I‘ve been asked to post this by a few people who thought this was interesting and highly amusing.
Okay, so here’s the scenario…we have a little exercise room that we built in our basement. We use it all of the time, sometimes a couple of times a day. And while we always try to make sure our dogs have enough exercise it can be hard sometimes, and Chakotay was getting a bit overweight last Winter.
When B’elanna, our German Shepard was alive, we used to have the dogs run a bit on our treadmill, a Sole F63 (see my
review of it here). Of course anything that B’elanna learned or was trained to do was picked up by Chakotay when he came along. I’m sure any of you with multiple dogs know that one dog learns from the other.
So anyway, when Archer came along it wasn’t any big thing to teach him to use the treadmill too.
Both dogs readily use the treadmill and seem to enjoy doing their walk and run. In fact, it wasn’t long before the whole process was completely ‘automatic’ – I would tell them we were going to the exercise room, they would follow me down and I would open the door, let them in and Chakotay would go over to the treadmill and wait.
Of course sometimes we would be planning on using the treadmill so we have to tell him to go and lay down. He looks disappointed when we do that but goes and relaxes.
But when we’re not using the treadmill I put the safety key in and he climbs up onto it, without me saying a word to him. In fact, as you’ll see in the video – I don’t have to say a word to either of them or tell them in any way to get on the treadmill, or even to take their turns; they just do it.
Archer on the treadmill
As he walks I slowly increase the speed after he warms up and after a few miles I slowly start to decrease it over time, then at the end I stop it and, again without me saying a word; he steps off the treadmill and goes to lay down and Archer comes over and climbs on. I start the whole thing over again until he’s had his walk/run. When he’s finished I stop it and Archer gets off to lay down.
Sometimes I even have them go for another turn on it.
We think nothing of it now, but after telling others about it we found that other’s are a bit amazed that A) they run on the treadmill and B) they do it all without us having to tell them to do it.
So here’s a little YouTube video (please give it a few minutes if it doesn’t immediately show up, otherwise click the direct link below it);
(Click here for the YouTube Link just in case the above embedded video isn’t showing in your browser)
