Conditioning a dog UP TO WEIGHT??

[R2L]

Jack and all, what do you think are good legal methods to test whether a dog's natural air is good enough?

[Officially Retired]

Jack and all, what do you think are good legal methods to test whether a dog's natural air is good enough?

Unfortunately, there isn't any.

Why? Because while you can see any dog's natural air in exerting itself, by watching it perform various exercises, the fly in the ointment has to do with NERVES and COOL.

For example, my Stormbringer dog was very short-winded when I would run him on a mill, or have him go all-out pulling weights, so you'd figure he'd be short-winded in the pit too, right? WRONG! Why? Because he was unGodly-strong in the pit, and he was cool and confident, and he never wasted any energy. So while he would run hot when going all-out to common exercises, he would never run hot in the pit. It was all any dog could do (at full throttle) to try to match Stormbringer's strength (at half-throttle). Further, Stormy was so confident in there, and so pit savvy, that he was always ahead and never got flustered.

By contrast, a physically-weak dog (that was unschooled and had some shit in him) might do very well air-wise to common exercises ... and yet when put in the box with a powerhouse supreme, pit master, like Stormy that weak-ass dog might have to use every drop of energy he had just to stay even with Stormy at an average pace. Further, if the dog didn't know what he was doing, and took bottom, that shit might start to come out of him (and he might start feeling anxiety), and so his heart rate would increase due to his nervousness at his predicament ... and he will start running hot.

So the whole concept of running hot in the pit is more complicated than merely running hot to exercise. One dog may have economy of movement in the pit also, and conserve his energy, while the other goes apeshit in there and wastes his energy, etc., etc.

Therefore, while you may be able to get an idea as to a dog's tolerance for exercise in general, by having him do exercises in general, there are enough other positive/negative factors that come into play in the pit, that you need to see the dog actually in there to judge his air properly at that capacity. In this regard, schooling an intelligent dog will go a long way toward increasing his air, as the more experience he gets, the more he will learn to pace himself (whereas a stupid/highly-intense dog will never learn to pace himself).

Jack