Today Beanie completed her first 10 session swimming course at the pet therapy centre and therefore was due a review with the vet. Now this isn’t a normal vet, but rather one that specialises in pet rehabilitation and sports therapy.

The focus of Beanies first 10 week course had been to build foundation skills (i.e. learning to swim) and to build a foundation of strength and fitness that will allow her to SAFELY lead a full and active life as an adult. She has progressed well during her course and everyone has been pleased with her progress. Two months ago she needed a life jacket to swim and was managing perhaps 16 laps of the pool. By last week she was swimming without a life jacket and managing:

• 10 warm-up laps
• 4 resisted laps (swimming against resistance on her harness)
• 10 double laps
• 4 tripple laps
• 10 cool down laps

This week we just had a little fun session.

At the beginning of the course in July the measurement around the tops of her legs were:

• Right Fore Leg : 16 cm
• Left Fore Leg : 16 cm
• Right Hind Leg : 24 cm
• Left Hind Leg : 24 cm

She weighed 9.5 kg

Today she measured:

• Right Fore Leg : 17 cm
• Left Fore Leg : 17 cm
• Right Hind Leg : 25 cm
• Left Hind Leg : 25 cm

She weighed 10.2 kg

So she’s muscling up nicely in all the right places!

Beanie was just over 9 months old when she started swimming. We asked the vet what age was best to start Biggles and she said 6 months – after the fast growing stage was over. It’s a little bit costly, but we think well worth it as it gets a pup off to a really good start by ensuring that it’s building adult fitness on strong, stable joints.

So what next for Beanie?

Beanie’s now a year old and has a green light to start really having some fun and trying her hand at some doggy sports.

We hadn’t planned a second swimming course for Beanie. We just wanted her to be able to swim and to develop strong joints ready for when she starts getting seriously involved in doggy sports as an adult. However, Beanie thoroughly enjoys swimming, and we’re so impressed by the staff at the therapy centre and the results that they get that we’ve decided to take Beanie to the next level and see how she gets on.

With so many people hell bent on keeping their dog’s as couch potatoes and spreading daft scare stories and old-wives tales about the perils of exercising your dog, it’s well worth the money just to have the peace of mind of having a highly trained medical expert involved in planning your dog’s training.

We had a chat about this to the vet today and she tells us that they’ll devlop a training program that’s tailored to Beanie and her chosen activities. At this stage it looks as if it’s going to be competing in racing and agility (We know she adores racing, and whilst it’s early days she seemed to really take to agility too). And of course, we also want to make sure she has a nice foundation for daily activities such as crazy high energy romps in the park and jogging and road racing with us. Also, when Biggles is older we’ll all go hill walking together, so in the meantime one of us will probably take Beanie out for a few hill climbs on her own while Biggles does his thing with the other!

But during the course of the conversation she gave us a few little useful tips that others might be interested in.

Firstly, she told us that one of the things we really need to start working on with Beanie is proprioceptive training.

Also, when we told her about the racing she said “Do you give her a good warm-up first as it’s very important from an injury prevention point of view?”. Whilst we always get to the racing early and have a little wander around with her we’ve never specifically set about getting her warmed up. She’s given us a few ideas for Beanie’s pre-race warm up.