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O3000: Fit to Heel: Fitness for Obedience Dogs

Course Details

3 WEEK CLASS - This class will ensure that your dog is physically up to the challenges of the obedience ring!  Join Kelly as she explores the roles of strength, movement and balance in fitness exercises specific to obedience skills and exercises.  

We will look in detail at the physical skills that your dog needs in their obedience training and competition, and build specific exercises to ensure correct and strong performance of these skills. We will also examine aspects of cross training for general fitness, warm up, and any other topics relevant to gold students. 

The course will have a different focus across each week, with Week 1 focussing on movements, Week 2 Positions, and then Week 3 advancing exercises to cover a number of fitness aspects. 

This course is best suited to handlers who have started some fitness work, however that absolutely does not mean that beginners cannot join! There will be lots of content and exercises, so selecting a focus for your dog, and specific exercises to work on over the class period is important. 

This class will focus on skills and positions important in a number of obedience, and obedience related sports that will include heelwork, positions and rotation between positions, retrieves. This means that people training and competing in sports such as obedience, IPO and mondioring, Rally-O, Working Trials, Gun dog competitors, and Heelwork to music will find this class useful.  

Teaching Approach:

Lectures will be composed of extensive written detail, and accompanied by photographs and videos that both verbally explain concepts, and demonstrate exercises. The majority of details and concepts will be covered in both written, and video form. There are often multiple videos showing different stages, or dogs, performing exercises. This means that the concepts are accessible to those who like to learn through text, or verbal explanation, or visual explanation. 

This class is relatively intensive, giving you not just the ‘how too’, but also the ‘why’. There is LOTS of information, so it is important to work at your own pace and focus on the needs for you and your dog. If this is difficult for you I suggest working at Silver or Gold so you can ask questions. 

Lectures will be released weekly, and are grouped under similar concepts. They will be released sequentially from theory and foundation fitness concepts, through teaching individual exercises, to putting these into workouts. 

Feedback is given in detail in relation to the goal of a particular task or exercise. In particular the focus of feedback will be improving a dog's form, understanding of exercises, and meeting your specific goals. 

Feedback can be given in written, OR video voice over form (Loom). Generally the form of feedback will be selected to best meet your specific post, but there are times where voice recording may be difficult so I may have to write feedback. Please be sure to discuss with Kelly if there’s a specific form of feedback that is most useful to you. 

Kelly DanielInstructor: Kelly Daniel

Kelly Daniel (She/her) is a learning and dog training addict. She has been training and competing with her dogs (of various shapes and forms) for around 15 years ...

Syllabus

View Full Syllabus

Week 1: Movements

  • Discussion of the importance of fitness on movements in Obedience
  • Warm up’s 
  • Sideways movements
  • Backwards movements
  • Cavaletti
  • Considering the head and neck (scent, dumbbell etc)
  • Sprinting, acceleration and deceleration
  • Bonus: Considering the impact of head positions 

Week 2: Positions

  • Discussion of the importance of fitness on positions in Obedience
  • Stillness
  • Stand
  • Sit
  • Down
  • Duration for Stays
  • Flexibility and Mobility
  • Bonus: Recovery and Body work

Week 3: Advancing exercises

  • Tuck sit / kickback stand
  • Sit back, come forwards stand
  • Down to stand
  • Additional rear end exercises
  • Additional core exercises
  • Additional front end exercises
  • Workouts: What, how much, when? 
  • Obedience Workouts
  • Looking whole picture at fitness: Balancing specific fitness and cross training

Prerequisites and Equipment

There are no FDSA course prerequisites, the only prerequisite for this class is that your dog has had clearance for fitness training. 

If you need more details about if your dog needs veterinary clearance please refer to the Hybrid Training Fitness Guidelines, or discuss your dogs suitability for this class directly with Kelly. 

Whilst there are no pre requisites for this class, having some experience in targeting behaviors (front feet and back feet targeting)  will make it easier to progress through more of the exercises.

Equipment 

Essential: 

  • Long stable non slip platform
  • Two smaller stable platforms
  • Cavaletti poles (8-12)

Might be helpful: 

  • Flat non slip target mats
  • Cones (taller) X2

Additional for more advanced dogs: 

  • Two or more inflatable unstable items like a wobble cushion, inflatable wedges, FitBone, Flexiness Twin Disc etc. 
  • Larger non slip square board
  • Taller platforms (or multiple stacked platforms) 
  • Foot pods

This video explains the equipment requirements in more detail:  

 

Please note that Kelly is happy to talk through equipment alternative options for students.

Registration

GOLD LEVEL $149 - Students may ask instructors questions and post up to six minutes of video for instructor feedback.  Access to all class materials and can post to class forums. 

SILVER LEVEL $99 - Students may ask general questions in the discussion forum and post ONE 90 second video per week for instructor feedback. Access to view all class materials and class forums. 

BRONZE LEVEL $49 - Students have access to all class materials and may view all class forums.  

For additional details on enrollment levels please view our Getting Started section on our Help Page.

Three week class will start January 1st and end January 21st, 2026. 

Registration opens December 22nd at 10:00am Pacific Time.

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