The Art Of Balancing Training, Recovery and Performance with Sport Dogs ft. Mel Doyle - Part I

Every competitive dog handler faces a crucial balancing act: maximizing performance while preserving their canine athlete's long-term wellbeing. This eye-opening conversation with small animal physiotherapist Mel challenges conventional wisdom about training and recovery for sports dogs.

"Your dog only has so many jumps in their lifetime." This simple yet profound statement forms the foundation of our discussion, exploring how recovery isn't just about rest, but about strategic rehabilitation that allows muscle fibers to repair and strengthen properly. Mel reveals the surprising truth that many handlers unwittingly compromise their dogs' recovery by misunderstanding what proper post-competition care looks like.

We dive deep into designing the ideal training week between competitions, creating a bell curve of intensity that peaks mid-week rather than continuously pushing our dogs. You'll discover why Monday should be a genuine recovery day, how to incorporate skills training, conditioning, and sprint work in a balanced schedule, and why travel itself creates significant physical and mental stress that needs accounting for.

Perhaps most surprising is the revelation that muscle building doesn't require extensive free running - contrary to popular belief, controlled exercises that recruit specific muscles correctly can be far more effective than unstructured activity. This "fit without kit" approach emphasizes quality over quantity and simplicity over fancy equipment.

Whether you're competing every weekend through the season or selectively targeting specific shows, this conversation will transform how you plan your training, recovery, and competition schedule. Your dogs will thank you with longer, healthier, and ultimately more successful competitive careers.

Tune in next week for Part II! 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Canine Sports Physio
• 5:10 Recovery After Competition
• 10:56 Designing the Perfect Training Week
• 17:27 Impact of Travel and Competition Stress
• 22:42 Injury Prevention and Management
• 31:30 Sprint Training and Exercise Selection

Transcript

Lauren Langman: 0:09

Welcome to the Absolute Dog Sexier than a Squirrel podcast. I'm Lauren Langman. I'm one of the world's leading dog trainers and it's my mission to help owners become their dog's top priority. In each episode, you'll discover how to gain trust and communicate with your dog like never before, creating unbreakable bonds that make you the most exciting part of their world. Okay, so, mel, I'm joined by, obviously, the wonderful Mel. Mel, you are, in fact, introduce yourself. What are you? What do you do on a day-to-day basis? You're a physio to me. You're the brilliant Mel who I grab at shows and I go, mel, help feel this. And you're like, oh dear lord, stop panicking. And what do you do for a living? What do you do day to day? How do you spend your days? I know you love what you do and you get to do that every day of the week. Tell us about it.

Mel Doyle: 0:56

So I'm a small animal physio, so I don't treat large animals. I specialize purely in small animals and pretty much 99 percent being dogs. I also do hydrotherapy as well, so but I see that as all encompassing really. So hydro physio is all integrated. I've got sort of an integrated service land based, water based, the whole, the whole package, and that's really what I've been doing probably for the last 13 years now really, um have my own clinic at home, um my own underwater treadmill, um, and yeah, and treat a variety of dogs sports dogs, um rehab cases, post-surgery elderly dogs, um, and I love doing it all because it all brings something different and you're absolutely brilliant at it.

Lauren Langman: 1:50

Now, we were talking only the other day and it really blew my brain. I was like, oh my god, I actually I think we need to do a podcast on this, because I've been in dogs all my life, so I've I've um sort of dreamt of of the job that I do. Um, since I was probably about two, like, I've always dreamt of doing what I do and I feel like I know a lot about it. I feel like I'm an expert in my field. And yet you sometimes look down and you're like, oh my God, I'm just on the top of the iceberg here. Like this is just scary. I'm right at the tip. And that was one of those moments where we had this conversation. I was like hang on a second, let's backtrack here. I think we've got trouble. And we were talking rest, we were talking recovery, we were talking rehab, we were talking how to plan a week out, and I think it's really important that we touch base on this Now. Today, we're going to primarily focus on sports talks, because I think that that is exactly what we were talking about when we obviously had the conversation and it really, for me, it was almost a trigger, but a good trigger. It was like, oh my God. And so I was like quite shocked by it, to be honest, and at the same time, I always feel like I'm fairly knowledgeable. And yet what you were telling me was like throwing like what I understood to be true or correct. And yet I'm not saying that there's always like a one way and all the highways. And you're very good at this, you're very good at like working with what's in front of you, but I do think it'd be really lovely to share with our listeners. So if you're up for that, um, that's what I'd love to do. Yeah, your game. So, basically, let's start with the idea that you've got a week now. We've got a week now we're talking agility. Agility is our sport and we're going to talk a competition week, so we're competing.

Lauren Langman: 3:23

Typically, let's go with the weekend we've just had. So we've just been in Scotland. I've been competing in Scotland, mad I know and it was a gorgeous weekend. There was loads of sun and fantastic. We competed on the Saturday and we competed on the Sunday.

Lauren Langman: 3:37

Now how does our following week look in the ideal life of a dog and I know there's sometimes the children to balance the husband, the dinners, the work, the treadmill, that all the other things. But with the best week in the world and the best will in the world, how does that ideal next week look? Because we finished competing on a Sunday? Let's say, like us, you're crazy enough to drive home when you're home on the Sunday night. We got home about midnight, um, and so that was good going then, wasn't it? I thought the same.

Lauren Langman: 4:02

We got home about midnight. That was good going then. It was good going, wasn't it? I thought the same. We got home about midnight. It might have been about 12.30, but it was pretty good. And all the dogs went out and we got straight back upstairs into bed done, everyone asleep, and so it was good. And we got up the next morning and took Liza to school at seven, so it was definitely a rock and roll. But when we get back and we start our next day at 7am, how does that look for a competition dog? How can we design our week? How can we make sure we're doing all the right things by them? And for me, this was my wake up because I was like rock and roll. Back to training or back to, um, maybe a swim or maybe a water, treadmill or all the other things. You were like uh, uh, uh, uh, hang on, a second, langman, get back here. And you kind of build me back in like a little fish and I kind of went. So, yeah, tell us how it might look.

Mel Doyle: 4:50

So I think it's really important that you know we think of things in particular like competition and we can sort of look at as well what human athletes do, and that's sort of again sort of where a lot of the sort of canine world is sort of, because the research is done in humans and although, yes, we've got a quadruped versus a biped, their physical, physiological systems are very, are very, similar. So we've got that to work on. So it's really important. You think we've been through really high stresses at competition and this weekend was like one of the planes taking off like 200 yards from the ring, landing crow scarers. I mean there was loads going off and that's just the mental impact for the dogs as well.

Mel Doyle: 5:36

But physically, we had some grass rings, we had some sand rings, we had some hard sand, we had some softer, deeper sand where some of the larger dogs run through. Now all those things are going to have different impacts on the body. Obviously, running contacts, now everything is so quick. We've got skills at speed as massive inputs into the dog's body that we have to sort of balance out. So it's really important that those little traumas that the dog's body has gone through through the competition and this also does apply to some training as well, depending upon what training you're doing that we give the body time to rebuild and recover and allow it to become back to normal again, normal again. Um, those muscle fibers that have had micro trauma, um, they need good nutrition, they need good hydration, they need all these things to rebuild and we need a quiet day the next day. So for me that if it's a competing saturday, sunday, monday is, uh, we do very little day um, I'm writing questions as we speak.

Lauren Langman: 6:40

I'm literally writing things, so I'm like quick, I've already got questions, but keep going. So monday, it's quite. I think we should just explain the venue. The venue was a close to an airport, wasn't it?

Mel Doyle: 6:48

so the venue yes, which is what you're saying is actually highly stressful for a lot of very, very stressful even if they, even if I don't, even if they don't actually show it, it's still massive and it's different, very different. It's my first time I've ever been there, so it was really new for me, but it's massively different to even a typical show environment. So, um, and then you've got some shows where you've got four rings, where it's really quiet and hardly anything, and then you've got like the likes of the really big shows that we have here in the UK. I mean, even Wallingford was 16 rings. You know, it's just crazy. There's so much going on. So, yeah, so Monday would be a lighter way so you said you said a rest day.

Lauren Langman: 7:29

Now I think it's really important we consider what rest looks like for different people and different animals and different dogs and people's perspective. And I'm going to give you a perspective here because I remember, probably about seven or eight years ago, maybe longer, having um a client's dog spayed and the um, I bet, said, uh, just go um straight back to um, uh exercise, a normal exercise um within like five days and the woman had the dog out like doing um canny cross and like running with the dog because in her mind that was lead work and I think that's really important to acknowledge, like what is the perspective of rest? So what does rest look like, mel for?

Mel Doyle: 8:10

you. So rest for me will include things like um having a quiet environment, having um writing them down, by the way yeah, um, my, I apologize for the noise, because my dog has just decided to now chew the ear that I gave her when we started this, which she didn't want, but now she's now doing it. So is it now? Absolutely had to be now, didn't it?

Lauren Langman: 8:38

um and um would be good something to chew yes, so something to chew.

Mel Doyle: 8:43

Again, nutritional input as well, because the body needs good protein in order to repair itself, um, so that's really important. Whatever format the, the nutrition takes is, is fine, but nutrition is really important. Again, hydration as well, because without those things the body's got no fuel to repair itself. So it needs the fuel in order to sort of facilitate those. So, yeah, something like um along you know chew, or a phil kong or something like that, or phil bone is quite nice, um, for me it might be a gentle lead walk as well.

Mel Doyle: 9:19

So it's important to have movement and rest shouldn't be just sleep in your bed all day and don't do anything, because, um, particularly the sport that we're talking about, mainly agility, you know you get, I mean, if we know it, if we've gone and done a lot of exercise, we get lactic acid build up and it's really important that we try and clear that lactic acid from the body, because that's what gives that delayed onset muscle soreness that you feel.

Mel Doyle: 9:43

You you know that achy feeling that you when you've done a lot of hard work, and we can mitigate that by using some. I mean, I would use some electrotherapy treatments to help with that. But actually movement is also key as well to that. So you know, light, gentle lead work is good. You know lots of sniffs, it might be on whatever you choose. In a long line, if you've got a dog that just mooch, but if you've got a dog that just wants to race, it might be a shorter lead, um, but it's about keeping things quite calm, quiet and just allow everything to settle back down and recover, basically both sort of mentally and physically so loads of good things that you mentioned there, and one of the things that I was going to ask you about was I've got quite a nice size garden.

Lauren Langman: 10:30

Is that appropriate or is that not appropriate when we think about rest time? Because I think you gave some quite nice clarifications, because it may or may not be, depending on how the dog behaves in the garden. So what would you say in terms of a garden?

Mel Doyle: 10:41

Yeah, so if the dog's going out and mooching the garden, I think what I said to you was if they're going to be bouncing vertical bouncing because they want to see something going on, or they're going to race up and down because they want to see, you know, hear something that's not rest, you know, if they go out in the garden they have a lay in the sun. They're going to mooch around, having a sniff, maybe some scatter feeding or something like that, to just allow them to mentally decompress as well as physically. Keep moving to allow the body to recover is good. But certainly I wouldn't be canny crossing, I wouldn't be going out with um where the dogs are racing. You know have multiple dogs racing around together, um, so I wouldn't have mine out in the garden where they're running around, playing chase and everything else like that. They'd go out on their own um.

Mel Doyle: 11:24

My spaniel does like to vertically bounce if she's um, you know, quite aroused. So I would be making sure that I would not allow those things to happen. But still allow movement, allow calmness, allow um her to decompress from the weekend yeah, so, so great stuff.

Lauren Langman: 11:41

Now, if you're thinking about having, for example, treatment because one of the things I often think is I've got to fit in treatment for the dogs, and often the day after the treatment the dogs are then rested as well, so they they have treatment one day and then they have a calm day or a lower impact day. Would a monday be a good day to have a trip if they were going to have like a, um, a treatment from someone like you as a physio, or would that be better on a Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday? Where do you put that in?

Mel Doyle: 12:07

yeah, so well, and again, it depends what you've got going on the following weekend as well, because again, this was something else we talked about. You know, um, if I've got no show on the the following weekend, then I might, my week might extend slightly, so I might do some light skills training on the Tuesday and then maybe Wednesday slightly more intense, then Thursday I might have again a quiet day. I might do some land based work. Friday I might train again and then Saturday I might treadmill.

Mel Doyle: 12:37

But if I've got so, like you know, talking about the professionals, like we did, you know it's trying to tailor the time of day as well. So for me, if you've got things you want to do say you want to do some skills training and you've got a professional to see that same day, then do the professional later on in the day and whatever else you want to do, whether that be treadmill, skills work, fitness work in the morning, whether that be treadmill skills work, fitness work in the morning, because if you see the professional in the morning it knocks the rest of your day out, because the dog should have some quiet, calm recovery time after that treatment to allow the best work from that treatment. Otherwise you're sort of you're treating in one respect, but then you're sort of negating a little bit by overdoing other things afterwards.

Lauren Langman: 13:25

Yeah, it makes complete sense. I'm still taking myself some notes. I'm loving it. Um, and so the other thing you talked about was like, um, potentially like damaged muscle fibers and then re um, building those muscle fibers and actually damage being just part of working them, and like those mining, like micro traumas, I think you called them, and but those types of things like tell me more about that well, in order to build muscle and to strengthen the muscle, we have to traumatize it in a way as well.

Mel Doyle: 13:53

So, in order to allow it to grow and get better, we add some trauma by basically, um, whatever, whether we're doing some treadmill work, we might be pushing, we might be doing some inclines Again, it depends on the dog and what stage they're at Actually to physically push them and push them to fatigue, because that's when we then grow muscle.

Mel Doyle: 14:12

What's important is what follows that session is time for that muscle to recover and repair itself, to become stronger. If we don't allow it time to recover and repair itself, excuse me, um, to become stronger, if we don't allow it time to recover and repair itself, to become stronger, and we then tax that muscle and cause more microtrauma the second day, then we're going to make the small microtraumas gradually accumulate and become a bigger one, and then we're more susceptible to injury. That's when we get like overloading, overtraining, um, and more injuries will probably happen as a result of it. So it it's a massive task because you found out when we were talking about it to balance out the week with competition, get the skills training that you want in, get some treadmill work, get a professional involved. Everything is is is really difficult.

Lauren Langman: 15:01

And then compete the next weekend. Because, yes, typically my, my summer goes from probably middle of october sorry, middle of april through to middle of october, pretty much every weekend in. In, in a nutshell, you might get the odd weekend off. And I'm now looking, thinking, well, actually I'm going to a competition this weekend. I'm like maybe I shouldn't go to that competition. So you start to like question which ones you should go to, maybe start to be a little bit more selective, which, again, I think is good. I don't think that's a bad thing, I think it's just a bit of a wake-up to it that you hadn't really woken up to before. And then there's that moment of feeling like you might be letting your. There's that I should be here and because you've always been there. So there's those feelings as well.

Lauren Langman: 15:47

So if we were to go ahead and plan our perfect week, mel, how might that look? And I'm going to give you an example and a scenario of purely selfishly here, because this is a scenario. And so we've just been to Scotland, we're going to Nottingham at the weekend. We've got five days now well, less than because we're already part way in, but let's go from the Monday. We want to fit in. I'm going to give you the list. This is the wish list. We want to fit in a professional at some point. The professional is probably going to be body work, because I don't have anyone that works in the treadmill like you do, other than, obviously, our own team in-house, which is a learning progress space for all of us. Um, matt is great, isn't he in the treadmill, matt? He is, he's employable, right, mel?

Lauren Langman: 16:29

absolutely, yes, you're not what am I like in the treadmill? How fast do I want to do it all so fast? You're like slow down, lauren, don't push so hard. And I'm like go, go, go, go, go. Um. So, yeah, definitely, I'm not a treadmill girl, I'm not a triple girl. Jamie and Matt fantastic treadmill girls and boys. Um, and so, mel, when we're thinking about that week, I want to fit in the professional. I want to fit in a session on the treadmill with Matt or with Jamie. I would like to fit in the professional. I want to fit in a session on the treadmill with matt or with jamie. I would like to fit in some land base. I would like to fit in some training and I might need a pen for all of this I know this is what we're gonna have to.

Lauren Langman: 17:12

I'm setting you home here. I would also love to fit in some walking on lead and off lead, because I quite like to do a bit of both. Um, I think that's my wish list. So, the professional, the treadmill, oh, if there was time, a swim as well. But this is where I struggle, and obviously we are leaving on the Friday. I'm gonna have to get a pen too. My phone's just died, um, but we are leaving as well on the Friday, so we leave on the Friday, we leave. So Friday is typically a travel day for us. So, yeah, we've got a professional, we've got a land base, we've got our um water treadmill, we've got our swim, we've got our um and obviously, enrichment and garden times happening anyway. So those are all happening anyway. But where do we start when it comes to designing that week? Like, how does that week look?

Mel Doyle: 18:12

okay, so the dogs we're talking about, are they competing on saturday and sunday or just saturday or just sunday, because that has an impact as well.

Mel Doyle: 18:28

I've got two that are competing both days and I've got one that is only going to do one class on Sunday. Ok, so the one that's doing the one on Sunday, that gives you a little bit longer because you don't have to think about backtracking. So for me I would backtrack from the weekend that we're working towards and go right, so we need to come backwards from that. So the one that's on the sunday you could probably do um, like a treadmill session on the thursday afternoon, um, which would leave friday, saturday, free for acclimatization from that activity, um, so that would be thursday, and then I would typically look at tuesday, wednesdays, being my training, like agility training days. Um t Tuesday, probably a lighter session, so because they've had Monday as a rest day, back on a Tuesday, possibly lighter. So it might be some very simple skills, just on one jump or two jumps, and then Wednesday, slightly a higher intensity of you know. So it might be. You might do then maybe some running, dog walks. You know, know, dog running, dog walks into weaves, because then you're looking at massive acceleration to decel, to turning. So it's really, really challenging on the body. So that would then be the Wednesday for that type of thing. So a Tuesday. Wednesday would be my activities. I would probably do the training in the morning and then have land-based sessions and lead walks in the afternoon. Yeah, and Friday would be again a quiet day, but then most of the time we're travelling.

Mel Doyle: 20:11

But something else I did want to talk about was travelling. I think sometimes we don't appreciate how big an impact actually travelling has on our dogs, even when they're in the vehicle, that they know with everything's calm and quiet. Um, there have been so much thought into human athletes when they travel to major competitions actually, that traveling two to three days before the competition isn't enough to for peak performance. And then again that's sort of talking for peak performance. And when we're talking about general weekend to weekend through the agility year, I mean there was a time where we couldn't do the amount of shows that we have.

Mel Doyle: 20:50

Now it has become more challenging for us to manage because of how much there is available to us. Um, and so we have to. We do have to be a little bit selective and no matter what we do, our dogs cannot be at their peak performance from mid-april to october. It's just not possible. They will physically not be able to manage it. So we have to actually manage it a little bit for them and almost like what are our goals? And the difficulty is when you have like you've had champ this weekend, you've got champ next weekend, you've got champ the weekend after, you've got champ the weekend after that, so we've got like four weekends on the trot of championship shows.

Lauren Langman: 21:31

Olympia novice, like there's a lot, isn't there. There's a lot. Yeah, you get to do and and it is like a I feel some days like a kid in a sweet shop, like I'm like there's so many things that I want and yet you also know that you probably can't have the, the like jelly worms and the fizzy, fizzy strawberries and the fried eggs and the chocolate covered. You know what that? And that's sometimes what you're trying to do. You're trying to go in there and try and have it all and actually you do need to be a little bit more selective and say, actually for this dog, this dog's seven or eight or nine, or this dog's um, like in did have a I don't know an injury last year and I want to be aware of that.

Lauren Langman: 22:08

Or this dog's still young and still building up, there's no, I don't get many times where I think this dog is just flipping perfect. You don't get many times where I think this dog is just flipping perfect. You don't get many times there is nothing wrong, everything is kosher, life is good. Let's stay like this. There's often something anyway, there's a niggle or there's something that you're working on. I think that's just the nature of a sports dog and a finely tuned eye.

Mel Doyle: 22:28

Absolutely. And the more driven, the more the sport pushes for speed, the more those things are going to happen. Because we, we're looking to have our athletes performing and they are, you know, highly driven and have less self-preservation and they are just all about the go. They're all about performing and they're not going to think about what they're doing to their bodies. You know, and you're very good at, if they're all about performing and they're not going to think about what they're doing to their bodies, you know and you're very good at, if they're eliminated and you're not going to get anything more from it taking them out, why carry on? Why risk anything more than what you need to?

Lauren Langman: 23:07

um, that's a really interesting one, mel, because a lot of times people have come up to me and gone why did you take her out? And I'm like, like as if I'm being cruel, as if I'm being a bad person, and I'm like, no, no, she's having a great time and I'm very happy with her. There's nothing I'm unhappy with. I'll even do it in like chammerings, like you've seen me. I do it. I don't, I don't care where which ring I'm in.

Lauren Langman: 23:27

Um, I'll complete on something I think the dog's successful at, seesaw, for example, and off I go um and for me that is. That is okay. But I think there's this expectation of the world to say this is the way it should be done, and there's almost like an etiquette that it might be considered as rude to not stay there, but I feel like it's my dog that I want to be um, like to and kind to, and I don't really mind the etiquette of the judge. I always say thank you, I always say I appreciate the course. But I think you're right, there's only so many jumps in a dog right and under. Absolutely do any more.

Mel Doyle: 23:59

Yeah yeah, and I think sometimes that there's saying that just because we can doesn't mean we should, you know. So just because we can run a whole course doesn't mean we should if we're not going to achieve something we want out of it. You know, know, or you know they've been eliminated in a champ class and they're nine, why would you carry on if you're not gonna, you know, want to preserve your dog for the next run? You know, and that's just. I think it's something that we, we really do need to pay more attention to, and it is becoming much more aware about those things, you know. But there are, like you say, there are still people going. Why did you do that? You know, and I'm thinking well, why wouldn't you do that? That just makes complete sense.

Mel Doyle: 24:45

You know, if a dog has a fall off a dog walk I must admit and I apologise if anyone's I have the it makes me worry so much when they put them back over it, when they've fallen off from the middle plank and it's badly. I'm like the dogs are full of adrenaline. They are not going to feel the impact of the fall that they've just had. It will be, and I'm sure we can all, as human beings know we've fought. Yeah, we've fallen over. Yeah, it'll be the next day, but it'll also be the second day that you will probably feel really sore.

Lauren Langman: 25:20

I recently fell over, I went over a tunnel and it was three to four days before I actually felt not sore. And that's the thing is. You'll sit down and for me, I always know like I always dread and I know this probably sounds OCD, but I always dread getting out of the vehicle after I've come home or after I've been on a big training session. Because I know, although I've warmed them up and cooled them down and done all the right things, I know if there's going to be any unsoundness, I'll often see it there, where they've had like a period of rest, yeah, or a period of um, which is why I actually really like doing training days at home here, because we've got a lot of space to warm them up, cool them down and they don't have to go in a crate afterwards.

Lauren Langman: 25:56

My dogs can wander around the house or wherever I'm going to put them up the work yard and garden, wherever they're going to go um, because I do think sometimes it's that period of immediate rest. After that you'll see them get up with a level of stiffness. But you're right, it's not often, if it's not going to be in that moment, they're still painful three or four days later, um, but you didn't know it in that moment and what you just did was put them over that dog walk again yeah, and even if you can't visibly see that they're painful, they will be muscle soreness.

Mel Doyle: 27:05

So if you know that they've had a fall, a slip or they've twisted in a tunnel, then I I would be accounting for that and going right.

Mel Doyle: 27:13

We are having a really quiet three to four days here to make sure I mean, obviously I do it myself and my own dogs, but all getting somebody in to have a feel, to do some work if they need it on them, to help them get through it, use electrotherapies if need be to help boost that recovery process. Because if we don't recognize that'm on notes again yeah, if we, if we don't recognize that, and then we go and do some training or you know, and training days are probably more physically demanding than competition, you know, most, like I say, goes that you have you're looking at sort of five to six minutes of intensive, intensive work and I mean you know I am, if I've gone on train day, if I think I've had enough, I'm like no more. Even if I haven't had my time, I'm like nope, that's it, we're done, because I want to make sure that I've got them for the next session or the next week or the next month.

Lauren Langman: 28:13

Or let's go with the next 15 years, right? And I think that's important because I know you, without either of us getting upset, you lost an older dog and she looked fantastic right to the last day, and I think the same with mine, I think the same like Poppy, to the day I lost her looked fit and healthy. She looked fit and healthy and I think for me that's such a privilege and a pleasure to have a dog who still looks great as they reach their senior years. And I know that you, you take huge pride in how good your dog looks, and I don't know about you, but I always think about mileage in a dog, like, I actually think my dog is a quite low mileage and I think of, like my vehicles, um, my van is quite high mileage, um, my dog is quite low mileage and that's the way I'd like to keep it now that I want my dog to be low mileage, um, that's the way I'd like to keep it now that I want my dog mileage, um. So now, one thing we didn't mention was in our plan for the week and I'm going to run through this plan for because there really isn't enough time and I know that this is what we're going to come out with in a minute, um is, there isn't enough time. But one of the things that you said I need to add into my program, which I struggle on, is sprint training. Now I struggle for a few reasons on sprint training or off-leash work because I'm paranoid.

Lauren Langman: 29:22

I have a very hyper, busy dog who I love her off-leash. I don't have any recall struggles or problems like that, but I feel like I need to protect her from the world because she will spring off banks. Or you've been on our lane Bowen Lane is beautiful. You're walking along the lane and you think the lane is really safe. She could only be on the lane and you're gonna see if it's because it's a one way, it's a one track road and I've got great recall. However, you'd hope um, and however, she's on the top of the bank. She's leaping across the bank. She's jumping across. There's like she's just nuts and I'm like I need to take full responsibility for you because you take none for yourself. She's like owning a lemming. I feel like. I feel like she has a strong will to die and I feel like she would jump off, like, and I feel I feel like there's a massive responsibility with that now.

Lauren Langman: 30:07

Then the second one I was walking across yesterday and our pony got out of the field only a few weeks ago and, um, he galloped across the yard. He undid his own gates and then galloped and I know you saw the video and then galloped across. But he left a few divots and so since then I haven't wanted to let them in that field because I need to get them filled um and then rolled um, and I find myself becoming very paranoid about the ground they're on and also the ability to sprint like I want them to sprint. But I'm also careful that they're sports dogs and that carpus and or carpal injuries or, um, sort of slight sprains, you know how quick they happen or how quickly they happen. You know how long they take to recover.

Lauren Langman: 30:44

What would be your recommendations on sprinting and off-leash work? When would that be best to happen? Because we've come back off a show on a sunday. Is it a good thing to do it? Maybe sunday night, monday morning, monday daytime? Is it better to do it when we're doing our Wednesday training day? Is it better to not do it, to do it on? The other option I've got is maybe a flexi lead, and I know that flexi leads aren't liked, but they give her a bit more range without me having a on lead or off lead, so they kind of give me a bridge in a safe space. What would be your recommendations on off leash?

Mel Doyle: 31:14

and, like I said, it's not about controlling her, it's about safe off leash yeah, stopping her from being crazy and hurting herself, yeah, um, I mean, you know we sort of talked about, I think, the flexi lead is a good option, because it gives more than just a short lead but prevents her from being on the top of bank and leaping off, because you can, you know, manage it a little bit easier. Um, but we talked about using the arena for sprinting as well, so you don't need to worry so much about, um, what the ground undulations are like and, like you say, about the little divots that could be in the field because of said horse galloping across the field. Um, so, but and it's, sprint work doesn't have to be um with a turn, because we talked about, you know, just doing it straight. So it could be somebody you can either. I often do it because I'm on my own, so much for my training, I don't have anybody else. So I actually have a and, I hate to say, I do have a really good weight with my spaniel.

Lauren Langman: 32:15

Um really do have a really good weight. I watch you and I'm like, oh my God, I love her weight. My dog is so, so different. On a weight she's like stalky little collie, whereas yours is like princess Phoenix is perfect. And I'm like, oh my God, look at her. So Mel does have a great weight. In fact, mel's teaching the next course. It's going to be like 10 days to start my days.

Mel Doyle: 32:35

um, go on and she's gonna so yeah, so I, I use her weight and I will leave her in a weight and I will um, I don't have an indoor arena, but you can use your indoor arena so you can either get somebody to restrain, who can restrain appropriately and we talk about not like restraining around the neck, um, and I then go out and I basically I recall her, and this is after she's warmed up as well, so it's a straight line, it's a straight sprint to me and I'm running and I then slow myself down. So we haven't got like a sprint to a dead stop, because I don't want that, I don't want her sprinting to a dead stop. I just, at that moment in time, I'm targeting just the acceleration and the sustainability of that as well, because I think that's something that we do need to, because agility is a sport that borders the 30 second to 45 second sort of window. I suppose not many of our top dogs do go up to 45, but you know you can go up to sort of that sort of you're looking at that time period. We do sort of cross the anaerobic, aerobic border and we do need to make sure that we cover sort of all of those aspects. Plus also we could do a run in one ring.

Mel Doyle: 33:47

You never know you might have to do another. You know, say you've got a champ run and then you've got a qualifier. Not that it's ideal, not that you really want to do it, and in an ideal world you would actually have time to have a break, calm down, you know if the class is big enough, but if that wasn't a possibility, worst case scenario you have to go from one ring to another ring and do two runs back to back or training days. You know, some of the training days, like I say, they're actually higher intensity than a competition. So we need to prepare them for that. So we need them to be able to sprint, have a short break but then sprint again. So we need to build that into our plan and I would probably include that within the, probably on the Wednesday, and I would. So I would probably do some agility training first. I then might have a like a short break and then do some um, sprint work, um, and then I might maybe do um a land-based session at the end of that.

Lauren Langman: 34:42

So we've got Wednesday being training.

Mel Doyle: 34:44

So Wednesday's like your peak day really. So you've basically you're creating like this curve effect. So the peak of your week is the middle of the week. You've got to build up to it and then you've got to tailor off to it to the weekend. So whatever you've done on the Wednesday, the dog's body has got time to get over that and recover before they then are asked to compete on the weekend so that's really good.

Lauren Langman: 35:05

So we've got. Monday is our sort of um rest day, maybe a lead walk, maybe, um, a little bit of like downtime, chew time, um, and obviously any of our therapies that we might be using, um, we could be adding in our lecture therapies there, potentially, yeah, and and a few other days. And our tuesday is lighter training, some lead work, um, and anything else we might add in there you could do some land-based work as well.

Mel Doyle: 35:31

So sort of all the, all the exercises that we talk about doing to sort of um maintain range of motion, to maintain core strength, to maintain and build.

Lauren Langman: 35:42

I mean, look how much um skittles, glutes have built up since august last year massive, massive, huge confluence circuits on top of um all of the land-based exercises we're doing with her structured stands and um her balance movement, and actually it's not free running.

Mel Doyle: 35:58

That's done that because she doesn't get a lot of free running, not because I don't want to more, because I fear for her life at times free running I think that's probably the biggest misconception is that, in order to build muscle, we have to do more off lead, we have to do more running, but actually it isn't. It's the slow, controlled recruiting the right muscles, activating the right muscles, having the right exercises in place and having them performed in the right way. Um, I remember when we first talked a lot there was a you know. We talked about using more stable surfaces. I don't think jamie very rarely uses unstable surfaces anymore.

Lauren Langman: 36:33

And look at what she's achieved with the dogs yeah, way, way, way less prop and more, like we were talking about the other day, fit without kit, like she's really yes, absolutely yeah. And we were talking about actually a lot of people underestimating the value of no kit, like it's almost like naked training, like you don't want it, you want to strip back all the like fun, fluffy, inflatable type world, because that there is that massive world, for I mean, at the end of the day, it sells, doesn't it? It sells really well, because a lot of products there you can buy and they look great, like they do look great. The fitness room looks great, but actually the amount we use those, compared to um, the, the real base exercise, is very little. And particularly thinking on the, the stand, the hamstrings, the tail, the structure and her weight shift, those are probably your real go-tos everywhere before you do anything. Yeah, absolutely.