Winter is the perfect time to increase the muscle and bone density of your Elkhound. The snow is perfect resistance as it slowly accumulates over the winter season to provide more and more depth and make the hikes tougher.

This increases the bone density and increases the strength and tendons gradually yet dramatically over the winter to really help the Elkhound in years to come. I do all my conditioning of the Elkhounds in winter for these reasons and others.

The cooler weather allows them to work hard and not become over heated. You can take extended hikes in tough terrain and give them full workouts as they don’t overheat.

Building up the lean muscle mass, increasing chest capacity, heart and lung development, all these lead to increased health benefits. The snow is actually very low impact as you can imagine and so joint issues and pad and elbow issues are removed entirely versus running constantly on hard surfaces.

Elkhounds do not have dysplasia, or joint issues, and definitely they are not in preservation lineages but you can allow your Elkhound even more advantages than genetics provide simply by working them in the snow throughout the season to increase this muscle and tendon advantage, combined with the overall genetic advantages of great ball socket development to begin with.

As bone density increases with the combined workload against resistance, there is a secondary aspect taking place as well. The dog gets heavier, not much but some. The muscle weighs more than fat, so the dog actually leans a bit, but becomes heavier. This increases the building blocks for bone to increase to carry the weight. The bones get stronger, they develop even better joints, limbs, all skeletal structure improves.

Take at look at some of my dogs in winter, you can literally see the muscles bulging out even with heavy double coats. You can see them plowing through snow over their backs and loving it. Pushing through like freight trains. I have tons of photos of every dog leaping straight up out of the snow, building massive power from these workouts.

The health benefits long term to heavy working and hiking in deep snow are so numerous it’s amazing. Not too mention of course, haha, think of you on those snowshoes, heading up, deep 14 inch powder, a few hours, heavy pack for safety gear, think legs of steel and heart the size of an elephant.

So it’s no wonder the large Swedish health study a few years back stated that individuals with dogs lived 30% longer and those with hunting dogs lived 40% longer.

Give yourself and your Elkhound the workouts this winter, live long my friends!

#Notes: be sure to feed for optimal health of your Elkhound in winter#

Another great article on winter hiking with Elkhounds

Be sure to check out all our litters of great Elkhounds, we have some really awesome pups right now.