Globally it is estimated that 59% of dogs are overweight or obese.

This causes health complications which further reduces the dog movement. Finding ourselves in a vicious downward spiral. Vets suggest the best way to avoid this is an effective programme of exercise.

In our books the sign of a healthy dog is an athletic dog, and like an athlete your dog having a balanced programme of exercise is vital. Lets use a competitive runner as an example. Their exercise doesn’t consist of just long steady runs, nor do they sprint everywhere at top speed - they have a balanced approach between the two. Here at Kompact9 our approach follows this theory and our mission is to help dog owners put it into practice. 

Using our competitive running analogy again. A common training strategy is to follow the 80/20 rule. This states that 80% of the dogs training should be low intensity and 20% high intensity. Converting this to dog speak, when you are on your walk aiming for about 80% of your time walking with your dog, allowing them to move around at their own pace, sniffing and peeing on whatever takes their fancy. Then 20% of the time for higher intensity activity like chasing a ball.

So how does this look in practice? We aren’t suggesting you sit there with a stopwatch and calculator figuring out percentages in the middle of the woods. The above is a guide and your strategy might look something like follows. 

45 minutes of total activity time. It might start with a walk through the woods, then into a park and finishing with a short stroll along the road home. We would walk through the woods, then stop at the park for 5-10 minutes for some fetch - taking our Kompact9 out your pocket - before finishing with a walk home. In this scenario your dog gets a warm up, warm down and a full balance of fetch and walking/sniffing around.

This balance does 3 things:

• Ensures your dog gets high intensity stimulation with that fasting pumping heart rate and athletic development
• Provides a strategy to limit excessive high intensity activity, reducing risk of injury and obsessive behaviours that might follow.
• Allows dogs plenty of warm up time before high intensity activity.