Looking for ways to keep fit? Musical canine freestyle is a modern dog sport that can be a really fun way to exercise and bond with your dog.
It combines obedience training like heeling, tricks and dance. Dancing with your dog regularly should help build fitness, balance, strength and focus and allows for creative interaction with your dog. Moving to music in a choreographed performance can be really rewarding and entertaining, in fact dancing dogs have done very well on Britain’s Got Talent and other Talent Shows and I confess I love watching- check out videos of Canadian Trainer Cassandra Hartman, of Cassandra’s Canines, a dancer who teaches and competes in the sport with her beautiful dogs including Twyla Tharp below.
Videos: Twyla Tharp, Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon.
We also took part in great fun classes at All About Dogs in Toronto and at The Red Barn Event Centre in Barrie Let us know more teachers in your area and share your videos and photos.
A good tip I heard this week: when getting fit and training with treats, to reduce risk of weight gain, take a measured amount in a little bag for your workout, break into small pieces and use natural, high protein, low fat treats without additives.
Check out the rest of the FitDog posts and get some fun ideas for keeping your pup in shape. Thanks SlimDoggy and co-hosts Peggy’s Pet Place and To Dog With Love for hosting the hop!
And thanks to Heart Like a Dog and co-host Hound Girl for the Follow-up Friday hop!
Love the dancing dog videos! I’ve always thought that was such a cool event… one of the things we haven’t done, yet!
Diane and Rocco Havanese
Thanks- aren’t the videos cool. The dogs always look like they are having so much fun!
Dancing isn’t only good exercise for your dog, but for YOU too! It also is just generally fun and makes you smile – all good for your inner health! Thanks for joining our Hop.
Agree- I love dancing and it is so good for you in so many ways- mentally and physically (I produce a kids dance show Pop It!). Thanks!!
Looks fun & I must admit i do like a good boogie but my dog just seems to want to run. Think it would take more than just a measured amount of treats to drag him up onto the dance floor. Instead of ‘white men can’t dance’ it might be a case of ‘large white muttbreeds can’t dance’……I rest my case
Thank you for joining our blog hop! Delilah and I recently finished a freestyle class, while we’re not yet ready for competition, we sure enjoyed ourselves.
Have a great weekend!!
We love it!! Hopefully we’ll be able to start dancing soon, aka Canine Freestyle. We have a bunch of agility hopefuls, but this would be great to do also!!
I am a horrible dancer, but I think anything would be more fun with a dog! This looks like a great way to work in exercise and fun! Thanks!
Canine freestyle is so much fun to watch…and I love the names of those dogs 🙂