Zooka and Blitzen love parkour! This blog contains videos of Zooka and Blitzen practicing parkour on some of our obstacles.

Dog Parkour is an adaptation of parkour for humans. Sometimes called urban agility, participants utilize their environment to navigate. That might includes walls, trees, logs, benches, or anything else in the environment to jump on or over, vault over, swing under, go around, etc. Think of it like agility but with whatever equipment is already in the environment rather than needing special agility equipment.

We have lots of parkour obstacles at our farm that our dogs practice on regularly. Zooka and Blitzen practice their parkour skills regularly on our walks around our property.

Parkour practice helps them to stay very fit. While they do a lot of off-leash walking and running, the parkour helps to build and maintain their core strength. So they are working different muscles than when they are just walking or running.

Unlike agility, we do not compete. The goal is not to complete a specific course as fast as possible. The goal is first and foremost to have fun! The secondary goal is to get in better shape and maintain good physical health and strength.

The fun thing about parkour is that you can do lots of different things with the same obstacle, unlike agility when you have to do a specific thing with a specific obstacle.

We can do:

• Up (all four paws up)
• Paws Up (just the front two paws on the obstacle, rear feet stay on the ground)
• Rear (Rear paws on the obstacle, front paws on the ground)
• Over (jump over it)
• Under (Walk or crawl under the obstacle)
• Off (get off the obstacle)
• Around (go all the way around the obstacle and return to me)
• Sit ( on the obstacle)
• Down (on the obstacle)
• Or any other ideas you or your dog can come up with to try!

When we practice Up, we usually practice walking across the obstacle, turning around on the obstacle and walking back the other way. That takes some practice and balance to do!

As always, our dogs have a choice. They can choose to do what I ask them to try. They can decline. They can offer something they feel more comfortable doing. They can go above and beyond and do things I would not have asked!

Some days they are much more into parkour than others. That's ok. The goal remember, is to have fun. If it's not fun, we don't do it.

I encourage them to do things or at least try. I reward them well for playing along. But I never force them to do it.

And often on our walks, they will rush up ahead and be waiting for me on an obstacle. They know the game!

What do you do for fun and engagement on your walks?