K9 Kamp Pet Blogger Awards 2012!

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doggy step aerobics with Daisy

As our regular readers and fans know, we recently completed 4 weeks of fun and activity in the K9 Kamp Fitness Challenge for Pet Bloggers! You can catch up on our posts from the entire K9 Kamp series here.

K9 Kamp Savviest Blogger Award 2012

Although Kamp has ended for this year, the excitement continues because the K9 Kamp Awards have just been announced and we have been awarded a very cool one! Daisy and I are thrilled to accept The Savviest Kamper Award for “finding the best bargains on K9Kamp toys and fitness supplies” throughout the event! You can head on over to K9 Kamp Headquarters and see the full list of award recipients! Congrats to everyone and we can’t wait to do it again next year!

K9 Kamp Week 4 Highlights: Kamper’s Choice!

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doggy step aerobics with Daisy

WOW…It’s the final week of K9 Kamp! Hopefully you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have! This week’s K9 Kamp Fitness Challenge was ‘Kamper’s Choice’ meaning do whatever fitness activities you and your dog enjoy most. Well, we did that the first week during the Walking on Sunshine Challenge since walking is our favorite and most frequent activity. So this week we decided to try working on a few tricks and skills, and added a fitness-spin on them by incorporating my fitness ball and aerobic step. For those of you who are young enough to have missed out on the step aerobics craze, here’s a funny and retro flashback. I love that Gilad had a parrot in his workout videos!:

Anyway, this week was mostly for fun. I did a few ab crunches on the ball and made a game of stepping up and down on the step with Daisy.  As usual, I got a pretty decent abdominal workout from laughing so much!

Daisy Step Up

Step Up Step Down: We like to practice climbing on and off of the agility equipment at the dog park so I thought it would be fun to make a game of it at home using my old aerobic step which doesn’t get much use these days (My current favorite is doing Zumba with the Wii or DVD set!) We took turns stepping on and off and once Daisy figured out what to do it was fun to try to get on the step before she got off. She got super excited and bumped me off the step a few times trying to get the treats I was using as incentive!

Daisy fitness ball

Fitness Ball Fun: I use my stability ball fairly often so it’s always sitting out for Daisy to poke at and chase around the room. With Papa’s help we’ve been teaching her to stand on the ball. Her legs still tremble and one of us has to hold the ball so she doesn’t fall off, while the other one encourages her with treats and a helping hand, but she’s getting the hang of it! Since he was busy the day I decided to try to get photos, this was about the best shot I could get on my own! It’s a work in progress…

Daisy on the ball - almost

So, those are our highlights from Week #4! How did YOU do??? We’ve really enjoyed participating in this year’s K9 Kamp Fitness Challenge and following the adventures of the other Kampers, too! A BIG Thank You to the co-hosts over at Kol’s Notes and Peggy’s Pet Place for ALL their hard work putting this together!

Leave us a comment to let us know you stopped by! Don’t forget to visit the other pet blogs in the listing below and remember to stop by the K9 Kamp Headquarters for a chance to win cool prizes for participating!



K9 Kamp Week 3 Highlights: Just One Doggone Minute To Win it!

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It’s week #3 of K9 Kamp and the challenge was Just One Doggone Minute to Win It! We all agree that it can be tough to find time for fitness each day, so the goal was to initiate a fun fitness game with your dog whenever you have a spare minute.

Since I work from home, Daisy usually comes over to poke at me and try to get my attention sometime during the day but I’m often guilty of ignoring her or sending her away with a pat and a toy when I’m busy. By the end of the day, I’m usually stiff from sitting too long, and my eyes hurt from staring at the computer monitor! This week was fun because I had an official excuse to get up and play for a few minutes throughout a day! I wouldn’t say that our games were all that original but they did get me up from my desk more than usual and I’m thankful for that! Here’s a rundown:

 

Indoor Frisbee Toss:

Indoor Frisbee

We took advantage of Daisy’s KONG Flyer and enjoyed a few quick games of indoor frisbee. Daisy was thrilled since I usually reserve this game for the park or beach, but I figured that since the Flyer is floppy and flexible rather than hard like a regular frisbee, that it wouldn’t do much damage if we were careful! After a few times of catch and fetch the flyer, it turned into a game of tug so we had to stop before we destroyed our toy!

flyer tug

 Football Roll:

football roll

This game is also called ROFL (Rolling Our Football and Laughing!) Instead of tossing the football, we crawled around on the floor with it. I tried to roll it away and Daisy tried to bring it back or stop me. She was general fascinated with the way it rolled since she doesn’t usually get to play with it…Don’t tell Papa we used his toy! My exercise was mostly laughing as Daisy pounced, batted and nudged at the football with her nose as she tried to figure out how to pick it up!

football game with Daisy

 

Rope Ring Tug and Toss:

Daisy Tug

I got a pretty good biceps and triceps workout trying out Daisy’s adorable new rope ring toy. This was pretty much your standard game of tug but every now and then I threw it and did some arm stretches and toe touches while she went to fetch it. I know it was suggested that we try to work in some squats or lunges but Mama’s knees just aren’t having any of THAT!

Tug with Daisy

We also played a little Monkey in the Middle with Papa and had a quick game of Hide and Seek but you’ll have to take our word for it. The most difficult part of the challenge this week was trying to take photos while playing!  We’re having so much fun…I can’t believe we are headed into the LAST Week of K9 Kamp! I’ll be posting product reviews and giveaways featuring the KONG Flyer and adorable Rope Ring Toy featured in this week’s challenge so stay tuned for those!

Those are the highlights from our week! How did you do with Week #3 of K9 Kamp Fitness Challenge? Be sure to leave a comment and let us know! Check in on the other featured pet bloggers and add your post to the blog hop,  too!

 

K9 Kamp Week 2 Highlights: We’re on the Ball…Kinda!

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Daisy as a Puppy with Basketball

The challenge for Week #2 of K9 Kamp was Play with Your Balls! Daisy has been a fan of playing ball since she was a puppy  and discovered her papa’s basketball but despite our best intentions, the heat and tropical rains got the better of us most days this week so we had to get creative with our challenge activities. We didn’t do nearly as much as we would have liked but we did what we could and had a good time!

Tennis Anyone?

tennis court gate

We don’t have a yard for off leash play, and the dog park was pretty swampy most of the week except for the day Daisy had a play date with her boyfriend Fin and they both just laid in the shade because it was too hot! So, we decided to sneak in to the tennis court while no one was looking.

Daisy Tennis

Daisy and I took advantage of the space to run around and chase the ball and each other, and I bounced it -sometimes over the net and sometimes just short – so that she was constantly guessing which way to go to try to catch it!

Walking Kick Ball:

Daisy Pink Nebo Ball

We play this game a lot on our regular walks. Daisy will find a coconut or old water bottle or something else that rolls and I kick it along ahead of us while trying to speed walk fast enough to catch up to it before it rolls away. A couple times I almost kicked Daisy in the head so watch out! Usually, Daisy carries the object in her mouth for a bit while we keep walking and then I give the “Drop” command and she does (most of the time). Here’s Daisy with one of her favorite balls during our game.

Daisy carrying her nebo ball

 

Indoor Chuckit! Game:

Daisy indoor chuckit

Since we live in Florida and have a LONG rainy season, we invested in the Chuckit! Indoor Play Set and use it frequently! The Chuckit! is a ball launcher handle thing that is designed to grab and fling the ball so it cuts down on bending and touching the slobbery ball and the indoor version is made of soft material so it doesn’t break stuff when you throw it.

Daisy Chuckit Fetch

We play indoor fetch with this a lot! This is super fun and a great workout for Daisy but not so much for me, so I added a little cardio for myself by running to hide somewhere as soon as Daisy ran to chase the ball. There are only like 3 really good hiding places so she figured it out kind of quickly but it got me up from my desk and moving around a bit more than usual which I need to do more of throughout the day!

So, those are the highlights from our week! How did you do with Week #2 of K9 Kamp Fitness Challenge? Be sure to leave a comment and let us know! Check in on the other featured pet bloggers and add your post to the blog hop,  too!


Join Us for Fitness Fun and Prizes at K9 Kamp: May 14 – June 14!

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K9 Kamp

Daisy and I are preparing to take part in a fun and exciting blog event and want to make sure you get involved, too! Join with us, and lots of other pawsome pet parents and their furry kids at K9 Kamp!

Co-hosted by Kol’s Notes and Peggy’s Pet Place, this virtual event is a chance to get active and have some fun! K9 Kamp begins May 14th and there will be a new fitness challenge each week. Challenges are easily adapted for beginners to experts and no registration is required. There are NO difficult rules or extensive time commitments involved; You can try one or all! Just have some fun with your dog…and did I mention there will be a chance to WIN prizes!?!

Daisy and I will be Blogging, Tweeting and posting on Facebook throughout this 4-week K9 Kamp event and we sure hope to SEE YOU there!  For more info and a preview of what’s to come visit the K9 Kamp Headquarters here:

K9 Kamp HQ at Kol’s Notes

K9 Kamp HQ at Peggy’s Pet Place