not always to carry all of this weight, but to make a frame for the shoulders – for example, for dogs with shoulder instability, the backpack will actually help the shoulders to keep together so that the dog will build the right muscles. Then we might not use any weight at all.
JEANETTE: When we’re talking about rehabilitation, swimming is something that’s commonly used. It’s quite light on the body. When can a puppy start swimming?
LINE: Actually, a puppy can start swimming as soon as they’re swimming willingly. But of course, how far they swim and how much they swim – and I would also be careful of puppies swimming in very cold water because the body reduces warmth really fast in cold water. Swimming is not actually a good exercise for endurance when the water is cold because of the temperature loss of the muscles.
But puppies can swim from the beginning. Here in Norway, it’s possible to use indoor swimming pools when the puppy is small because there is ice on the water and it’s too cold. There are some breeds, of course, that swim less well. If you have one of those, they should wear a swimming vest, I think, just because it will make it easier and more comfortable from the beginning.
I also recommend using a life vest for dogs that have issues in their body and for dogs that are moving their front legs a lot when they swim because it makes them more comfortable, and then the technique will be a lot better and you will get more out of swimming as exercise.
JEANETTE: Is there anything else you can do or you should not do with a puppy?
LINE: I think that it’s important not to jump from really high places. It’s really normal to maybe lift the puppy up on the sofa, but we have to remember that the puppy was not able to get onto the sofa by itself, and then it’s also really important that it doesn’t jump down.
The body must be able to do the stuff that the puppy is doing, so if you are lifting them up, then you should also help them down and not let them jump from the sofa. The surface on the living room floor is also often very slippery, and then it will be a double risk having them jump down.
JEANETTE: We talked a little bit about age. With competitions, in some sports you can start when the dog is about a year or a year and a half old. What do you think about these age limits? Is that too early, or is it okay if the owner is experienced and knows how to prepare the dog?
LINE: For me personally, I would never recommend doing stuff faster than the dog’s body manages. Of course it’s nice to have limits because then we at least help younger animals not to exaggerate what their body can manage. But I think that how mature a body is is different. It’s different concerning breed and it’s different concerning how well-prepared they are. But of course, if people are really well-prepared and have done a good job without exaggerating, maybe it can be ready at that age.
But I always recommend that you make it individual, that you look at it individually so that we don’t start too early with a dog that is not mature enough in the body.<
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JEANETTE: We wanted to involve our listeners in today’s episode, so we’re doing a Q&A with dog trainer Steve Walsh from McCann Dogs. Welcome.
STEVE: Good morning. How are you? Well, good morning over here. I guess good afternoon over there?
JEANETTE: Yeah, it’s afternoon for us. You’ve had dogs for more than 30 years and taught classes for the last 15. Is that right?
STEVE: Yeah, at least. They’ve been a part of my life since I was a little guy. Always something that I’ve had a lot of fun with. Training was always the most important thing to me, and actually, it was the most fun, more so than anything else. [laughs]
JEANETTE: What kind of dogs have you had throughout the years?
STEVE: My first dog when I was a kid was a black standard poodle. She was the worst trained dog ever. [laughs]
JEANETTE: She taught you a lot, I guess.
STEVE: Yeah, she was a dog that when you walked out the front door, you had to try to close the door really fast so she wouldn’t run away. I think that probably started me on this idea of wanting to train dogs. Since then, I’ve had several Irish wolfhounds and whippets and border collies and things. I have two border collies right now and an Irish wolfhound currently in the house.
JEANETTE: You’ve been competing in different kinds of dog sports?
STEVE: Yeah, I’ve done a fair bit of lure coursing with the sighthounds and stuff, and now my main focus is agility. I’ve been lucky enough to represent Canada overseas at the European Open and national events around here as well. I’m very, very lucky to be able to do that.
JEANETTE: That’s good. So you have a lot of experience.
STEVE: Well, there’s always things to learn. [laughs] That’s the one thing I’ve learned. I never know enough, so I’m always trying to learn more.
JEANETTE: That’s good. Our listeners seem to be eager to learn more as well. We asked everyone on Instagram to send us their questions, and we got a lot, actually. There seems to be a lot of excited dogs out there because there were a bunch of questions similar to this first one “Do you have any tips on how to train your dog to not get too crazy and excited before a training or a race?”
STEVE: Dogs that are stimulated and excited, especially when it comes to training, are things that I love because I want a dog that’s eager and I want a dog that’s motivated to do the things that we want to do, whether it be agility or just some retrieving or some field trials or any of the sledding sports, things like that.
I will say before any of the sport stuff starts, though, I spend a lot of time with my younger dogs just near the environment. The reason I say near is if they’re right in it, we all know the events, especially the trials and events and races and things, are very high energy. If I can start to spend a little bit of time getting them comfortable in the area, doing basic things – having them sit, having them lie down, having them walk with me before I ever get to trialing, that can really help down the road.
Now, that doesn’t mean that older dogs can’t do that. We spend a lot of time trying to simulate a trial environment and trying to simulate that energy level because it is so different, and teach our dogs to listen. The more they can do that, the easier that becomes.
One thing I don’t want to ever do is try and get rid of that interest and excitement from the dogs. I really like it, but I really want to make sure that they can focus on listening to me in spite of that excitement. That’s a bit of a challenge to do, but like anything else, if I do it in a manner that my dog can be successful, that can help in those situations. That’s for sure. It’s a challenging thing to do, but it’s definitely worthwhile focusing on.
JEANETTE: Do you start when the dog is a puppy and you start from a distance and then gradually work your way closer?
STEVE: Yeah. Distance is a really big benefit. If you’re right next to something and let’s say the dog’s not even listening because you’re right next to the start line and there’s dogs screaming and barking and all sorts of things, going 40 or 50 feet away can really, really help to bring that puppy’s mind back in and allow it to listen.
I think about my dogs as having a bubble around them, and when they’re puppies, of course, that bubble is quite large. Anything that comes within that bubble really affects them and really distracts them. But the more adept they get at learning to listen with those distractions, the smaller that bubble gets and the more they can focus.
But it also starts with doing simple, basic behaviors, simple things that I want them to do, and really letting them know what to do instead of what not to do. This is one of our big training philosophies. I don’t want to spend a lot of time telling my dog what not to do, but I want to spend time telling them what to do and showing them how to do it to be successful.
If I can give you something that you know how to do when you’re in an excited mindset, it becomes easier for me to prevent the things that I don’t want to be happening. Basically, I replace behaviors that I don’t want with behaviors that I do. That’s a bit of a challenge, but that distance that you talked about is really helpful in doing so.
Just having a dog sit on a loose leash near that excitement – it might not happen 10 feet away, but at 50 feet away, it can be really, really successful. And then I would move slowly closer, building on that success.
JEANETTE: And if your dog is starting to fail, you just go one or two steps back again?
STEVE: Yeah, I move back. I move back to where they can be successful. Teaching a dog to offer me some focus when they’re excited is another thing that I really spend a lot of time doing. If I have an excited dog and they’re let’s say standing next to an agility ring, going nuts, if I move away, just encourage the dog to move away with me – I’m not going to tell them “leave it,” I’m not going to tell them “no” or anything negative – I’m just going to wait, and oftentimes in waiting, they will offer to look and offer a little bit of focus.
That’s a great way to build a little bit more of the idea in the dog’s mind that when you’re excited about things, you need to look at me for directions, not continue to focus on looking at that thing that is exciting to you. I want my dogs to feel free to look around the world. I don’t expect them to stare at me the whole time. But any time they do offer me some focus, and especially any time they offer me calm focus, then I start to offer a lot more reward. I simply build on that idea that yep, those exciting things are there, but I’m still here and all the good stuff comes from me.
JEANETTE: Do you prefer to reward with a toy or with treats?
STEVE: Every dog is different. People get so caught up on the thing, whether it’s the toy or the food. I want my dogs to think that I am a reward. All of me, whether it’s a piece of a kibble, whether it’s a toy, whether I’m running and playing with them, whether I’m simply talking to them, I want my dogs to think of me as a reward. All that stuff is just the icing on the cake, so to speak. The more that they think I’m fun, the more they’ll pay attention to me.
JEANETTE: Staying in a starting area can be quite challenging because in some sports you have a specific time. You know that “at this time, I’m going to run,” but in other sports it depends on what’s happening on the course. Sometimes you have to wait for a long time, sometimes a shorter waiting time. It can be quite hard to train this.
STEVE: Oh yeah, absolutely. You know with a lot of the sports that you do and a lot of the events you’ve been to with agility that sometimes the setups to go into the ring are very different from event to event. Sometimes you can be on the other side of the field and there’s a sound system where they call your name when you need to go. Other times you’re waiting in line, 30 or 40 or 50 dogs long. That’s where spending time away from those events, working on that ability to focus and that ability to settle, can really go a long way when you really need it to.
Of course, the other side of that is at those events, we’re also worked up. We’re also nervous or focused or a little bit more on edge, and that goes right to the dogs. They read that, as far as I’m concerned. So conditioning us both to be calm and collected can really make a big difference. Again, starting away from those events and working towards it.
The other thing that we really try and do, we often set up fake trials, or we play games in our training to put pressure on them, because pressure changes how we interact with the dogs. Pressure changes how the dogs react to it. We’ll make silly bets or silly games or play music really loud or do something else that simulates that environment to really have the dogs work through it.
Maybe it’s a challenge for if you don’t run clean, then you have to do 50 pushups, or something where there’s something on the line that we really have to work towards, and that makes it fun.
JEANETTE: When you are at competitions, would you use the chance to do – I like to call it false starts, to pretend that you’re preparing for a start, but then you don’t start so that the dog never knows when it’s an actual start and when it’s just a game?
STEVE: Yeah. I go on the adage “train like a trial.” At events, whether it be at your race starts where there’s times to warm up and then sit and wait and warm up and sit and wait, by all means I would do the same routine every single time, whether I’m starting or not so that the dog isn’t sure whether we are actually going to run or not, but they are tuned to the excitement level. That’s always a great idea.
JEANETTE: We got another question that’s a bit related to this, I would say. “My dog is perfect in training, but won’t listen to me at competitions. What can I do about this?”
STEVE: To me, that sounds like pretty much the same question. Slightly different result, though. It has more to do with the environment. One of the things that I hear from students all the time is they’re often surprised when their dog doesn’t follow something that they ask them to do.
The first thing they say is, “My dog knows this.” My answer to them is, no, your dog doesn’t know it in this second, in this environment. It may know it in your kitchen, it may know it in your yard, it may know it at the field or the place where you practice all the time, but in this particular environment, your dog doesn’t know it.
That really highlights the fact about how much environment plays a role in dogs’ learning and dogs’ ability to perform things. In that particular second, does the dog know it at that particular second in time? No. But it’s the stimulation that we talked about in the last question that’s overruling the dog’s understanding of what we’re asking them to do.
With that particular dog, personally, if it were my dog, I wouldn’t be doing any competitions at that particular point. I would spend a fair bit more time spending time around competitions without actually running – but again, still trying to build on a little bit more verbal control in those situations and a little bit more focus.
JEANETTE: I guess consistency is also quite important when it comes to these kinds of issues.
STEVE: Here’s the other thing. If I have a dog that’s already proven itself to be more distracted in those environments and I continue to be able to give it – we talked about rewards briefly; running agility for my dogs is a reward. But if my dog is rewarding itself by not listening and doing all the things it wants to do, it’s not doing anything for their ability to be successful and be more focused on me on a course if I continue to trial and continue to let those things happen. It’s not doing a whole lot for our relationship and our goals overall.
One of the things that we really try and do is take away our dog’s ability to rehearse things incorrectly. If my dog never does anything wrong because I’ve set it up that way, they don’t know how to do anything but be right.
Let’s say I went out with a young dog – I have an adolescent dog right now, and he listens really, really well, but there are still those times where he looks around and says, “Do I really want to listen to you or do I not?” That’s part of it. But one of the things I will make sure I do at that point is if I see any hesitation in him to respond – I’m never mad at him, but what I will do is take a step back and give him a little bit less freedom. Put a long line on him, do something where I have a direct connection to him to simply prevent him from making the mistake.
If I can prevent my dog from not listening to me at an event or a race or a trial or whatever, they never learn that they can. [laughs] Going back and se
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JEANETTE: Today’s guest is actually the fastest 5k runner in the whole world. Assisted by his dog Blake, Ben Robinson from the UK beat the world record with the time at 12 minutes, 24 seconds. I met him at the World Championships in Canicross in Sweden some months ago to find out how he is training. After they won, he was already more than 30 seconds ahead of #2. How is that possible?
BEN: It’s a combination of factors. I just had really good preparation. We started preparing for this race in the spring. Throughout the summer, I did whatever I could with Blake in terms of heat acclimatization, and obviously in the end we actually had slightly warmer temperatures than expected, but Blake was able to deal with those. Obviously I’m very lucky that Blake’s an exceptional dog. And just massive athletic preparation myself as well, away from canicross, and then just put the two together, and the result was pretty good for us.
JEANETTE: There’s a lot of good runners out there, but you seem to be one step ahead all the time. How are you training?
BEN: I train in athletics and canicross, obviously with the dog. A lot of my training will be on my own, but at the same time I place a great importance on working with Blake. I think we’ve seen in the past some really strong athletes, but then maybe don’t have the bond with the dog. So all the time, even when I’m training say an average week where I’ll train most of the time myself, I’m with Blake, walking him, whether that’s on lead, whether it’s off lead, scooter training, free running. I’m always with him. He lives at home with the family as well.
So I think it’s a combination of my athletic ability, obviously his incredible ability as a sport sled dog, and then still keeping that bond and importance on that bond.
JEANETTE: How does a normal week look for the two of you?
BEN: An average week, I would run most days. Maybe the odd rest day, so one day off. Probably two interval sessions for myself, one hills-based session and then one long run, and then the rest of the run is just made up of a little bit of recovery work. For Blake, in season, probably between three and four harness-specific sessions, which would mostly be scooter with just the occasional bike session as a speed and maybe the occasional canicross just to get my legs used to it, certainly in season.
And then hit up a couple of free runs with the rest of the team dogs. They all free run as a group, so they run hard together, and then a couple of days where he’ll walk on harness. I use obviously the half harness, the shoulder harness, but he will pull. I always let him pull on the walk, so that’s like a high resistance session for him.
And then I always give the dogs at least one rest day. Sometimes two if I feel they need it, but a complete rest day where they’re only at home, only in the garden, nothing at all, no walk, no run. I think there’s a lot of importance on the recovery for the dog as well.
JEANETTE: Do you have any breaks throughout the year, like a week or a month or something like this with alternative training?
BEN: Yeah, I always try and find a couple of stages across a calendar year where we have a few weeks of no structured training. We just do what we feel like, just enjoy time together, just the free run and the walk, but nothing else. It will depend a little bit where that fits on the seasons. That’s quite a hard thing to manage.
Obviously, I manage my own training around an athletic season and cross-country and road running, and then obviously for Blake, there’s the domestic season at home and then there’s an international season, and they don’t always agree, so a lot of the time it’s dictated to by that a little bit. But we’ll always try and find some time to rest too.
JEANETTE: How is it for you two to rest?
BEN: We’re quite active, still. Blake will accept it for maybe a day or two of complete rest. He’s used to that, obviously, in the week setup that I described earlier. But after that he’ll want to do something and he’ll get quite pent up. So yeah, there has to be some activity in there, like activity if he’s been out, free run a little bit. So more a little rest for the mind. I take him away from the harness work so he’s not having to think, he’s just doing what he wants to do. If that’s run hard, he can.
For me, a little bit easier. Obviously I’ve got the family at home, so a rest from running is okay, but I’m busy and they’ll keep me busy, the kids. Some time spent with the family is nice as well after a really intense preparation.
JEANETTE: How is running with a dog different than running just by yourself?
BEN: It is different and it isn’t. I obviously run track. What I generally find is it’s like me running a much, much shorter distance. My effort in canicross with Blake would maybe be like my 400 to 800 meter running, but obviously the addition of Blake just means I can keep that pace going for much, much longer, up to 5k distance. My 5k time is probably equivalent to about my 800 meter time without him, a flat out 2 minutes. He keeps me doing it for 12-13 minutes.
JEANETTE: You and Blake have the fastest 5k time ever. Can you tell us about that day?
BEN: Yeah. We weren’t really sure what we could do. I knew we could run under 13 minutes, but I wasn’t really sure how much. Just really fancied an attempt at going at the 5k distance hard. Obviously, we picked a good fast course for it and just really had a go, just went out hard. He was in really good shape, and I was just really pleased. Around 12:24 in the end.
Interestingly, I think there’s a little bit more to cut, maybe, even in the last kilometer. We had to go back past some of the early starters, and I had to go quite wide with him, off the track, onto grass. So I’d like another go in the near future. He’s in good shape this year. He’s really matured well now. He’s coming up to 4 in January. So I think if I can get my shape in a good place for next season, then maybe we’ll have another attempt.
JEANETTE: What’s the best age for a canicross dog?
BEN: I don’t think I really know the answer yet. Blake is, as I said, coming up to 4 in January, and I would say he’s improved the whole time to date. I think he’s the fittest he’s been at the moment. He’s really matured. He’s stronger. I’ve been able to do more training with him this year than I have before, keeping him in excellent condition. So I’m just really excited to find out if there is any more from him. I think next year can be as strong if not stronger. Hopefully he can even improve from there.
But I would say he’s approaching peak, so I think 3 to 4, and then it’s just a case of obviously holding that fitness for as long as possible, so hopefully a good few years left of Blake at top performance.
JEANETTE: Are you thinking of getting another dog to get ready for when he’s retired?
BEN: Yeah. Obviously we’ve got a team at the moment. My other large European sled dog, Nero, has been coming on really well. In preparation this year, I’ve prepared them mostly on scooter, as I’ve said. A lot of their training sessions, they’ve been neck and neck. In the end, I trusted Blake just for what he’d do in the championship, but canicross, I’m very similar with Nero, so he’s a good backup.
I’ve got my smaller girls who I can’t run quite as fast in the short distance sprint because they’re a lot smaller. They’re 20 and 24 kilos, and Sophie is 26, 27. But we have now got two sons of Blake. We bred Blake and Sophie ourselves at home, and both myself and my father have kept a pup, so we’ve got two of Blake’s sons. They’re just 6 months old, so we’re hoping that they’ll follow in his footsteps as well.
JEANETTE: How do you work with a puppy and a young dog to prepare them for this sport?
BEN: To date, for the first 6 months, I’ve just really let him be a puppy. He’s just at home. As our others, he’s with the family. The most he’s done in terms of preparation is just come with the team to the odd training session, so he’s used to traveling with us in the van, he’s used to seeing them get excited, seeing them have the harness on, seeing them run. But he’s done no specific preparation; he’s just obviously done some short walks and a short amount of free running with them.
But after this preparation, I’ll go home and by the end of this year I’ll just start some very short runs with him. I like to do his first run just to assess where he’s at, just him on his own, so I won’t take him with any of the team. I’ll take him on his own, try just 100-200 meters, and see what he does. Then I’ll vary his sessions. Some he’ll see the others, some he’ll follow the others, some he’ll go on his own.
I like the dogs to be able to do anything – prepped Blake in the same way – and just gradually build the distance up so that hopefully beginning of next season, after a summer of light preparation, he can debut in canicross.
JEANETTE: Do you ever train longer distances than what you run in competitions, or do you stay around 5k?
BEN: Yeah, I’ll always go a little bit over. As with my own prep, I don’t like the 5 kilometer to be the maximum as I think it leaves a little bit of a weakness toward the end of the trail, particularly if it’s been a challenging trail. So Blake would’ve certainly prepped some sessions up to 6k or just beyond. But the other dogs, my smaller dogs, do a lot further. My girls I’ve run as far as 13-14k in harness, and hopefully in the future I’d like to run a half marathon with them and maybe even look at events such as the TDM where it’s multiple events across the week. So they will do a lot further. But yeah, Blake’s certainly above distance, but not too much.
JEANETTE: When Blake is running, it’s full speed from the start, but he cannot go for that pace for like 14 kilometers or something. Do you have a command or something to tell him that “this time you can slow down a little bit”?
BEN: I think it’s certainly possible. Obviously I’ve got friends in the sport that have done that. Certainly I’ve mentioned TDM, and I know a lot do call their dog off for downhills and that. It’s not something I’ve tried to do with Blake. I’m quite happy that that 6k+ preparation keeps him in a good place for the 5k racing that we’ll do. He’s all or nothing. He’s all out.
With the girls, you can control them a little bit easier, yeah. The way they’ve trained and that, their mindset’s a bit calmer. Nova, our smallest hound, she’s from the middle distance kennel. She’s always pulling, she’s always working well, but her mindset is for the long haul. She’s in it for the long run. She’ll run all day. But she’s not necessarily really, really pushing everything she’s got in the early stages. She’s just happy to get out there, get running, and keep running.
JEANETTE: How is it to run with such a big and such a fast dog? You seem to be flying up the hills, and downhill it looks quite scary.
BEN: Actually, with Blake I feel in unison quite well with him. Blake in great shape is only about 28 kilos, so actually, versus a lot of the other top teams, he’s a little bit smaller. I think that helps me quite a lot. I’ve been able to see the differences running him versus say Nero at 34 kilos. Corners, downhills, I can make a lot of time with Blake because I’m able to run flat-out. As we talked about earlier, I don’t attempt to slow him on the downhill, and I can still make the downhills quite well. But it certainly feels like a sprint when we get to those technical sections.
JEANETTE: Running technique is quite important when it comes to canicross. How do you train this, and what’s important to keep in mind?
BEN: Yeah, running technique is massively important. I’ve always been a firm believer with canicross that core stability work is hugely important as well, because the dogs are always pulling us away from that ideal core setup and position we’d be normally in. So I do a lot of core work just to be able to hold good running form, and just a lot of running-based drills in training, in warmup and that for main sessions.
I’ve been running since a teenager, so I’ve put a lot of emphasis on that to be able to run well, and then a really good core stability preparation to stay in that form when the dog starts to really pull you.
JEANETTE: Can you give us some specific exercises, some examples?
BEN: For core stability exercises, anything you want to look at doing limb to torso-based exercises. Things like leg raises can be really good, or rollouts, things like that, and also planks, any static core stability where you hold the position. Trying to avoid common exercises like sit-ups and crunches, because actually they’re not so good for the core. There’s a lot of spinal flexion there, which is something that actually we want to avoid. So try to focus on the limb to torso movements and the static isometric hold exercises.
JEANETTE: Have you ever had any injuries?
BEN: I have, yeah. I’ve been fairly lucky since starting canicross, but as a youngster I had various injuries. But when I look back, they’re probably more down to growing pains and things like that. Since coming into canicross, nothing really specific to canicross. Just been unlucky 2 years. One year a break in the foot, but it was just literally hitting a stone, unlucky timing on the trail. And a tendon issue in the foot as well, possibly which is related to tightness in the lower limb from a lot of trail running. But not anything canicross specific, luckily.
JEANETTE: Now you have been running in the World Championship, and that’s a big competition. Everybody has expectations that you are going
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JEANETTE: These days are putting our mental strength to the test. We need some motivation and inspiration. Today’s guest might be able to help with that.
Through 25 years at the top of his sport, the “King of Biathlon” has impressed the world with his abilities to handle challenges and pressure. Ole Einar Bjørndalen won 13 medals in the Olympics, 45 medals in World Championships, and had 95 individual World Cup wins before he retired a couple of years ago.
One incident in particular at the very start of his career set a standard.
OLE EINAR: That was quite many years ago. It was in 1998 in Japan, in Nagano. I was very well-prepared for this competition. It was a 10 kilometer sprint. The race went really well. Around 2 kilometers before the finish, they cancelled this race because it was too much wind and too much bad weather, so they felt it was not a fair competition.
I was in the lead. I got a message from my staff people. They said I was 15 seconds in front, so that was my first gold medal, I thought. But as you remember, directly before I finished, they cancelled the race.
I got really angry up in the mountain there and smashed my skis and poles on the track, for sure. But then I understood that this race was not finished after a few minutes. I needed to come back to the stadium. So I skied slowly down to the stadium again, and then I saw a lot of media and journalists and I knew exactly what they would ask me about.
I thought, “Why should I speak to them? This race is not finished. I used 4 years for this competition; I don’t want to miss this competition again.” So I went straight forward, didn’t speak with anyone, no media, nothing, because I had no reason because the race was not finished. I would make this race finished before I spoke with anyone.
Then I went into my wax cabin, and in my wax cabin, my waxer was sitting in a corner there and he was more sad than me. He was sitting and crying because he lost also one gold medal. I remember the words I said to him. “I have fantastic skis these days,” and I said, “Thank you for the skis. Make the skis the same tomorrow, because it was really great.”
Then I took the bus down to the hotel. I needed to think about the next day. For sure I was feeling a bit sad, but I went to the hotel, took some food, and then I called my mental coach. This mental coach, Øyvind Hammer, I’d worked with him since two years before. We went through this competition the day before this race, and for sure I had to call him and explain what had happened.
He took the phone and he was a little bit different coach than others, because he was not interested in biathlons. He was more interested in what I am doing. I’m not sure if he was looking at this competition because he had a big business and he worked like hell, so I’m not sure if he looked at this on TV.
His first question was, “How was the race?” I explained it. “Skiing was fantastic. First round was also good. I shot four, and on the last shot I missed one and I put my rifle – but still I went in front because I was fast skier this time. Shot clean standing, so everything was good.” Then I explained they stopped the race.
Then it was quiet a little bit from him, and he said to me, “You’re quite lucky that you have a chance to make this race again, because we had an agreement yesterday” – because he prepared every race an agreement. I prepared on the paper, I wrote everything down what I had to do, and I signed it. When you sign the paper, then you need to hold what you write on the paper.
This time I didn’t hold my prone shooting. I was not on the place. I had the rifle on my back before I shot the last shot, almost. So he said to me, “We’ll do exactly the same preparation for the next race the day after, and you should do a single shot, prone, single shot standing, and don’t leave the stadium before you have done this job because you did not do this job before.”
I did that. I made my best race ever, shoot 10 from 10 and win more than 1 minute. I didn’t speak with anyone, almost, because it was in Japan. I didn’t speak with any media. I was focused on myself. I had the right person around me and not people who were sorry about that happening. That is really a challenge when you make a bad race, because everyone is sorry to you. You don’t need that because you have a chance to wake up again and make the race better than what you have done before.
JEANETTE: But how do you protect yourself from negative energy? Because it’s all around.
OLE EINAR: It’s all around, but you don’t need to meet them. Go around. For sure, you’d be shorter in the dinner, shorter in all – because the main point is the meal. All others, you stay in the room and I go running in the evening, so I don’t see any people. You need to be in your vacuum and think about yourself, especially when there’s a championship like that. Then you’re a little bit shy from people.
JEANETTE: But everybody wants a piece of you. Is it difficult to stay in your bubble?
OLE EINAR: For me, it’s normal. You need to give a lot for the media and people, but you need to give that with that you get energy. If you lose energy – which is really easy to do when you are a good athlete because everyone wants a piece of you – the moment you start to lose energy, you need to stop. Then you need to explain it to people around you, if you have somebody who can help you with that to inform, or you inform them yourself to say that you need time for yourself. I think that is important when you are in a challenging time. If not, there’s only one man who loses, and that is yourself. So you need to take control about your time, your balance in your life.
Competition is to stay focused – everyone stays enough focused on the sport, I think. The problem is they don’t take control of their life. If you don’t have balance in the rest of your life, you have no chance to make a good race.
When I started to work with mental coaches, my colleagues worked 90% with the sport and 10% with the private. I do the opposite. I work 90% with my life and 10% with sport.
JEANETTE: Why did you decide to start with the mental training? Was it normal at that time to do it, or was it something new?
OLE EINAR: Today, it’s totally normal. In 1996, it was definitely not normal. This man, Øyvind Hammer, he doesn’t get any chance to come to our hotel. All coaches don’t like him. He was dressed in a suit and coming with different cars than usual normal people. He had no experience in sport. He thought different, and always when people are different, they feel threatening to people, so they get always afraid. It happened also this time, but he definitely was the most important guy for me to come through, to be World champion the first time and definitely my Olympic gold the first time. When you make it one time, it’s much easier to make it again.
JEANETTE: What was the biggest difference you could notice before you started doing mental training and after?
OLE EINAR: As you’re a professional in your sport, you know plenty enough about the sport. Different what I did, I put everything in a system. When I should think in the right way after each other, because you know plenty about everything. You don’t need to have more information, but you need to make a system. That was a big difference. Plus I fixed my private life.
JEANETTE: Do you do some kind of mental training every day? Or did you do it only before competitions or championships?
OLE EINAR: I did it every day. Sometimes I did a lot, other times I did not so much. But you can definitely be overtrained in that. I did that too. It’s easy to get overtraining mental training because you need to have balance in everything. Physical training, mental training, private life, and then you have a chance to make a good race.
JEANETTE: When it comes to the sport you have been doing, biathlon, it’s much like agility, for example. If you miss the target, you get a penalty. That’s precisely what happens when our dogs knock a bar, for instance. When something like this happens, it’s easy to lose focus, but you are really good at fighting till the end. What were you telling yourself in these situations?
OLE EINAR: First of all, you should never give up. I’m training the Chinese team now, and that is the first rule. Never give up. That is first. Second is the mental stability. You have happiness, you have depression, and you have aggression. Many emotional things can happen with you. If there’s some sport that you’re doing shooting or like with animals, you need to have balance in your life.
If you are more stable yourself, I think your animals or your stuff around you will also be more stable. So you should not go too high and not too low. When you have a good result, you should be a little bit calmer, and when you have a bad result, you should not go to hell, too low. If you have a bad result, my rule is 30 minutes you can be in a bad mood, but after that it doesn’t help anything.
I think it’s also really important to be analytical, not so much emotional. Analytic, how I can fix it, stay positive, and fix it and use energy in the right way.
JEANETTE: Your mental strength also shows in competitions where you are really pushing yourself to the limit of what’s physically possible. How did you use your mind to work through all the pain?
OLE EINAR: It’s quite a long time since I made a really hard competition. If I make competition today, it’s painful, but when I was a professional it was not painful because I trained every second day. So that was more a habit. I was prepared for that.
I can maybe remember one race was painful, many, many years ago. But really pain – when you’re in bad shape, you remember pain, but when you’re in normal shape, you have so many things you need to think about and techniques you need to think about, everything. I was quite professional. I was quite prepared for what I had to do, so I didn’t think that was pain. It pushed me a lot, but really it will be a little bit same as when you brush your teeth. You have to do it. For me, it was fun. I live for my sport and I do it every day, and that was my life.
JEANETTE: Through 25 years in the national team, you have done a lot of competitions. Some were big, some were not that big. But have you ever been nervous?
OLE EINAR: Well, I was really nervous for a small race in Norway. Some relays in the World Cup I could be nervous for. In the first years, for sure, I was really nervous. I could not sleep the whole night until I started to be good at mental preparation. When I started to be good at mental preparation, then I did all nervousness the day before and then I was calm for the race.
The Olympics, I was less nervous for all races because I had trained for this race 4 years. That was like to brush teeth again. I only had to do the job. Everything had to be okay with all the equipment. You need to stay fit, right weight, right food. Your health had to be working well. So there’s many things you need to fix, but nervous, I was not so in an important race.
JEANETTE: What differs the best athletes from the second best?
OLE EINAR: For sure, you need to have extreme talent. If you don’t have talent to be in the national team, you have no chance. If you’re on the national team, I think you’re good enough to be quite good to win medals. But to be constantly on the top, there’s really few people who have this quality.
There’s something with talent, but also about mental – not health, but mental strength that you can handle success, handle bad races. You need to do not always the right choice, but you need to do 95% the right choice. You need to stay healthy. If you are not healthy – I made 25 years World Championship. I was healthy in each World Championship. That is quite good. You cannot stay unhealthy. If you are sick, you lose too much to your opponent.
JEANETTE: How did you manage to stay healthy all the time?
OLE EINAR: You can get bacteria, you can get virus from a lot of people. I get that also. Everyone gets that. Then you need to handle it and fight against it with your immune system. Sometimes you have it; some other times you do not have this immune system and you need to use something to be able to cope.
But most of the time, if you’re mentally tired from mentally negative stress, that is the worst case and you can have bacteria and virus. That’s my opinion. It’s not proven, but I say that each time I get sick is because I am mentally tired from mentally negative stress. From huge working stress or huge hours of training, I never get sick and I get overtrained about that. It’s more about balance in your life. If you have a lot of negative people around you and mentally negative stress, then you can get everything if you want.
JEANETTE: How important is it to have a good team around you that’s giving you that energy instead of draining you?
OLE EINAR: This is about this 90%, what I spoke about before. You have no chance to do all this job alone. You need a crazy strong team. You need really smart people around you and you need to fix them. If they’re not so good, you need to make them good.
I don’t want to say a name, but one of the best coaches in Norway came to us many years ago. He was educated from the Norwegian sports university and was okay, but when he left the job, he was in the highest level ever. He got good from the athletes, not from other coaches. Athletes can make the coach great. You need to make people around you really good. If not, you have no chance because our sport is a little bit like business. You can survive in business, but in sport, you are on the podium or you are – not a loser, but you are –
JEANETTE: You’re just out.
OLE EINA
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JEANETTE: Ski mountaineering with a dog is getting more and more popular, and one of the influencers you can see doing this is Elisa Deutschmann from Germany and her husky, Finn. Welcome.
ELISA: Thank you. Nice to be here.
JEANETTE: You get a lot of questions about ski mountaineering with dogs. First of all, what equipment do you need for yourself and your dog?
ELISA: Finn and me are always out in the mountains, and it’s quite important that the dog use the right equipment to go out there. For that, I use the Freemotion Harness. I’ve used it now since 6 years, when I started to ski with my dog. I also use the running line because I think it’s super nice, and it has a flexible part in it. I always attach the line to my backpack so he’s not pulling that hard, the flexible part, and it’s nice for my back. These two are I think the most important things I use for Finn, and he feels really good in it.
JEANETTE: A question I guess you get a lot is, what kind of skis do you use when ski mountaineering with a dog? Because you see these horrible pictures of steel edges causing some bad injuries.
ELISA: Yeah, it’s true. I still use normal ski mountaineering skis, but I trained with Finn from the very beginning when we were going down that he’s always 5 meters away from my skis. It’s really important that you don’t crash into it. I think that’s a point which you have to train really in the beginning, and I did it. I ski up with my dog, and Finn is normally always on the leash in front. Sometimes if it’s a nice area, he’s loose.
When we are up on the top, then he gets unleashed, and then I say the training word. It’s called “hinter”. Then he knows he has to go behind me. Then we start to ski. If you want to train with your dog so that he’s not going into your skis, I always use my ski poles. I put them in the back and I always make sure he’s far away. Of course, I look that I don’t touch him and that everything is fine. I think that’s a nice way that he gets used to it.
JEANETTE: So you put some effort into this in the beginning so that he learns from the start that this is how it works.
ELISA: Yeah. That’s super important that he knows the basics. When you ski up, it’s important that he not push one time like crazy and then he’s loose, so it’s nice that he always goes the same speed. If you go ski touring, you also have “spitzkehren”, It’s the crossing points when the hill is getting really steep. He also has to get used to that. I trained it with him before. On the normal ground, I make stops and then I say what he has to do. Train with your dog, because otherwise you can get in trouble on the mountain.
JEANETTE: What dangers are there when you’re bringing a dog to the mountain?
ELISA: I think there are so many points. Of course, first, it’s amazing to bring your best partner to the mountain and to share this experience. But I think you have to be really good and think about avalanches. That’s a really good point, that you go up first. Before I brought Finn to all my ski mountaineering stuff, I trained a lot on avalanche risks. I’m really used to all the mountains, all the snow conditions. After that I brought Finn. Because he has no avalanche thing with him, so it’s really important that he’s safe. I think I’m a good skier, and I always look around and he’s safe. That’s important. So a lot of things.
And of course, weather conditions. And then it depends on which dog you have. I have a Siberian husky and he is really used to rough conditions. It doesn’t matter if a snowstorm is coming or not. He doesn’t need any booties for his paws, so he does really well. But if you have a different breed like a chihuahua or anything, any dog can go on a mountain, but it’s important that you know your dog really well and that you also bring the right equipment for him.
JEANETTE: But Finn doesn’t need a jacket, I guess.
ELISA: No, he’s super warm and he doesn’t care about anything. [laughs] When I wear three jackets, he’s still happy and enjoys the snow and the cold weather conditions.
JEANETTE: Is the heavy snow ever any trouble to you?
ELISA: I only had once that he stopped walking in the mountains because we had like one and a half meters of powder, and he was over his nose in the snow, so it was crazy. But I think all the other times, he was always fine and doing well. But I think that’s the thing I already said: you have to know your dog really good, and I think then it works with every dog.
JEANETTE: How do you know that he’s doing okay or if you should break a bit more?
ELISA: As I said, I know Finn really good. When I ski down, for example, I always make breaks. Of course I would love to ski the whole way, or if it’s nice powder, to ski the whole way down, but you always have to think about your dog. It’s like if you would run the whole way down the whole mountain, so it’s crazy. So I made every 200 meters a stop, and he has to wait and has to breathe, and then we go for the next. It’s important, but for that you also have to know your dog.
JEANETTE: When you’re going down, do you have your dog on the leash, or is he running free?
ELISA: He’s running free. I think for me, it’s a safe way to go because I don’t like to go with the leash down. But as I said, he always runs behind me and 5-10 meters away from me so that nothing happens. If I know the area, I also let him run in front of me, but it depends where I am and how everything is.
JEANETTE: Why don’t you want him to run in front of you?
ELISA: He’s a Siberian husky, so sometimes it happens that he sees something and then he runs away. [laughs] It’s quite important for me that I always know where he is. Normally he’s not running away, but you never know, and I don’t want to search for him for hours, so that’s why. [laughs]
JEANETTE: Do you see many others with dogs in the mountains?
ELISA: I think in Germany, it became more and more, but I think a lot of people don’t know how to handle it and how to do it and which equipment to use. So I think it gets more and more. I would love to see more dogs up in the mountains because I think it’s so nice to share this experience with your dog.
JEANETTE: As far as I know, you’re going to have some seminars about this topic.
ELISA: Yeah, that’s true. As I said, I get a lot of questions about how to do this, and to explain it is fine, but I think it’s better to show people how to do it. I think it’s nice to meet so many people who are also loving their dog and want to go out ski mountaineering. That’s why I did these ski mountaineering camps, and I think it’s really cool and the people get to know it. There are so many people who have a dog and also would like to go out in nature, but don’t know how to handle it. That’s nice, and I think it’s nice that there are so many people out there that want to do some activities with their dog.
JEANETTE: What’s your best memory from doing this with Finn?
ELISA: The best memory is – I’ve had Finn now for 6 years, and we’ve made a million nice memories. But right now, last week I had been to Dachstein, the glacier in Austria. It was a tough expedition. We made like 64 kilometers and 14,600 meters high, and I was not sure if I could make it and also if Finn could make it because I had last year an accident with my leg and it’s still not good.
We had really rough conditions. The first day was a crazy storm, ice, and I could not see anything, and Finn I think also. We still kept on walking. The second day was really good, but the last part of Dachstein is you have to climb up, and I could not bring Finn up there. So I had to leash him down on the rock and he had to wait there. It was a crazy, horrible feeling for me because I heard Finn when I was on the top. He was crying because of where I am.
But skiing down on the second day, there was a really rough, crazy storm up in the mountains with snow. But both Finn and me were working so good together, so it was really nice. I think right now this is one of the nicest experiences I did.
JEANETTE: For next year, you have a lot of other plans as well, and you’ll include Finn in this?
ELISA: Yeah. Not only next year, I think also in the spring I want to do paragliding with Finn together. I dream that we’ll ski up with the skis and then I’ll bring a paraglider and fly together with him down. That’s something I really want to do. But to do paragliding is also not that easy, and also with a dog, so we have to train a lot. But I think there’s a lot of fun expeditions and other stuff awaiting me and Finn and it’s very nice.
JEANETTE: You’re really pushing the limits of both of you.
ELISA: Yeah. I don’t want to do anything without Finn because it’s horrible for me when he has to stay at home and I’m in the mountains. Before, we did everything together, like skiing, climbing. Also, he’s climbing a little bit, so it’s super nice. But the point of flying, dogs are not able to do it normally, so that’s a thing I really want to do with him. But we’ll have to train a lot for him before I really take him out in the air. I already bought a harness for him which fits for flying, and we will see how we will do it.
JEANETTE: So people are actually flying with their dogs, even the big ones, already?
ELISA: Yeah, there are some people out there who are flying. But a husky is not really small, so we really have to see how it will work. Finn is always, when he’s with me, he’s super chill and doing well, so I think he will also do it. But we will only do it if he really enjoys it. I will not push him.
JEANETTE: What does it mean for you to bring your dog to all these activities?
ELISA: For me, Finn is not only a dog; he’s my partner in crime, you can say. He’s always with me, and we’re a really good team. It’s really nice for me to bring him, and it’s also really good for me that he’s doing everything so well still, because he turned 6, so he’s not that young. He’s in a really good age and he’s still so eager to run and so happy, so it’s so nice to bring him everywhere.
JEANETTE: There is one question we ask everybody on this podcast, and that is: if you had to do another sport or activity with your dog, what would it be? You and Finn are doing almost everything, but is there something else you would like to try?
ELISA: I think we already did everything together. He’s been paddleboarding with me, he’s running, driving in the car for hours with me. [laughs] There’s nothing he doesn’t like. I think the flying thing is something I would love to do with him.
JEANETTE: You will also be back for another episode in the summer about trail running with a dog, and I guess when you start flying, you’ll have to come back and talk about that as well.
ELISA: Yeah, of course, and I can share all the experience I have with you about flying with a dog. [laughs]
JEANETTE: Super. Thank you so much for joining us on this podcast.
ELISA: Thank you. It was super cool.
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JEANETTE: I did not grow up with a dog myself, but had animals around me all the time, and I know it had a good effect on many aspects of my life. Therefore, I wanted to find out more about the human-animal relation. I have talked to one parent and one professor. Let’s start with the parent.
Claudia Zenner from Germany has been doing agility for more than 20 years. Claudia did not grow up with dogs herself, but got a Staffordshire Bull Terrier as soon as she moved out from home. They started doing agility and qualified for national teams and world championships. They even won a gold medal with the team, and she has been at the top level with several dogs ever since.
One of the Zenner family’s dogs is a 7-year-old Kelpie. He is the former competition dog of Claudia’s husband Jörg, but now he’s running with their 7-year-old daughter.
CLAUDIA: They grew up together, and since my daughter was 5 years old, they started to do some agility. Now she’s 7 and is ready for competition, and yes, they are doing pretty good.
JEANETTE: Who wanted to start with agility? Was it your daughter, or was it you as parents that thought it would be nice for her to try?
CLAUDIA: If your kid is sharing the same interest and the same hobby, of course you like this very much. But it was not us to tell her, “Okay, get the dog and start agility.” It was just her, because we are an agility-addicted family. We are crazy about the sport, and we are on the training field very often. We do a competition almost every weekend. Since she was a baby, she’s with us all the time and she grew up with it.
One day she said, “Okay, I want to do agility too. Can I just join the training?” So it all started. And she was really talented and got better and better and better.
JEANETTE: I guess it’s either/or because some kids growing up with agility get sick and tired of it. Do you have any tips and tricks for other parents with kids to avoid this?
CLAUDIA: You never can tell how it will develop, but I think it’s very important not to tell the kid “you have to do this and that.” Let it go and see what will happen. I guess it’s very important to tell the kid this is an animal and how to treat the animal and how to take care of the dog, and don’t be so stressful and strict. They need to have fun, and it’s not important to be good at the sport; it’s important just to have fun with your dog as a team partner. Then they understand that it is not about winning, it is about being a team and having a good time.
JEANETTE: Doing this sport, does it affect your kid in any way, positive or negative?
CLAUDIA: I think my kid has become much more self-confident. She is proud of what she is able to do together with the dog. She’s very talented with the dog and has a special sense of how to handle the dog in agility. In my opinion, agility affects all kinds of development, like more focus, more concentration, better learning, socialization, movement, and even body control. She’s very eager to learn more of what she’s doing, not only in agility.
JEANETTE: Do you see any changes from before she started compared to now?
CLAUDIA: Oh yes. Like I said, since she was a baby, she has been to the agility class regularly with us. Because we are on the field and in training so often, she joined our trainings and competition and she started very early with agility – she was 5 years old, and she was very eager to learn more and more.
Now, after 2 years of training, she was ready for competition. Her development was huge. In even 6 months from her first start till now, she is gaining so much more self-confidence. Yes, the development is really, really huge. She has gained so many agility skills in such a short period. This is just amazing.
Of course, this affects her daily life. Usually, she would rather back off as situations get more complicated, and now she’s able to handle daily life situations more easily. She’s very open-minded now towards other people and cares for others. She has learned to deal with failures. If you work with an animal, things very often go not always as planned. We teach her, don’t be mad at the dog. It is always your fault. Rethink your handling. This is an important lesson for the kids.
JEANETTE: And the handling is how you move to show the dog the way on the course.
CLAUDIA: Yes, that’s true. In agility, you guide the dog only with your voice and your body movement. The dog doesn’t know the course because the course is always different. It’s up to you to show the right way. If the dog takes the wrong way, like a wrong obstacle or wrong tunnel, it’s your fault because you’re not showing the right way for the dog.
JEANETTE: Your daughter seems to be a natural at this, maybe because she grew up with it, but she’s adjusting very nicely to the dog and everything. I saw her running at the B.A.C.K. That’s a big competition in Germany. She was running the finals, and they had a great run. It was a fault on the contacts, as far as I can remember, but the rest was flawless. How was it for her to have that experience, to compete with some of the best handlers in the world in front of a big, big audience?
CLAUDIA: This was a great experience. Like 6 months earlier, she wouldn’t do it, and now she was qualified for the final, because in Germany the kids are invited to run the final course. It’s a very good support for the kids. She was so excited. I was thinking this course is way too much for her and the dog. I was a little bit worried. She answered me, “Oh Mom, don’t worry. We can do it.” This was very cute. She has a very special feeling for the dog, and the dog is also very, very nice and very kind to her. He is watching the kid very good. They are already a perfect team. So this is very good to see.
Of course she was very excited to run in this final at this international competition, but she was doing so perfect. She was showing off so much, it was just very impressive. She started; from Jump #1 to the end, it was just – she had a plan, and she was running it, and she was sure the dog would follow, and she nailed it. It was just amazing.
JEANETTE: Now she just qualified for Grade 3. That’s like the elite class in agility. Now she’s competing against adults and some of the best ones in the world as well. How do you think this will be for her?
CLAUDIA: Oh, yes. [laughs]
JEANETTE: It looked only easy because maybe she’s used to winning and everything until now, but now she gets some serious competition.
CLAUDIA: Yes, it’s true. She started in Class 1 and did all the qualifications for Class 2, and now the qualifications for Class 3. To be honest, we didn’t imagine she would even do it so fast, in such a short time. Now she’s, yes, in Class 3, running with the adults.
Of course, it’s now our job to teach her it is not about winning. It is to be a perfect team, to have a very nice teammate with you. She needs to learn this. We need to explain every time. Now it’s getting more complicated, and maybe she will not win even if she has a clean run. It is all about the feeling. If she is having fun with the dog and if she is enjoying the run, then that’s all that counts.
JEANETTE: How is the relationship between your child and the dog outside the agility course?
CLAUDIA: They are, even outside agility, a perfect team. They have daily life together and they take care of each other.
JEANETTE: Do you see any difference in how the dog is behaving around your daughter compared to you guys as adults?
CLAUDIA: He is adjusting to the kid. When the kid slows down in the course, he will adjust perfectly and slow down too, and he even waits for her. He’s very nice. In one course, she fell down, and he stopped immediately, watching her, being sure she was okay, and then he started to run again. It was so nice.
JEANETTE: Would he do the same if it was your husband falling?
CLAUDIA: No, of course not. When he was running with my husband, he was a totally different dog. He’s not an easy dog. As a Kelpie, of course he’s very, very big. It was not easy to run with him in the agility course. But now he’s a totally different dog with my kid. This is really amazing.
JEANETTE: What do you think the future will hold for your daughter and her Kelpie?
CLAUDIA: They just started to compete in agility, but in Germany we have some junior championships, and maybe she will go for that. Maybe next year or in some months. We will see. Next year there is even the Junior European Open, but this is a little bit too much for her right now. We want her just to grow as a team and to get even more self-confidence, and maybe they’re ready for this big event a little bit later. It’s very important not to overdo it.
JEANETTE: You did not grow up with a dog yourself, but now you’ve seen your daughter growing up with this amazing dog. Do you think every kid ideally should grow up with a dog or a pet in general?
CLAUDIA: In my opinion, every kid needs a pet for its own development. If your kid can have a dog, then it’s better. They can learn for life social behavior and special needs of the animal, respect and kindness, and of course, responsibility. And they learn patience and how to train an animal. I think the combination of a pet and sport is perfect. Of course, agility is our life. If our kids love dogs as much as we do, everybody’s happy.
JEANETTE: Then the question is, can this be backed up with science? I called Gail Melson, Professor Emerita at Purdue University in the USA, to find out. She has a PhD in developmental psychology with a focus on children. When she started doing research in the 1980s, there was hardly any information to find about the relationship between kids and animals. She has changed that and collected some of her findings in the book, Why the Wild Things Are: Animals in the Lives of Children.
GAIL: The field of psychology, until recently, really focused on relationships that children had with other human beings. I became interested in the relationships that children have outside of the human species. Of course, that takes me to an interest in animals, and particularly knowing that in not only Norway, but through much of the world, pets are very much a part of the household, of the home that children are growing up in. So it would be natural that this would be a relationship that could be very important.
JEANETTE: Did you grow up with any animals yourself?
GAIL: I did grow up with a dog named Trixie. She was of course very much part of our family. But I think my professional interest really began in a little bit of a different way in the sense that as I was studying social and emotional relationships in children, one of the relationships that I was really interested in was the idea of nurturing.
We very much think of that as something that adults do for children, and of course, they do. But I was interested as a person who focuses on child development, what happens in childhood that maybe might make an adult a better nurturer, a better caregiver, a more compassionate and more nurturing person? Is this something that develops at childhood?
This was really an academic question, but I discovered, just as I did when I was interested in non-human relationships, I discovered there was very, very little research. So I began a research program with a colleague on the idea. We called it the development of nurturance. What goes on in childhood? We never thought about pets and we never thought about animals because we just thought about maybe kids who are around babies, that might be something. We weren’t sure, but we never thought about it.
We did studies of children, both observing them and videotaping them and interviewing them, about nurturing others. When “others,” we thought of other human beings, mainly little babies. What we found in that research was by the age of 5, children had a very firm gender bias, which was kind of shocking to us. Girls were very interested in nurturing and caring for little ones, and boys not at all.
We interviewed young children and one said to me, “Taking care of a baby, that’s a mommy thing.” This is a little boy. [laughs] “I’m a big man.” It didn’t seem to matter that his dad was there taking care of – he had plenty of models, plenty of examples. We were kind of distressed by that because we felt that in our society, and in fact in the world, we need everyone to be a nurturer, a caregiver, somebody who is attuned to helping others.
I remember vividly talking with colleagues about our results, our findings, and how disturbed we were. One of them said to us, “Well, what do you think about taking care of pets? They must be in so many homes, and obviously you’ve got to take care of them if you don’t want them to suffer and die. I wonder if you’ll find this gender problem with that. Certainly it would be an opportunity to learn about nurturing.” A big light went off in our head, and we said, “Oh my goodness, yeah, that’s so interesting. I wonder about that.”
In the days before Google, we actually went to libraries to do what a researcher always does first, which is look at the existing research, and we discovered not a single research study on this question. Not one. I was very surprised because I soon discovered that, my goodness, childr
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JEANETTE: According to ASPCA, 3.3 million dogs enter shelters each year in the United States, and there are millions of dogs waiting in shelters for a forever home. For some, itâs a bit harder to find new families than others. There could be many reasons for that, but a common reason is that they are too demanding. You guys often end up with these dogs. Why?
NICK: We got into dog powered sports because as a kid, I always wanted a malamute. We ended up getting a malamute that had been returned because he was too high energy. The family couldnât handle him. So it was my opportunity for us to get a malamute. We got him, and he was going to destroy our house. We had to find something to keep him from destroying our house. We were not going to give up on him.
I started in canicross for that reason. I just started running with him to burn off energy so that he could get the exercise he needed to be a good dog. That just let us see that there was really a need for high energy rescue dogs to have a place that â they need a family where they can burn off that energy and be the good dogs that they really are deep down inside.
JEANETTE: But it can be quite hard to find that good dog sometimes. Do you have some tips and tricks to share?
NICK: The biggest tip, really, is exercise. In the U.S., we have a saying, âa tired dog is a good dog,â and thatâs really it. Itâs about getting them the exercise that they need to find that inner calmness that they all have.
JEANETTE: Is this often underestimated when somebody gets, for example, a malamute or a husky or a border collie, the level of activity these dogs need?
NICK: Absolutely. In fact, almost all of our dogs have had homes before us where someone got them and underestimated how much work they were going to get.
For example, the dog that Joy ran with in the first World Championships that we competed in was a dog that someone applied to a husky rescue. The rescue said, âYour life is not right for a husky.â They said, âToo bad, I want a husky anyway.â They went out to a different shelter, adopted one. Called this rescue back and said, âHey, you were right. We canât handle a husky, but we adopted one, so here. Please take him.â
People really need to understand that huskies and malamutes and many other breeds out there require a certain lifestyle. You have to make a commitment to that lifestyle. If youâre not an active person, donât get an active breed.
JEANETTE: And you are quite active with your dogs. Youâre doing canicross with them, and you have done quite good. We are at the World Championships in Sweden right now, and you have been running with one of your rescue dogs.
JOY: Yes. His name is Oso and he is a husky mix. We adopted him several years ago from a shelter in Oklahoma City, and heâd just had this third birthday.
When we adopted him, no one wanted him. All of the people who had come to look at him and see if he was right for their family took one look at him and said âabsolutely not,â and walked out the door. He would destroy wire crates. He had had a couple surgeries with stitches and had ripped those out and tore up his cone, had to have a muzzle. He was just sort of a mess, and people thought they really couldnât handle him.
We came across him and we talked about it and talked about it, and we decided heâs the perfect fit for our family. We have never had one problem with him because from the moment we brought him home, we started running with him.
NICK: We find it a little funny in that when we walked in to meet him, we picked up a leash and he started screaming at the top of his lungs. The rescue said, âThatâs why everyone is scared of him.â We said, âHeâs perfect for us.â
JEANETTE: Was he screaming because he was eager to do something?
NICK: He was just so excited. He knew that the leash meant he got to go for a walk, and all he wanted to do was get out there and burn energy off.
JEANETTE: Do you think these signals are often misunderstood?
NICK: I think theyâre misunderstood. I also think that a lot of people just ignore them. They see something like that and donât really comprehend whatâs behind it. With Oso, Oso needs a lot of exercise. He can go for miles and miles and miles and miles. Just taking him for a walk was never going to be enough for him. He was born to run.
JOY: I think people also think their screeches and their howls for a leash, that theyâre cute. They come and look at a dog and they see them do that, and theyâre jumping and theyâre excited, and they think, âThatâs just so adorable. I canât wait to have that at home.â And they bring that dog home and realize that itâs so much more than just needing that walk. Itâs beyond cute. They really need to go for a run. People see that in the shelter and they just donât understand what itâs really going to take.
JEANETTE: As far as I know, you guys are really eager to get more people to be more active with their dogs.
NICK: We live in Missouri, which is not a huge place for dog powered sports, but weâve been pretty active in encouraging people to get involved in canicross. We have a big running community where we live, especially trail running. We actually host â it used to be a road 5K. Weâve since expanded that to trail running races. This year weâre adding a trail mountain bike race. A couple years back we added a canicross race.
In addition to that, weâve also started Canicross Missouri, which is just a Facebook group for people to get on for helping find canicross type races. We donât really have a lot of canicross official races, but dog-friendly 5Ks and that sort of stuff in Missouri, and then training tips, etc.
JEANETTE: The people you meet, what kind of state are their dogs in? Do you see a change after they start doing dog powered sports?
JOY: We see a lot of different breeds of dogs, and a lot of people who are in different places with their physical fitness who are looking to get into a dog powered sport. There are a lot of people who like to do ultra-running, who are already running with their dogs, and their dogs are very fit, and they already understand taking care of their paws and proper harness fit and things like that.
Then there are people who are just looking to really start. Maybe they just want to start running; theyâve never run with their dog before. We have seen a difference. Weâve had a lot of people who, once they start in the sport, then theyâre looking for more gear and theyâre looking to see what they can do to get better with their dog and asking more questions and really getting excited about it.
For us, thatâs whatâs exciting, to see people really enjoying it and getting more excited about doing things with their dogs.
JEANETTE: But getting started can be quite hard, especially if youâre not very fit. How do you solve it if you have a dog thatâs super energetic and needs a lot of exercise, but youâre not a proven runner yourself?
NICK: The first step is literally just that. Just take the first step. Go out and start â go to a trail, do a mile or so walk. Just start that way, and then build up. You can do that. After a couple weeks, maybe throw in a little bit of jogging with your dog, and then before you know it, youâre going to be doing canicross or whatever sport you want to do.
JEANETTE: As far as I know, you have quite a few dogs. Is it nine?
NICK: Thatâs correct, nine dogs.
JEANETTE: You have to tell us a bit more about them. How many are rescues, how many are not?
NICK: Two are not rescues. Six officially came from rescue groups. The seventh one, heâs not a true rescue dog, but he was one that someone had bought from a breeder and returned because they couldnât handle his energy level.
JEANETTE: Did the rescues have any extra baggage, so to speak? Any problems?
NICK: Each dog is different. Some of the dogs were more problems for the rescue groups than the others. Actually, three of our dogs have come from the same rescue group thatâs based out of Oklahoma City. Itâs Heartland Husky Rescue.
Oso, for example, came from there. He was a handful for them, because like Joy had mentioned, he would destroy wire crates. He had had to have surgery because when he came in, he had a lesion on his leg, and they had to stitch it up multiple times, and he continually ripped his stitches out.
In fact, itâs a little funny; we have a picture of him from back at the rescue. The only way they could get him to leave his stitches alone was to put a cone on him and the muzzle on him at the same time. We have a picture. Itâs absolutely hilarious, because he looks like some sort of serial killer. But you can see underneath the muzzle, heâs just smiling and his tongueâs hanging out.
Every dog that we adopt, whenever we talk with rescue groups about them, we say, âTell us their problems. Weâre not scared of the problems; we just want to know what they are so that we know how to address them.â Thatâs really the big thing for us.
JEANETTE: But getting a rescue can be a lot of trouble. Why donât you just get a puppy instead?
NICK: Thereâs a lot of dogs in shelters. They all need homes. A puppy can have just as many problems as a rescue can. In fact, all these rescues were puppies at one point, and their problems most likely originated from people not taking care of the puppy as they shouldâve in the first place.
JOY: I think, too, being able to work with a rescue and helping them overcome some of their problems is very rewarding, just as it is to raise a puppy and watch them grow. We have a rescue, the one that I took several years ago that Nick mentioned early on, and his name is Prudhoe. Prudhoe has a lot of anxiety issues, and Prudhoe also does not trust women. He gets very scared if a female touches his paws or his head or if he feels like he might be a little bit cornered with a woman in the room.
Itâs been very enjoyable and rewarding for me to be able to work with Prudhoe, because for quite some time, I could not even put a harness on him, and now Iâm able to harness him and pet him, and he trusts me. To me, thatâs so rewarding and so wonderful. I just remember when we first got him, I couldnât touch his feet. Sometimes he wouldnât even come to me.
JEANETTE: But how did you address this problem, and how gradually did you progress?
NICK: The big way to address not only that problem, but any problem, is first you have to earn the dogâs trust. It takes baby steps. Itâs making sure they get the food they need, making sure they get the exercise they need, making sure that you never ask them to do something that you donât already know they can do and setting them up to succeed.
Over time, you build that trust, and as you build that trust the dog will â like in Joyâs case, Prudhoe slowly over time realized, âhey, itâs okay if I sit beside her.â Then it became âitâs okay if she touches my forearm,â and it just gradually went from âno, you canât touch me at allâ to âhey, weâre best friends and I trust you completely with everything.â
JEANETTE: So patience is the key word.
NICK: Thatâs exactly right.
JEANETTE: If I have a problem dog but Iâm new to dog training, what should I do if I cannot solve this problem myself?
NICK: We got into dog powered sports all because we had a problem that we didnât know how to solve. That was that we had a very high energy malamute that was going to destroy our house. We just got online and started looking for ideas of how to burn energy off of him. We were both already runners, so it started off running with him.
Got a little tired of having my arm be sore after every run, so itâs like, thereâs got to be a better way. We just did research and research and research. Any problem you have, someone else has already encountered that problem, so look online. Try to find the resources.
In the U.S. thereâs a lot of dog training blogs and webpages where you can go and get tips. In saying that, donât read everything as gospel. You know your dog. Just because it works for someone else, doesnât mean it will or it wonât work for you, but be open to trying new ideas.
JEANETTE: It can be quite hard to figure out what information I can trust and what not.
NICK: The most trusted resource for us is your dog. You can see very quickly if somethingâs working or not if you just pay attention to the subtle cues that they give. Thereâs lots of training things that we try that, after a week or two, we say âNo, thatâs not working. We need to get rid of that.â So just follow your dog. Let him tell you whatâs working and whatâs not, and if itâs not working, donât be afraid to change up what youâre doing.
JEANETTE: What are the most useful lessons you guys have learned, either by experience or from others throughout the years?
NICK: The most useful tip that Iâve ever received for training dogs â it actually came from a book â was never ask your dog to do something that you do not know they can do. As long as a dog does not know their limits, they believe they have no limits, and they will do anything and everything that you ask.
If you ask them to do too much, they learn they have limits and they know exactly where that limit is, and they donât want to come close to that limit. So you can accomplish so much more in training by you knowing the limit and never asking them to cross it and if you push them to their breaking point.
JEANETTE: Itâs your job to protect their confidence and to build it.
NICK: Exactly.
JEANETTE: You have to tell us a bit more about your dogs and the championships youâve just been doing.
NICK: The dog that I brought to the championships, his name is Anarchy. He is a Greyster. Heâs 14 months old, very young. Heâs actually only been racing for 3 weeks. This was his third race â his first large race where there was crowds. Our first two were smaller races where he didnât really have to deal with a whole lot of people or anything. Heâs still very much a puppy. Heâs very excited. He very much lives up to his na
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If you like to be active with your dog, canicross is the perfect sport for you! Everyone can do it - both proven runners and people who have never participated in competitions before. In this episode, Multiple World Champion Tessa Philippaerts from Belgium shares her tips on everything from how to get started to what to remember at a competition.
JEANETTE: Todayâs guest was a Top 5 track and field athlete in Belgium. Now canicross is her main discipline, and today the three-time world champion will share some tips and tricks. Tessa Philippaerts from Belgium, welcome.
TESSA: Hi. Welcome.
JEANETTE: Thank you. First of all, can you tell us a bit what is canicross?
TESSA: Canicross is basically running with your dog, but youâre connected to your dog. The dog is not free-running, and the dog is wearing a special type of harness in which he can pull freely, and heâs connected to the runner by this elastic line. The runner is wearing a special type of belt. Usually they run basically anywhere they want. They can go off-road, they can run a little bit on the road.
JEANETTE: So it doesnât need too much equipment. This is basically something everyone can do.
TESSA: Yeah, everybody can do canicross. Itâs really easy. You just need basic equipment and a pair of running shoes, and then youâre good to go.
JEANETTE: How did you come into the sport?
TESSA: I was doing track and field from when I was 7 years old, I think, and I always hated to do the long distance running training that I had to do by myself. I really liked dogs, but after our last dog died, my father said, âNo, we do not really want to have a new dog anymore. Itâs so much time.â So I kept on nagging and nagging and nagging to get a new dog. My father saw I was struggling with my training and he said, âYeah, maybe if I can buy you a new dog that can join you on your training runs, will you then go and do it more often?â I was like, âYeah, of course. Of course I would love to have a dog to join me on my runs.â
We basically started to look online for which type of dog fit in with our lifestyle, and we stumbled on the whippet, because theyâre pretty calm in the house and theyâre active whenever theyâre outside. Theyâre not the typical canicross dog, but by then I didnât know anything about canicross, so it was okay.
After a while my father said he was looking on the internet, surfing, and he found this sport where you can run with your dog. He was like, âThatâs something for you, canicross. Would you like to try it?â I said, âYeah, we can go one day and try it.â So one race somewhere in Belgium âThere we started. There was this small stand standing outside where they have all this equipment hanging and you could try it out, or you can buy it. We just bought instantly everything because I thought it was nice for running at home anyway.
Then we did the race, and I thought it was so much fun â even though my dog didnât get anything about what she had to do. But yeah, it was so much fun to run with my dog. I remember I finished last place, but I didnât care because it was so much fun. After that day, I think we went to every possible race. Then we got really stuck with canicross, and we got better and better during the years, so that was really cool.
JEANETTE: You also got more dogs.
TESSA: Yeah, because I think after two years of doing canicross, my father said âThis is actually so much fun. Can I borrow your dog?â Of course, âNo.â
Then he was like, âOkay, then maybe we can buy another dog.â So we bought a second whippet. Then he started to race as well with her.
From then on, we started to get more dogs after my whippet got injured when she was 4 years old. I was so sad. I remember I was just so sad, because she was actually really good for a whippet running in canicross. She had an injury on her shoulder which was not related to what we were doing. We always threw this ball and a stick, and they run like 60 kilometers an hour and break it once. So she had this arthritis already in her shoulder.
I was borrowing for a couple of years some dogs, until I stumbled on a border collie. It was a girl, and she said on Facebook, âYeah, you can borrow my dog.â It was so much fun because the dog and me, we were such a great team. That girl is called Femke. She is my best friend since then, and we are still best friends from that day.
But then after a while, her father got sick, so she couldnât come to the races anymore. It was a little bit back and forth and borrowing some other dogs, but it was not the same as running with her dog or running with my own dogs, so we started to think about getting a new dog. Then eventually we stumbled on this crossbreed sled dog, and his name was Yukon. It was a guy in France who didnât want him anymore. He basically said, âYou can have him.â I bought him when he was almost one year old. He was just the best ever. He was a natural talent.
Only 3 months after we got him, there was a world championship in Bergen, which is only 3 hours from our place where we live. So my father entered me there, and apparently we did really good because we ended up first in the junior category. I think we also ran faster the second day than the senior women, so that was really awesome. Now we are growing with the sport. My first dog got old, so now we have three other dogs at the moment, so four in total.
JEANETTE: Together with your dogs youâve had some great achievements. Can you tell us a bit about what youâve done throughout the years?
TESSA: Like we said before, in Bergen was my first time I did a world championship, and we ended up first in junior class. Then the world championship is alternating with the European championship, every other year. Two years after it was another world championship, and I was in the senior category, and we won again. Then two years later, we won for a third time.
In between, the European championships, Iâm very happy to have finished as a Vice European Champion a couple of times. Belgium also, we won a couple of times the Belgium championship, and also in bike, biking with your dog. There I also won a couple of times the Belgian championship. Sometimes I did double entry on the big championships with the same dog, and we ended up â I think also two times on the world championship â Top 6, I think, with him in bike. That was not too bad either. I think thatâs kind of it
JEANETTE: How does it feel to win the world championship with your best friend?
TESSA: Itâs a crazy feeling. I donât think you can really describe it. You know youâve worked really hard for it, and if everything falls in place that day and works out, it is like this huge emotional rollercoaster.
JEANETTE: Can you tell us a bit more about how you are training to become good in canicross?
TESSA: I actually think before I was a little bit lucky because I had this background of track and field. I think many people that were in this race were not track and field runners. It was just people that basically go and run with their dog and they do only that. So I had a little bit of knowledge of how to train before.
I think I didnât train that much before because the competition was, in my eyes, not super high. But now, the sport is growing every year, and now I see that with basic training, I will not get there anymore. Now Iâm specializing myself a little bit more.
JEANETTE: Do you always run with your dog, or do you train your dog separately and yourself separately?
TESSA: Yeah, thatâs a big thing. I have pretty big dogs. Itâs actually easier to train without your dog. I train my dogs separately with the bike or the scooter. Every now and then I do run with them, because I really like to run with them, but it would not physically be possible to run with a 33- or 35-kilo dog, and I weigh myself around 52. Itâs not that healthy for the joints and everything to do with such a big dog on a daily basis.
I have one smaller female, around 19 kilograms. If I go training, usually I use her to train with because sheâs a really nice size.
JEANETTE: Do you do running, or do you do other things as well?
TESSA: Like I said, when I train my dogs, itâs usually with the bike or the scooter, and then it depends a little bit on the weather. They also go in summer, a lot of free running whenever itâs possible, or swimming is also a very good alternative. Myself, like I said, I like running a lot. But I do also like biking, and sometimes I also like running without the dogs and going in really high kilometer amounts in one week. Then I sometimes also go biking, mountain biking, or go with my road bike, just to have some alternative training. I think running is hard for the body, but you can do lots of stuff.
JEANETTE: Can everybody do canicross? Older people, people that didnât run before, is it possible for everybody to do this?
TESSA: Yes, I think so. I think as long as you respect your own limits and the limits of the type of dog you have â if you do not want to get dragged like me, you can buy a smaller dog thatâs not so powerful, and you can basically train with him every day. Thatâs not a problem. You just have to see, if youâre older, you just have to take it slow and build it up, basically like you do with normal running as well.
And the same for your dog. He also has to build up stamina and endurance. Small dogs can do it, big dogs can do it. You just have to respect the type of dog you have. You cannot ask from a French bulldog to do the same as a German short-haired pointer. If you respect that, then everybody can do canicross.
JEANETTE: Are there specific breeds that stand out?
TESSA: Those mixed breeds, and I think a lot of pointers are also very popular. When I started in canicross, I think border collies were very popular because theyâre very smart, and they are very hard workers also. But they are now considered small dogs in this sport, so I think the dogs they use the most are the pure GSP, English pointer, and also some huskies I think. Also some Belgian Malinois. Theyâre also popular. And then our mixed breed dog types that we have. They are very popular at the moment.
JEANETTE: What makes a good canicross dog? What kind of mindset do they need to have, and how do you see that a dog is really good in the sport?
TESSA: I think it all depends on the head. You can have a dog that has the best body and the best build, but if he doesnât have the right head or the right mindset, then you will achieve nothing. My whippet, for example, she was very good in the head. She would pull basically like three-fourths of the race. For a whippet I think thatâs really good because itâs a dog that usually chases other things in the field.
The dog doesnât only have to be able to run good; he also has to be smart, because you have to steer your dog. You have to say left and right. They are very self-secure, the dogs. They usually are very good when youâre giving commands. Some dogs are very insecure and then itâs a little bit more difficult because they will hesitate during the race or something.
Itâs also very good to have a nice dog, a dog thatâs very well-socialized with other dogs, before you go racing. Of course, we do not want any dogs biting when theyâre overtaking people on the track or biting other people. That has also happened before.
Itâs also a very good thing that the dog has a hard head â even though he gets tired and uphill, he keeps on pushing a little bit further. Thatâs basically what you need for having a good canicross dog.
JEANETTE: If you have a dog thatâs a bit careful, maybe doesnât pull too much or is a bit careful, are there any tips or tricks to motivate them a bit more?
TESSA: Yeah, thereâs always some tricks to motivate dogs to go do a little extra during a race or something. I usually use food or some toys that they really like. They only get this during training, for example, so itâs this really special thing that they only get when they go running. I basically give them a goal that they are running for.
For some of my dogs itâs a treat. For others itâs a tennis ball. I start with really short distances and make it really fun. Try to do maybe some interval training with them so that they do not always have to go all the way and always feel really tired. I keep them motivated with these shorter training runs, and treats and toys. They usually work.
JEANETTE: When do you start training your dogs? Do you start at puppy age?
TESSA: I donât like to call it training my dogs at puppy age, but I call it more like educating them. Iâm basically teaching them what they have to do without really doing it. For example, I teach them to, from the start â not from the start, but maybe 3 months, I start to walk them in harness. When they are walking in the harness, they are allowed to pull. When theyâre attached to the collar and just go walk like that, then they are not allowed to pull.
INTERVIEWER: Thatâs nice to teach the difference. Otherwise you will just hang in there all the time.
TESSA: Yes. Itâs some really basic training for them. It makes afterwards the whole process a lot easier. I also teach them, for example, at the race that they are standing in line out, they are stretching the line, standing still, not barking. They are concentrated until I do the countdown. This I also start a really young age, just to learn that they have to stand still, stretch the line. I also work always with treats and toys or whatever. They think itâs really fun to do these exercises. Then I do the countdown, and then I run for 10 meters so that they know, âoh, okay, this is how itâs supposed to be.â
I teach them already the commands. When I go walking, I already teach them left and right. I start doing this really early, and itâs so cool because they are so smart. When theyâre young, they are so easy to teach this kind of stuff, and it makes them also more self-confident when they get to the part where they are almost one year old and can start really training, or training a little bit more.
Itâs easy to have a dog that already knows everything before he actually has to do it.
JEANETTE: With the commands, is it only left and right, or do you have any other
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Do you know what to do if your dog gets a paw cut, suffers from diarrhea and vomiting, or eats a plate of chocolate? Veterinarian Trude Mostue shares her best first aid tips.
JEANETTE: I remember rushing home from riding lessons every Wednesday to catch the latest episodes of Vet School and Vets in Practice, where todayâs guest was one of the stars. The student from Bristol School of Veterinary Science became well-known in England as well as other countries. Later, she started her own veterinary clinic in Norway, and now sheâs leading the vets in FirstVet. Trude Mostue, welcome.
TRUDE: Thank you very much. That was very impressive, actually. All the things you mentioned, Iâd almost forgotten all of it because itâs a long time ago. But I have very nice memories from that time. I spent so much of my career on camera. It was very unusual, but at least I can say that Iâve been working as a veterinarian all these years. Now itâs actually 20 years.
JEANETTE: Now you are the boss of I think 15 vets in FirstVet. What is FirstVet?
TRUDE: This is really exciting, actually, because for so many years Iâve been working in the ordinary veterinary practices â which is very exciting and very nice. You meet people and you see the patients and you do diagnostics and you operate. And I still do that one day a week, but times are changing. Iâve been so lucky to take part in the newest of developments when it comes to what we call telemedicine, which is actually that you can have your veterinarian on your mobile.
So if you have a question or if youâre worried about your pet, letâs say, youâre out in the woods or if youâre in the mountains, on a boat or wherever â I actually did have a patient that called me from a sailboat the other day, and they were worried about their dog. It was vomiting. Maybe it was seasick. They were far away from the vet and they called me on video cam.
This service is actually based on consultations via video cam on your mobile, so I consult my patients by talking to them through a camera. Of course, I canât check the pet physically, but I can tell a lot by just watching a pet and asking the owners to check different things. Also, they have a lot of questions, and I answer all the questions. Instead of googling, they will very often call us and they will feel reassured afterwards whether they should go to the vet or not.
JEANETTE: What are the most common questions you get and the most common injuries you see?
TRUDE: Itâs a lot of first aid situations. For instance, one of the most common things people call me about â and the rest of the team, of course â is injuries to paws, like cuts. Theyâve been cutting their paws on glass or different things when theyâve been for a walk. Then I have to talk to them and help guide them through how to clean the wound, how to make sure thereâs no glass in the wound, and how to bandage the foot. Then I assess the wounds, whether they need to be stitched or not.
This is a quite cool thing to do because when youâre out there, maybe in the middle of the woods â or maybe youâre just home from a walk â itâs great to have someone to talk to and someone to guide you. So I think thatâs the most common thing I see.
JEANETTE: Do you have any general guidelines? I know every injury is different, but what should I do if my dog gets a wound in the paw when Iâm out hiking, for instance?
TRUDE: I think on a general basis, I always advise my clients maybe after they talk to me, because they always are missing a lot of equipment, I always think you should carry, wherever you are, a little first aid kit, which could include some bandaging, some antibacterial wash, maybe some scissors and some cotton and so on. I think the most important thing to do if you have a clean cut in the paw, and particularly under the paws, is to flush the wound, maybe just with some sterile saline water to make sure thereâs no glass or dirt in the wound.
Once youâve flushed and cleaned it, I think you need to dry it and then you bandage with cotton between the toes. People very often say they know how to bandage their hand, but the difference between a human hand and a dog paw is of course that they sweat a lot on their paws. So you have to make sure you put a lot of cotton in between the toes, for instance, before you put on the bandage.
So I think the most important thing when it comes to these kind of injuries is for people to think ahead, make sure they have what they need if it should happen. Saline, for instance, or chlorhexidine is excellent. A little bottle of chlorhexidine.
JEANETTE: But if you donât have this, is it okay to use water?
TRUDE: Of course you can use water and whatever you have. I think the most important thing is to flush it so you donât get the dirt staying in the wound. Then if you donât have any bandaging material â which maybe thatâs the realistic situation â if you are out in the woods, then maybe just put a sock on. Take your sock off and put the sock on.
What very often happens if you get cuts in those types of areas, you get a lot of bleeding. Some people panic when they see all this blood, but always remember that very little blood looks very, very dramatic, particularly when you have a white dog. [laughs] I have a lot of clients that call and theyâre in full panic, full of blood, and saying âoh, thereâs blood everywhere!â But actually, it just looks dramatic.
But itâs important to know how to stop the bleeding as well, because they can bleed an awful lot, and then you need to put a pressure bandage on. This is actually quite a simple thing to do, even if you donât have bandaging material. You can be creative. You put something firm on the top of the wound and put pressure on it, and then you just put a long strip of something. It could still be your poor sock. [laughs] I think everyone should have some spare socks in their rucksack when theyâre out for a walk.
And then just tie it really hard, and of course then it will stop bleeding after a little while. So I think thatâs the most important thing when it comes to stopping bleeding in the wounds.
JEANETTE: When do you know if the dog is bleeding too much or if this is just normal bleeding, so to speak?
TRUDE: Itâs really hard to know whether itâs a normal bleed or not because it really depends where the cut is. Sometimes if youâre unlucky, itâs been cut in a place where you have big blood vessels, and then you will have very dramatic blood loss. But you will know that because the blood is really pumping out.
Regardless of how much or how little, you should try to put a pressure bandage on. A normal dog that doesnât have any blood diseases that stops the blood from clotting, it should stop bleeding very quickly, within minutes.
JEANETTE: We started talking about legs. When you are active with your dog, accidents can happen, and sometimes dramatic accidents like breaking a leg.
TRUDE: Oh my gosh, yes. Thatâs a very dramatic accident, and yes, that is a very acute emergency. You obviously have to go and see a veterinary clinic as soon as possible. But the things you can do, and the most important thing to do, is to stabilize the fracture. You probably will have to carry your dog, so I hope you have a Chihuahua and not a Rottweiler. But to stabilize the fracture is really important.
JEANETTE: What do you mean by stabilizing the fracture?
TRUDE: Again, if youâre out and about, you have to take whatever you have â and maybe you have to take two sticks on each side of the leg, and then you wrap a sock again, maybe. [laughs] Again we have to use socks. Maybe you should always wear two pairs of socks in case something happens. And long socks. So use something that you find to tie the sticks around the leg.
But of course, if itâs an open fracture, which is very dramatic, you have to make sure you rinse with some water or whatever you have accessible first, and then try to â Iâm saying bandaging, but if you donât have any bandage, then use whatever you have. A t-shirt, rip the t-shirt apart, and okay, you have to walk home in your bra, but never mind. [laughs]
JEANETTE: Most important is the dog.
TRUDE: Most important is the dog. So the most important point is to stabilize the fracture so itâs not getting worse by the time you reach the veterinarian.
JEANETTE: Other dramatic accidents could be choking, if your dog gets something in their throat.
TRUDE: Choking is actually not such a common acute emergency as you would think it is, but I have come across it a couple of times in my career. Personally, it was a quite dramatic experience because I was quite new in the profession. It was a dog that swallowed a little rubber ball. Those kind of things are quite dangerous when youâre playing with your dog and you let it play with small rubber balls because they get stuck in the back of the throat.
At this particular incident, the dog showed the typical symptoms of going a little bit blue. The tongue went blue. The dog was really stressed. It was not able to breathe, and it was just standing there looking really desperate.
The way you should handle a situation like this â and remember, differentiate between if itâs coughing and the airways are open â but you have to aim for open airways. You can actually practice the Heimlich maneuver on dogs.
JEANETTE: How do you do that on a dog?
TRUDE: The challenge we have in the veterinary world and in the dog world is obviously that we have very small dogs and we have very big dogs, like the Great Dane and the Chihuahua. Theyâre two quite different approaches.
With the very small dogs, you just have to lift them up, put them halfway upside down, and push their chest from the side.
JEANETTE: How rough can you be when you do this? Because I know with myself, I would be a bit scared to injure the dog.
TRUDE: Itâs really hard to say because, again, it really depends. On a Chihuahua, of course you have to be a little bit more careful than you have to be with a German shepherd. You need to see some form of effect. You have to see that their chest is actually moving. The chest actually can take quite a lot of pressure. I can show you, but itâs difficult to explain in this type of format.
JEANETTE: Iâm not quite done with the paws yet, because something that happens quite often is also that the dog may lose a claw or injure a claw.
TRUDE: Very common problem, youâre absolutely right. Of course, dogs walk around everywhere and they run around and they twist around, and one of the other most common problems we have is ruptured claws, fractured claws, or they actually manage to pull off the cover of the claw, so the nerve and the blood vessels are bare, which is quite dramatic. It doesnât bleed so much, but itâs actually very, very painful.
What you always should do if you have an acute lame dog is to go through the claws. If he has just a partial fracture of the claw, itâs very painful. Sometimes you can see the claw is in a different angle. Itâs not like a massive emergency, but itâs really painful, and the dog will be lame.
What I would say to that is that if the claw has broken, if it has a really big fracture in it, or if the capsule is off, then you have to come and see us. But you can put a bandage on so it doesnât hurt so much in the meantime. To learn how to put a proper bandage on your dogâs leg is very important.
JEANETTE: Itâs not always easy to see that something is wrong with your dog, but one thing thatâs quite easy to see is if itâs vomiting or having diarrhea. What can you do if that happens?
TRUDE: Two of my favorite symptoms. [laughs] Itâs the most common symptoms you will see in your dog in all of its life, really, because dogs do vomit and they do have diarrhea because of their feeding habits. They will eat anything. Well, my dog does, anyway, and it does induce vomit.
The most important thing is really to understand when your dog is vomiting and when it has diarrhea because it has eaten or stolen a piece of pizza â because that does happen â or when it is caused by something you should worry about.
I would say two things. The most important thing to look for is how is your dog in itself? Is there blood in the vomit and the diarrhea, and particularly the diarrhea? If we just talk about the diarrhea in itself, I have a lot of people sending me photographs of diarrhea, which is very nice.
JEANETTE: Lovely. [laughs]
TRUDE: Itâs lovely, particularly if Iâve just had my dinner. [laughs] So Iâm very used to assessing photographs of diarrhea. We can laugh, but thereâs actually quite a lot of information to read from a photograph of diarrhea, or just to ask questions around the diarrhea, because that tells me quite a lot.
Letâs say you have a dog that is well in itself, itâs jumping around, it vomits a couple of times, and then he runs out again, and then he goes out to have liquid diarrhea. Then he comes running back in again and he wants to play. Then I would probably say itâs okay. Heâs probably eaten something that doesnât agree with his gastrointestinal tract. If it continues to be well in itself and it doesnât seem affected and he still has diarrhea, I would still say thatâs probably just something he has eaten.
But if he should start to be a little more sleepy, more fatigued, not interested in food, and maybe the diarrhea goes from just being soft to watery and maybe bloody diarrhea, and then he starts to vomit more and more, and maybe thereâs blood in the vomit as well, then thereâs reason to be worried.
Letâs go back to what you can actually do yourself. The situation you donât need to be worried about, when the dog is bright and happy in itself, playing around, and he vomits and he has a little bit of diarrhea, but itâs still very happy and eating and everything â the way to handle that is actually to starve it for 24 hours and then swap the normal food with something easily digestible, like white fish and rice or chicken and rice. Dogs love that, normally. This is just to restart their stomach lining and the intestines. Itâs to give it a break from whatever the dog has eaten.
JEANETTE: Should the chicken or the fish be raw or cooked?
TRUDE
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