Can your dog exercise too much?
Yes, you can over-exercise your dog - and it can have a long term impact on their health and behaviour!
Yes, you can over-exercise your dog - and it can have a long term impact on their health and behaviour!
March 5, 2024
Short answer - yes.
There are a handful of instances in which a dog can be getting too much exercise (or too much exercise of a certain type), and of course it is both breed and age dependent. Here are some examples (and some suggestions of what to aim for instead!).
Puppies that are over-exercised or do too much high impact activity are at risk of joint and bone injury, which may result in immediate damage, deformity or conditions such as arthritis and hip dysplasia down the track. It's recommended that puppies refrain from high jumping, fast jarring turns, excessive impact situations and long periods of exercise, until the growth plates are closed (this happens at different ages for different breeds, so check with your vet, but it’s often around 12 months).
A good rule of thumb is that a puppy should have five minutes of extra exercise for every month of age, up to twice a day, until they are fully grown (so an 8 week pup = 10 minutes twice a day).
However, limiting your pup’s activity too much can lead to boredom, frustration and behavioural problems. Low impact play, ‘sniffaris’ and mental stimulation (including training sessions) are an excellent way to tire your pup out in a safe way - the brain uses the majority of the body’s energy!
Just like with humans, senior dogs generally need to slow down. While they may once have enjoyed long exercise sessions or high impact activity, the likelihood is that now they need to take things more slowly and do exercise in shorter bursts. Your dog may not always self-moderate with this either, so don’t rely on them to “tell” you when it’s time to ease up. For example, my old dog Reggie was ball OBSESSED. He would chase that ball forever if given half a chance. But if I overdid it, I could see that he was in pain from his arthritic joints the next day. Working dogs also often have trouble easing up on their jobs. If you can see this may be happening with your dog, tone down the high energy exercise and focus more on gentle, slow stimulation like walks with plenty of off-lead time for sniffing.
My son had a young hunting dog called Patch who was INCREDIBLY fit and active. He loved chasing a ball that my son would hiff as far as possible with a ball thrower, but like my Reggie - he didn't have an off switch. As a boisterous dog with hyperactive tendencies, it was tempting to really try and tire him out, but Patch would go and go until he was utterly exhausted, panting and at the point of collapse (if you let him). Again, we couldn’t rely on him to let us know when he was “done” so we had to monitor him and make sure we didn’t overdo it.
If your dog stops listening when you’re out and about, demands play or is hyperactive, it’s possible they’re getting too much of a certain type of exercise leading to excessive arousal.
The underlying driver in games like fetch is prey drive, and chasing “prey” can be a highly stimulating activity for a dog - adrenalin rises up to five times for a dog that’s in prey drive. When in this state, they can become fixated only on their ‘prey’ item (e.g. their ball). In some cases, this arousal can also become aggression if another dog interferes at the wrong moment.
Other activities that are great for physically tiring your dog can also be hyper-arousing, such as racing around a dog park, chasing birds, playing frisbee, running next to a bike or chasing water from the garden hose.
When your dog is hyper-aroused, it closes down their communication and they're in a very poor learning state - they become fixated on what they’re doing, uninterested in listening to you and unable to settle down. It’s easy for undesirable behaviours to be reinforced in this state (for example, they learn to ignore your “come” or “leave it” commands).
Plus if your dog is frequently getting into a high arousal state, they become addicted to these high excitement levels - basically they’re becoming little adrenaline junkies. They will start to expect and demand this high-arousal play, and get frustrated (and vocal!) when they can’t have it immediately.
Don’t get me wrong, I love these games as a great way to burn energy for active dogs, but this type of play should be balanced with really good impulse control training to teach your dog how to listen and regulate themselves when they're in a state of high excitement. Impulse control training doesn't happen automatically, you need to teach your dog how to do this so they know how to settle down and KEEP RESPONDING TO YOU even when something exciting is going on. This is a very important skill for your dog to have.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of just wanting to physically tire your dog out as much as possible, as quickly as possible - especially when you have a high energy breed.
But keep in mind that mental exercise can be just as tiring, without the over-arousal. The brain uses a huge portion of the body’s energy, so balance physical exercise with mental stimulation such as trick training, sniff walks (very stimulating for a dog), food puzzles and brain games.
And if you are incorporating a fair amount of high arousal exercise into your dog’s life, make sure you balance this with impulse control training so that they’re able to regulate themselves and keep listening to you.
Exercise is an extremely important part of your dog’s life. They need it for their health and happiness, and a dog that’s burned off some energy is also much easier to train and generally more settled.
It’s just important to balance high arousal exercise with low arousal exercise and mental stimulation for a well-rounded dog.
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