your two cents please

no problem glad to help. keep up the good work with the dog! you will be there in no time.

 

i would like it if i could keep chiming in on you to show you updated pics and get more advice if you dont mind....ill post pics of the flirt pole too

 

Pitfallin, I would slowly reduce her feed if I were you. In my opinion, 4 cups is WAY too much for her to be eating....Get her used to the feed reduction, just remember, the more you work-the more you feed.

 

IMO, ur dog looks good but needs a lot of work to compete with the dogs that are shown at an adba show. Definately cut back the food, that i believe is the number one reason she doesn't look better than she could at this point. If u've been working her hard like u described for about a month's time then IMO she should look drastically leaner. My advice would be work her as much as u can until ur injury heals up then do some serious road work with her. If u want that dog to have a chance with the gamebred dogs that are at the adba shows, then u need to make her stand out with her conditioning as much as physically possible. Keep up the work and take the advice given on this thread and u should be in good shape once ur ready for a show

 

You have made great improvements with her! Do you have a bike, if so get her out on it and you will see big differences. You also mentioned that you feed your dog evo, how much does your dog weigh? I believe you are feeding her too much! My female is 50lbs and she gets 2 cups at the most, that food is very good and has a high amount of calories so be careful. Keep up the good work!

 

Also if you looking for a flirt pool, try getting a horse lunge whip. You can get them off ebay or at you local farm and feed store. All you have to do is put hide on the end or whatever you use. I personally use a kong tennis ball that is cut in half.

 

Instead of reducing her food, try feeding her a raw/premium diet. That way she will get more from less. IMO reducing food is a lazy way of doing things, the dog will need more energy (food) if being worked hard and reducing food intake will deplete the dog of the energy it needs to work.

 

He said he's feeding the dog about 3.5 - 4 cups of Innova EVO which is a very high protein food that is probably the closest dry feed to a raw diet there is, and that right there is way too much for a dog that size. I was feeding my 70lb mutt about 2.5 cups of EVO so his 50ish dog should get only about 2 cups

 

inovo evo food is like 42% protien if my memory serves me correctly. there is nothing lazy about what i suggested the dog is being way overfed with this food. IMO a raw diet is not near as easy to maintain as people think if you are getting the dog all the nutrients it needs. yeah anybody can feed a dog some raw shit and say they feed raw diet and in the short term you may see some results, but stay with the evo feed and cut it to 2 cups and you will not be depriving that dog of anything nutrition wise IMO. i also don't think you need to do it gradually. just cut it to 2 cups. she will be fine.

 

I missed what type of feed he was using. My fault. You just hear so much about reducing food as an easy solution, i ASSumed wrong.

 

I completely agree with this! This is alot of feed a day! IMO...(dont know your dog or the weight) but I would almost cut that in half!

 

hey here is a pic of my weight sled set up. the harness and sled weighs 15 pounds. those plastic/concrete weights are 9 lbs each. the black weights you can get at any sears in the sporting good dept....they are 10 lbs. i got the plastic ones with the sled when i bought it. i would suggest making the sled if you know anybody with a welder. just go to a muffler shop and have a piece of tubing bent in the u shape like this with an angle up in the front so it is off the ground. there are 2 connectors under the weights that go between the tubing welded ON TOP of the tubing for the weights to sit on. put a plate on that...weld the pole on. weld a loop on the front of the u to hook to and you are done. i started out at just the sled to get nick used to it. it bounced around so much i added a weight pretty quick. then i added weight about every 10 days or so. maybe it wasn't that fast i don't remember. judge for yourself and how your dog pulls it. here's what i do. i set the dog and sled up and make him stay there. go to the other side of the yard with a piece of raw venison. then i call him to me. he basiclly sprints as fast as he can pulling the sled. i go corner to corner of the back yard as far as i can make him go. it's a pretty good haul cuz one of the ways it's uphill. i make him walk it in a big circle at the end of each sprint and line it up for the next trip back where he came from. then i give him the piece of venison go to the other side of the yard and do it again. i usually do about 12 pulls and stop. i do this every other day when training for shows. don't go over the dogs body weight...IMO with the amount of weight they drag. some people say that's too much but i have had great results with it. an old timer told me about this and it works great IMO. now don't just do this. i do this and mill on same day. i do spring pole/flirtpole/mill next day. rotate that. 4 days on...1 day off. try all this and i think you will see amazing results. there you have it. my whole show training regimine for the world to see! LOL like i'm anybody!!! lmao

p.s. the puppies have never pulled....just nick. he looks very good in my eyes though. especially considering at one point he weighed 67 pounds...lmao you can see those pics in my gallery. oh and also your whole yard's gonna go to shit once you start doing this...LOL

EDIT: ALSO THOSE DAYS OFF ARE VERY IMPORTANT FOR RECOVERY! Make sure your dog is getting the time off to rebuild the muscles you are tearing down doing all the work.....and also.....rubdowns after EVERY workout. You don't have to get crazy with it, 5 minutes is good. Does tons of good though. It takes alot of your time getting one in peak physical condition for a show if you wanna place against the dogs that show up in the ADBA. That's in no way a slam on your dog, but it's already been said and I agree that if you wanna accomplish the goal you've set out to do, she will have to really stand out IMO.

 

Again, it's already been said but she'll really... REALLY have to stand out to place in an ADBA show. Hard to do? Yes. Impossible? No! Here's my Blade (R.I.P.) at the 2004 ADBA Nationals.



Best of luck to you & your dog!
Jack

 

Get that pup swimming....try more endurance exercises. Running in sand versus concrete

 

I see some improvement: tuck looks a little tighter, and her muscles appear to have more definition. I agree, the amount of feed you're feeding is high, so I would definitly cut back on that and just continue on the path you're already on. Reducing her calories should help bring some quicker, more visible results if you continue with your current exercise regiment, and to speed it up some, yeah, if you incorporate somes resistance work, you'll see even quicker results.

But, yup, she is definitly looking better as opposed to worse, so keep up the good work!
add in some flirt pole, running, walking, etc.
I have mine do laps up and down some steep upgrades, and run her daily with me, along with using a flirt ploe. I get tired, never her!!!!!
good luck!

 

hey yall, heres what i got..i got my flirtpole done and i just tied a tore up basketball on the end of it, its the samr thing i use on my spring pole so she already knew what to do....lol...she seems to like it pretty good.
i got her food cut back to two cups a day, she pissed but im broke and dont wanna buy a bag of that expensive shit every two weeks so shell have to deal with it.
with what ive been doing and the advice yall gave me i honestly think i can get her in adba shape pretty easily, like i said, there hasnt been any shows that i've been able to catch so we havent went full throtle yet.

tell me if im wrong, ive been trying to stay a way from resistance workouts because im trying to lean her back legs out. her back thighs are huge and i need to slim down on them....so i got the mill on the lowest angel i can and sometimes i even elivate the back of the mill to take even more of the angel out. .....am i wrong??
i called that lady about my belt wearing out to fast and she tried to tell me that i must have had it way to tight...which is not true...she told me to box it up and send it back so it can be looked at. and how it must be somting i did because they've been making mills for a while and have never had problems.

oh well,
ill post some flirtpole pics in here as soon as it drys out yall....

billy

 

heres a couple of pics from that flirtpole i built,damn she like that thing....