Your dog’s hind legs play a vital role in everyday life; they allow them to stand, keep their body upright, and move freely. But just like any other canine body part, the hind legs may be susceptible to diseases that lead to mobility issues.
Several underlying health issues can cause hind leg weakness, such as canine arthritis, hip dysplasia, and old age. Thankfully, you can help prevent hind leg lameness in several ways, like indoor dog exercises that focus on strength training for dogs.
Exercises to Strengthen A Dog’s Back Legs
To help keep your dog’s hind legs strong, we’ve listed seven indoor dog exercises to help your pets enhance their active lifestyles.
Assisted standing with a swiss ball
This indoor dog exercise helps your dog with weight bearing and weight shifting; two elements that significantly impact the condition of their hind legs. To do this drill, you need an exercise ball appropriate for your dog’s size and another person to help keep your pet stable. When looking for an exercise ball, ensure that it allows your pet to touch the ground with all four feet.
One person must help stabilize your pet’s front legs while you stabilize their back legs. Once your pet is safely leaning on the ball, the person in front will gently move the ball in an up-and-down motion. This move helps stimulate the contraction of your dog’s limb muscles.
To help strengthen their back legs’ weight-bearing ability, you can shift the ball forward.
Weight-shifting drills
Another great drill that helps improve weight bearing on all of your pet’s limbs is weight shifting. All you need is a treat or toy to perform this exercise. Move the object in different directions, ensuring that your dog is following the treat.
We highly recommend starting with smaller movements and progressing to more complex motions. This exercise will help your dog maintain balance as their center of gravity shifts.
Manual unloading of limbs while standing
Manual unloading of one limb is another excellent approach to strength training for dogs that teaches them proper weight-shifting techniques. While your dog is standing, lift and hold a single limb off the ground. Afterward, start slowly pulling the limb away from your pet’s body.
This move helps your pup transfer their weight from one leg to another, preventing themselves from falling to the ground.
Resistance drills
Adding resistance to specific exercises using elastic bands increases your pet’s endurance and muscular strength. There are many types and levels of resistance bands you can use. For example, light and medium ones are perfect for improving muscle strength and mobility. Conversely, high-intensity bands help train your pet for total off-leash activity.
Sit-to-stand exercises
These drills help improve your pet’s active range of motion as it requires the strength of different muscle groups like the quadriceps and hamstrings.
Before starting the exercise, you must ensure that your pet has sufficiently warmed up its muscles. You can walk your dog for five minutes before proceeding with the drills. Once done, ask your canine to sit squarely for a few seconds before asking them to stand and take a few steps forward.
We recommend completing at least five to ten repetitions before allowing your dog to rest. This drill works well if done once or twice a day. Once your pet becomes accustomed to the exercise, you can start adding more reps.
Walking in the sand
Walking your dog in the sand is not exactly an exercise. Still, this fun activity helps strengthen their supporting muscles while avoiding heavy impact typically placed on their joints. The sand adds resistance to our pets’ limb movements when walking or running, helping them strengthen their flexor muscles.
This drill can also work if you want to exercise your dogs indoors. We recommend adding sand to diverse surfaces like foam, rubber, bed mattresses, and even shallow pools of water. Additionally, you can use treats as an incentive to help them walk back and forth.
Backward dancing
Dancing is a popular exercise that helps dogs increase their weight bearing on their rear limbs while challenging their balance and coordination. One downside to this drill is that canines tend to resist dancing forward toward their pet owners. As a solution, we recommend you stand behind your pet so you can support them from there and start moving forwards and backward.
This drill helps shift your dog’s weight from its front limbs to its rear and helps promote hip extension. You can also elevate the exercise further by dancing up and down inclines or adding additional stress to your dog’s back legs.
Strength training for dogs is key to a long and healthy life
While we can’t protect our beloved canines from age-related health issues, there are several ways to ensure they live healthy and happy lives while they’re with us. Aside from the exercises mentioned in this blog, we recommend modifying your pet’s diet and adding supplements for stronger bones and muscles.
For more indoor dog exercises, make sure you visit our blog here.
