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Hi Laurie,

Happy Holidays to you!

I’m back at work and facing a problem with the sheltie (I previously sent you the vibration-video on). He’s progressing really well and has started to train a bit of agility. The problem is that, regardless of how I approach speed changes in the under water treadmill, I cannot get him to trot. He keeps ambling and that at a very high speed, sometimes he hops a few steps and then trots for 2-3 seconds but as soon as he’s ”recovered composure” we’re back at the amble.

This is really frustrating for both the owner and me, and we very much hope that you might have a smart hint to help us make him chose the ”right" gait

Enjoy your day, looking forward to hearing from you!
Kind regards

S

Hi S,

God Jul & Happy New Years to you!

Thanks for asking this question! I’m going to post it to the forum as well for others to read and to see if anyone else has other ideas!

Getting a dog to trot in the UWT is not always easy! A few things to try:
1) Once the dog is properly warmed up, increase the speed faster (not gradually). This may get the dog to transition to a trot instead of moving from walk to amble to pace.
2) Go faster in general.
3) Lower the water. You may find that you need to lower the water to below the stifle or mid tibia height to get the dog to pick up his feet. Amble & Pace would be easier to move limbs through the water, since the front limbs ‘cut through’ the water resistance thereby making it easier for the rear legs to move through the water after the forelimbs.
4) Give up. Is the goal exercise, conditioning, & building muscle? Then you are doing this regardless of the gait pattern. And sometimes, no matter what you do, the dog won’t trot in the water. It’s actually somewhat of a debate. “Should you use UWT as a conditioning tool b/c quite often you cannot get a dog to trot… Are you just training them to pace?” I think you can use UWT as a ‘cross-training tool” for conditioning, and I don’t think that it will ‘mess-up’ their gait patterns on land. But ‘not trotting’ is such a pervasive issue, that sometimes you just have to give up on ‘trotting’ being the goal.

So if any others on the forum have more suggestions, I think we’d ALL like to hear about them!

Cheers,

Laurie