Activities For Barbets

Agility training is a dog sport in which several obstacles, like jumps, tunnels, and weave poles are used as an obstacle course for your dog to move through accurately within a set time frame. This is a fun sport that not only engages your dog physically but gives them a mental workout too. It also has the added benefit of improving your overall communication and bond with your canine companion which may improve their behavior both during training sessions and at other times as well. The Barbet is an intelligent and agile animal with a great deal of stamina, traits that make this breed of dog an excellent candidate to participate in the competitive dog sport of agility trials.

Most dogs like swimming, but the Barbet dog is likely to love swimming. This energetic activity is second nature to water dogs like the Barbet, who were developed to retrieve waterfowl.  During swimming activities, unlike during land-based exercises, the water supports the weight of the animal, preventing additional damage to the joints while still allowing the dog to get a good muscular and cardiovascular workout. This type of exercise is particularly helpful in preventing and sometimes slowing the progression of joint disorders like hip dysplasia, a condition that larger dogs, like Barbet breed dogs, are somewhat more prone to than other dog breeds.

Rally obedience sometimes referred to as Rally-O is a fairly new dog sport that is particularly appealing to some pet parents because it combines elements of both agility and obedience training. In this sport, a dog and their handler, usually the dog’s owner, navigate a course of between ten to twenty signs that indicate certain behaviors for the dog to exhibit, such as sit, do a U-turn, reducing and increasing the pace, and serpentine weaves. As this sport does not have the rigorous obstacles that agility training includes, it can be enjoyed by both young dogs that are over six months of age as well as senior dogs.