#67 - Creative Solutions for Physical Exercise

Last week we heard from Lori Stevens and one of the topics we discussed was movement & exercise for behavioral therapies. This week we’re going to dive further into creative solutions for physical exercise and talk about implementation with the animals in your life.

In this implementation episode, Emily and Allie talk about:

• Risk levels being on a spectrum
• Do you need a new solution or a different version of a current solution?
• Play as exercise

You can find the full show notes here.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Emily: Y'all know by now that we believe in a descriptive approach, so we're not recommending any one size fits all formulas. We're talking instead about examples of what a descriptive approach could look like based on the needs of the individual. The reason a descriptive approach is so important here is that every body is unique.

Even animals that have been cloned end up with very different personalities, and preferences, and needs. Even when they're genetically identical, every body is unique. So, it's really important to look at the pet in front of you and figure out what that individual needs in that moment to thrive.

[00:00:46] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:01:04] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:01:05] Allie: ...and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let's get started.

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

Last week we heard from Lori Stevens and one of the topics we discussed was movement and exercise for behavioral therapies. This week we're going to dive further into creative solutions for physical exercise and talk about implementation with the animals in your life.

In this implementation episode, Emily and I talk about Risk levels being on a spectrum, do you need a new solution or just a different version of a current solution. And play as exercise. Let's get to it. 

Before we dive into today's episode, because this is a topic that causes a lot of confusion and conflict, we need to start by creating a clear framework for the conversation we're about to have so we're all on the same page about the context in which we're having this discussion. First, we're not medical professionals, and we need to stay in our lane.

[00:02:15] Emily: Second, y'all know by now that we believe in a descriptive approach, so we're not recommending any one size fits all formulas. We're talking instead about examples of what a descriptive approach could look like based on the needs of the individual. The reason a descriptive approach is so important here is that every body is unique.

Even animals that have been cloned end up with very different personalities, and preferences, and needs. So, even when they're genetically identical, every body is unique. So, it's really important to look at the pet in front of you and figure out what that individual needs in that moment to thrive.

[00:03:04] Allie: Third, we're always talking about levels of risk. There's no such thing as something that is 100 percent safe. People die from falling out of beds. Not even sleeping in your bed is 100 percent safe. Instead of thinking of activities in the binary as safe or unsafe, we need to think about them as being on a spectrum of risk, and each individual needs to decide for themselves what their level of risk aversion is for themselves and the pet in front of them. So, everything that we'll talk about includes some level of risk. Because everything does. You need to decide for yourself what level of risk you feel comfortable accepting for your pet. 

[00:03:44] Emily: And I'd like to add to Allie's last point, that unless you are a professional with specialized expertise in some aspect. of wellbeing for that pet, nobody can make those decisions about level of risk for somebody else's pet. It's really up to the person who lives with that animal and knows them well and knows their entire history. And yes, of course, anybody that person brings on to their pet support team, it's up to the support team to make those decisions. Nobody outside of that support team can make those decisions about levels of acceptable risk for somebody else and their animal. Alright, so we're all clear. Talk to your vet or other medical professionals on your pet support team before trying any recommendations. 

[00:04:33] Allie: We get a lot of questions from folks looking for creative ways to provide physical exercise for their pets. And what I loved about Lori's episode is that she really challenged what we think of as physical exercise.

[00:04:47] Emily: Yes, she did. As we've talked about before in previous episodes, this doesn't only benefit the animals in our care. It also benefits us because it requires less time, energy, and labor from us when we're looking at meeting the pet's needs as a whole rather than having to just give them more and more exercise. Or rather than having to constantly come up with new ways to exercise, or new ways to keep them entertained. Because Lori's main focus is on dogs, we'll be mostly talking about dogs in this episode, but you can really apply these concepts to every species that we share our lives with.

Creative solutions doesn't mean having to constantly find new ways to provide novelty or making things more elaborate or more complex. It often means finding the simplest, easiest way to achieve contentment for everyone involved. 

[00:05:44] Allie: I think that's a great point, Emily, that we often conflate creativity with complexity, but really, a lot of times creative solutions are the simplest solutions. It's how do we work smarter, not harder, and that's usually how I'm using my creativity. Not to create some really complex, convoluted thing. Let's be real, sometimes I do that. But I try not to. 

[00:06:06] Emily: This reminds me of a story that my dad told me because my dad is like a software engineer, tech nerd guy, and he was a computer scientist in the 70s when computers were massive. My dad was telling me once about VHS tapes, and how like it was a problem because the tape spools were so big that they couldn't like, get them to fit into something that would be easily scalable or marketable. And they were trying all these different solutions, and they were looking at all this like advanced tech. At the time, what was advanced tech at the time, now we look at it and we're like, "Oh, how cute." And then some, somebody was like, "What if we just lay it down diagonally?" And they were like, "Oh, my God. Oh, my God, that works." And then that's how they were able to make them small enough to make them, like scalable and marketable.

Also, I am trying to retell a story that my dad told me when I was a weebab. So, I may be getting a lot of the facts wrong, so don't quote me on that story. But the point is that all of these people were trying to come up with these really complex solutions to this problem, and this one person had the most creative solution. And that solution was like, "Yo, what if we just lay it down diagonally?"

So that's a really good sort of like, anecdote about how creativity doesn't have to equal complexity. A lot of times it means finding the simplest solution do something. Just like we've talked about before, novelty isn't the end all be all. Maybe you don't need a creative solution. Maybe you just need to tweak your current solutions. So, a few of the things that you can think about, and a few examples of what it looks like to just improve what you're already doing. 

First of all, we need to keep creative solutions safe. One of the most important ways, or one of the biggest ways, that we can do that is by understanding the basic anatomy of the species that you're working with, and how that species does things. Like how they move, right?

One of the lessons that I learned from Lori is, instead of throwing the ball overhanded so that the dogs are having to look up and jump up to grab the ball, you throw it underhanded so that it's skidding along the ground. And that's actually so much better for them anatomically because dogs aren't designed to have their head bent upwards and be jumping up like that.

That repetition over the years can do a lot of musculoskeletal damage, which then can cause nerve pain and all kinds of other secondary problems, right? By throwing that ball underhanded and letting it skip along the ground, dogs are actually chasing a fast moving object the way that their bodies were designed to do that.

And if your dog likes that distance and likes to run fast, you can still do that with an underhanded throw by using a chuck it man. Let me tell you, I have tried it. You get a chuck it and you throw it with that underhanded throw. And that ball will skip along the ground for you. For quite a long ways. Like I was shocked by how, how far it would go, just skidding along the ground. 

So, that was one thing that Lori taught me that I have used with every dog that I've worked with since then I don't throw the ball overhand anymore. I always do these underhanded throws.

Another thing that we learned from Lori is tug rules. So, when you're playing tug with a dog, you want to make sure that you're protecting that spinal alignment. So, you're playing tug on that horizontal axis, instead of tugging like up and down and doing that jerking movement where you're making their head snap, really almost like whiplash in this vertical movement up and down. You keep that tug toy horizontal so that their spine stays in alignment while they're playing tug. So, that was another thing I learned. We don't have to get rid of tug. We don't have to turn it into, you know, the, the villain of our story. We can just change how we play it so that we're protecting our dog's anatomy. 

Another example is avoiding having any kind of game or activity where a long torso to dog, like a dachshund or a Basset hound has to sit an alignment, stack their spine vertically. So, things like sit pretty are not good activities for those dogs with torsos that are proportionately longer than their legs.

Things like that, like you can still play these games with your dogs. It just pay attention to their basic anatomy and how their bodies work and. change how you play so that you're playing in a way that actually aligns with how they're designed to move. And again, as I said, we're talking about dogs here, but this applies to all species.

Another thing that we can think about in terms of changing how we're doing, what we're doing, making a creative solution so that they can be protected, be healthy, play longer, get more out of it, feel good afterwards. Is paying attention to the substrate that you're using or that you're on when you're doing these activities. 

So, for example we're not going to ask dogs for lots of movement on slippery surfaces. This is one that I really struggle with because my house has really slippery floors and my dogs actually. have learned to enjoy playing on the floors and they do things that sometimes make me uncomfortable. So, I've had to find ways to put things down on the floor that give them more traction and they have these little zones.

And what's interesting is I didn't have to teach them to use those zones when they realized that they had more traction, they voluntarily direct their play over to those zones of traction. And the zones are different, some sometimes I have blankets down in some places, I have rugs in some places, I have yoga mats in some places, I have those interlocking rubber floor mats. But I have zones in my house where the dogs can really play and move in and get goofy, but they have that traction. So, they're not slipping their feet aren't slipping out from under them in a way that could injure them. 

Another aspect of substrate to think about is what kind of high impact movement like running, are we asking our dogs to do and where are they doing it? So, we don't want to ask dogs to run on hard, unnatural surfaces like asphalt and concrete because over time that can wear down their joints. So, if you're running with your dog, and you want to be on the hard surface, that's totally cool.

You do you, it's your body, you know what feels good to you, but you can just run on the edge of that hard surface so that your dog can run next to you on the grass or on sand or whatever that more natural substrate is because dogs. weren't built to run on asphalt and concrete. They were built to run on natural surfaces.

Another way that substrate can play into this is digging. So, one of the mistakes that I used to make a lot, and when I say used to, I mean like a few years ago, this is a more recent aha moment that I've had, so no shame here. But I realized that if we're trying to get a dog to move their digging from an inappropriate or undesirable area to an area where we want them to dig, we have to make sure that the substrates that we're offering to the dog as a replacement, match the dog's chosen substrate as closely as possible. So, the place where I learned this lesson was with a dog that was digging up grass that has lots of roots and there's lots of pull and resistance and feedback. And we were trying to give this dog a digging pit with loose potting soil. And that dog was like hard pass. I don't care that you put like tasty snacks and fun toys in that digging pit. I am digging because I like that resistance that I get from the tangled roots.

And that was the moment that I was like, wait a minute, the substrate matters. It's not the, all behavior has a function, I'm, I can't just in my head go digging. Cause that's not why the dog is doing it. The dog is digging for that resistance. Finding substrate that actually matches what that dog is getting out of it is really important.

Conversely, Copper, our 15-year-old dog, has no history of digging. He's never dug anywhere we've lived in our lives. We moved to Seattle, and he was like, what is this magical, floofy soil that they have here. I don't understand how this can be so loose, and loamy, and wet, and easy to dig and fun. And so, as a 15 year old dog, he started the habit of digging in our yard because for him, he doesn't particularly like digging gnarled roots.

He enjoys digging in that soft, loamy, moist soil. And so, for him, the dig pit with potting soil is a great solution because the substrate actually matches in terms of texture and moisture level and, and looseness, or lack of resistance, for lack of a better term. So, think about those things and I bet you can come up with creative, simple solutions to the challenges that you're facing with your pet. 

[00:15:29] Allie: I didn't know that Copper had started digging in the yard and that's adorable and hilarious all in one.

[00:15:35] Emily: Yeah. He likes to dig under the rhododendron bushes specifically. And he digs a pit that is Copper sized, and he'll stop digging when it is the exact depth. And then he mooshes himself down in it. So, all you see are these little ears poking out of the soil. It is hilarious. He like creates a little dog cave for himself and you literally can't see him except his little ears poking out of the dirt.

[00:16:02] Allie: I love the Copper story. And to just connect some of those dots that you were talking about, Emily, for folks, a lot of times when people are asking us for creative solutions, it's because they've tried something and it's not working the way that they intended it to, or it's not producing the results that they wanted it to for their pet. And that's where making these changes that you were just talking about can be really beneficial and helpful. Because what you said with the digging can be fantastic physical exercise, but we need to make sure we get the substrate right, if it's going to do what we actually want it to do for our pets. So again, you don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water. Sometimes you just need to tweak what you're currently doing. Now, along those same lines, I have talked probably about a billion times about Winter Oso. So, as we're talking about making tweaks to current solutions, something to keep in mind is that you're going to need those different solutions for different scenarios. So, for example, the physical exercise that Oso gets in the summer, a lot of it is just hanging out outside, and chasing birds, and yelling at squirrels, and hunting voles and just like, being a menace to wildlife in general. 

And he also gets to like, hang out as we are gardening and just in the yard ourselves, and we play outside more, and just fun happens outside. In the winter, in the Chicagoland area, we don't have as much of that going on and so we have to supplement his physical exercise with more tug inside. So, seasons are going to have you looking for different solutions. And by seasons, I really mean like indoor options, outdoor options, things like that.

Because sometimes, it's a rainy day in summer and I also don't want to be outside. When you're looking at getting creative with your pet’s physical exercise plan, what I recommend is creating contingency plans for all of those different situations that regularly crop up. So, things like, if you can be inside versus outside for your pet's physical exercise. What about when you feel well versus when you're sick?

Or if you travel, if it's you providing that activity or if it's somebody else. So, I've mentioned that tug is one of Oso's ways that we provide physical exercise for him when he can't be outside as much. My mom is the person who watches him when we are out of town, my mom cannot play tug with him. That would be a disaster. She's just, there's no way she is strong enough to even try to play tug with him. So, we have different activities that meet Oso's physical exercise needs, and when the situation merits, we can say, "Oh, this is the one that fits with these criteria that we're currently experiencing. That one doesn't fit with these criteria." We can just pick things up off of the shelf and put them back whenever we need it. 

But realistically, there's not a million different activities. Here's an activity that can work in these different ways, depending on what that criteria is. Again, it's not about novelty, it's about tweaking the current solutions we have. 

[00:19:14] Emily: One of the most important takeaways that I got from Lori and her talking about exercise and movement as a piece or a big part of overall wellbeing, is that we need to resist the temptation to compartmentalize needs as if they each exist in a vacuum separate from each other. And I know we have contributed to that tendency to think of these different needs in a vacuum because we utilize these enrichment categories, which we didn't invent. We just modified them from enrichment categories that have been created for other species, to help people learn about these different needs and think about them.

So, so categorization is a teaching tool and that's a really great and effective teaching tool, but the problem is if we continue to go through our lives thinking of everything in these discrete categories as if they're in a vacuum and they don't interact with each other, we can suffer from that.

We can be less effective, and we can put more work on ourselves than is necessary. And so, learning how to uncategorize everything after you've learned them and let them live in this real world, organic interconnectedness is such an important part of coming up with these creative solutions that make your life easier and your pet's life easier.

And so, when you listen to Lori talk about how she provides exercise for her adolescent herding breed, high energy dog, she's not thinking of it as, okay, it's time to provide physical exercise. She is thinking of it as, I am meeting all of my dog's needs. We are doing these activities that enrich us in multiple ways.

So, her playtime in the playroom is not just about physical exercise. It's about mental exercise and balance and um, social interaction and play. And they go out into the world, and they explore and it's about sensory enrichment and scent work and still bonding, still social interaction and still play.

They're not these discrete categories because, oh, my God, if you had to do an activity for 14 categories every day, taking care of your pets would be a full-time job. And that's not sustainable for us. And it's not necessary for the pets. Look at how. Enriched Mai is, and how she's able to be calm, and how she's able to stand still because Lori doesn't compartmentalize these needs and think of physical exercise as this discrete unit that exists in a vacuum. 

A lot of times our creative solutions might be categorized differently. Like we wouldn't put them in the exercise category, we might put them in the play category, or the social interaction category, or the foraging category, because we're categorizing them in our brains, but they're actually all interconnected.

So, what types of play, do your pets enjoy and how can you utilize that play to encourage healthy movement that meets their needs and improves their wellbeing? So, for example, I actually don't have to do a lot in terms of providing exercise for Brie and Copper because they exercise each other.

They play together so hard, they like get to where they're both panting, and they have these several play periods throughout the day in these little bursts and they decide when they want to play. They decide how long they want to play, and they decide what games they're going to play with each other. So, that makes my life much easier. Now, I also have a winter Brie because they don't want to be outside as much when it’s cold and raining. I do have to do more activities in the winter, but winter Brie's exercise is actually scent work. We're playing scent work games. We're not actually thinking of it in, as in terms of exercise, but it is movement. It is exercise, and it's also foraging, and it's also sensory enrichment, and it's also social bonding, and it's also play. Copper is right there alongside. Copper doesn't need it the way Brie does, because Copper, we don't have a winter Copper, but he's also doing it too. So, the dogs are still playing. It's just parallel play instead of more direct interaction. 

[00:23:34] Allie: Yeah, Oso gets a lot of his physical exercise out of scent work and forging as well. I just throw the treats farther away, so he has to do more walking to get there and to find them. We do a lot of training for his physical exercise as well, especially like what Lori talked about. I've actually taken one of her movement classes.

And so, I have incorporated a lot of the things that I learned from her and that movement course that I took with her, into what I work on with Oso. He loves training. He is. He's so jazzed about having treats. And so, we do things like teaching a backup, and spinning in different directions so those little feets are crossing over each other.

And all of that good sort of stuff and he's tired at the end of it. Which is lovely and its relationship building. It's fun. There's some mental exercise, but with the things that we're working on for the physical part of it, he knows how to do them well enough that it's not really mental exercise at this point anymore.

But that's one of the ways that we provide that very intentional. movement that Lori was talking about, which is so important to long term mobility with our aging pets. 

So today, we talked about creative solutions for physical exercise and how creativity and novelty are not necessarily the same. Maybe you don't actually need a new solution and you just need to tweak your current solution to make it work better for you and your pet. Additionally, think about creative solutions for different situations.

How can you use foraging in the yard, in the house? How can it be used in winter and summer when you're, when you feel well, when you're sick, if it's you or another person? And resist the temptation to compartmentalize needs. Chances are you already have a lot of solutions for your pet's physical exercise, but you might be categorizing them in your head differently.

And when you take away those unnecessary boxes, you can see that something that might be in the mental exercise, or foraging, or social engagement categories are forms of play that can work for physical exercise. Next week, we will be talking with Jungle Jordan Weasley about improving welfare for all species.

Thank you for listening. You can find us at petharmonytraining.com and @petharmonytraining on Facebook and Instagram, and also @petharmonypro on Instagram for those of you who are behavioral professionals. As always links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes and a reminder to please rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts a special thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode, our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixabay.

Thank you for listening and happy training.