Methods for Understanding Our Dogs’ Peak Fitness

Farr, Brian, et al. “Functional Measurement of Canine Muscular Fitness: Refinement and Reliability of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center Sprint Test.” Frontiers, Frontiers, 19 June 2023, doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2023.1217201.

Summary By: Charlie Clarke 

Background:

Currently there is no way to reliably measure canine muscle fitness. This makes it difficult to measure the comparative muscular strength of 2 dogs side by side, and difficult to measure a single dog over time as they age or recover from an injury. The purpose of developing the sprint test was to fill this gap in performance measurement to allow working dog handlers to assess the fitness of their dog for the job at hand. It is a model that originated in people to measure sprinters’ trunk strength. In the first 25m, the canine sprinter goes from a full stop to nearly maximum velocity, and the time taken is a measure of overall fitness. 

Methods:

The motion of beginning to sprint from a downed position engages the forelimb, trunk, and hindlimb of the dog, making it a useful tool for measuring overall fitness. The 25m sprint test was specifically developed to be easily replicable. The researchers wanted to create a system where multiple evaluators could evaluate the same run and achieve the same overall time. In the development of the test they originally started with one camera that the dog was running directly towards, but they found it difficult to determine the exact start of the dog’s movement. The final iteration included 2 cameras that were positioned perpendicular to the path of the dog with markers on the wall behind the dog so that the camera can capture the exact moment the dog begins its motion and crosses the 25m mark. The major limitation of this test is that all of the dogs tested were large working breed dogs. As such this test may not be suitable for small or giant breed dogs as they may hit their maximum velocity at different distances than the dogs tested in this study. 

Figure 1. Overview of the ST setup.

Figure 2. (A) Shows the ST start setup with the dog’s chest in Zone 3. (B) Shows the dog’s nose crossing start line 3 (yellow circle). (C) Shows the finish setup with the dog’s nose crossing finish line 3 (purple circle).

To make sure that the dogs were actually running their fastest they were graded on their motivation to get a toy. A is maximum effort while B and C are decreasing motivation or distractedness and F meant that the dog did not complete the course. Once a dog was running at the level A maximum effort category, their film was graded by the raters. 

For the actual grading, the researchers wanted to make sure that the testing was replicable. They recruited 2 completely novice raters, 1 intermediate rater (25-100 dogs rated), and 1 experienced rater (>200 dogs rated). Each rater watched the start and finish videos and marked the second that the dog crossed the start and finish lines. The raters were asked to evaluate 5 different dogs 3 days apart. Then the novice raters were compared to each other and to the intermediate and experienced rater on those 5 dogs. The novice raters were provided feedback and an opportunity to re-evaluate the 5 dogs. Those novice raters were considered trained when their times exactly matched the experienced raters at least 80% of the time. Then all 4 raters were provided with videos of 23 dogs over 83 attempts. Each rater evaluated and submitted their times for each run. Then the raters evaluated the same videos in a different order 3 days later and submitted the times for each run. All of the raters were able to identify the times the same way every time with incredibly exact timing. 

Next the researchers measured the acceleration profile of 2 labradors at different life stages and with different body condition scores. The researchers were able to accurately document how each dog accelerated, and they were able to track how an additional set of dogs (working German Shepherds, a Dutch Shepherd, and a Munsterlander) accelerated on different days to measure the inter-day reliability of the method. The dogs all tested within 0.1s difference on all of the days tested. This indicates that the measurement is reliable across different days if the dog being graded is running its fastest. 

Discussion:

For working dogs fitness is crucial to being able to complete the necessary tasks that they were bred and trained for. This sprint test method will be useful for determining when a dog is at peak physical fitness and will allow teams to better understand when a dog may have an unnoticed injury and aid in determining when a dog has completely recovered from rehabilitation. It will also be useful for evaluating aging dogs to determine when they should be retired. For pet and sport dogs, this test or similar test like FastCAT could be useful in determining the fitness of dogs relative to their breed.

This work by the Functional Dog Collaborative is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.