Turn Scooping Time into Healthy Exercise

Did you ever notice how Fido turns an unpleasant situation into opportunities for fun? Early this morning, Toby was waiting for me to get off the computer and, rather than waste time complaining, he used the opportunity to explore the wonderful smells of my laundry hamper! It’s all about the attitude!

After weeks of daily, fluffy snow, our many inches have been melting down as warmer temperatures have hit us the last few days. Although I do try to keep up with poop pick-up in the yard, snows are very good at covering the evidence before I can find it. So, when we gave the yard a scan before this morning’s walk, the melt had uncovered a “wealth” of buried treasures.

If this happens in your yard, before you can sigh, “Ugh. It’ll take 10 minutes to pick that all up!”, take a lesson from Toby and find a way to take advantage of what might otherwise be seen as an unpleasant situation. You can do like I did and turn chore time into a healthy exercise session. While I was scooping this morning, I realized that I could do a deep squat or lunge with each scoop. So as I approached the little piles, I put my feet about shoulder width and squatted for each pick up. And, when there were piles by my sides, I used the opportunity to do some side lunges during pick up. Adding these simple exercises helped me jump-start today’s activity and made a smelly chore a bit more fun. I was also motivated to pick up the pace on our morning walk as I felt a gentle tug in those butt muscles I’d been working out doing poop pick up.