Exercise is one of the best ways to keep your Chi healthy. Tired of the same walks around the block and looking for more to do with your Chihuahua? From noncompetitive to performance events, there are many activities that you can enjoy with your Chihuahua.

Agility

Agility is perhaps the most popular canine sport in the country. There's a reason it's so popular; agility is fun. The objective is to send your dog around a ring filled with obstacles, such as a teeter-totter, a tunnel, or an A-frame, with the least amount of mistakes in the fastest time. A lot of people play with agility just because their dogs enjoy the training so much.

Obedience and Its Cousins

If you've enrolled your Chi in a basic puppy class or beginner adult class, you're already learning obedience! Competitive obedience is an extension of these early classes with a few new tricks to learn. With obedience, your goal can be to achieve passing scores to attain a title or it can be to achieve the highest score in the ring on that day. You may not be interested in competitions, but if you and your Chi enjoy training, there's no reason why you can't train your dog to the top levels.

Other versions of obedience are rally obedience (or Rally-O), in which the ring is set up with signs that tell the handler and dog what skill to do at that place. The skills that competitors are asked to complete are actually training segments or parts of the more complex skills required in formal obedience.

Then there are sports in which obedience meets music. In canine freestyle and canine musical freestyle, participants work to set maneuvers to music. Canine freestyle is a bit more structured, whereas canine musical freestyle involves costuming and choreography for both dog and owner.

Volunteer Opportunities

If sports aren't really your thing, and you have a wellsocialized, friendly Chihuahua, you might consider doing therapy work with her. Therapy dogs are no longer limited to social visits in nursing homes. Depending on the need in the community and on your interests, you might train to assist in one of many scenarios, such as school reading programs, rehabilitation centers, assisted living communities, and children's hospitals.

With the Chihuahua, size is not a limiting factor when it comes to being involved in a wide range of activities. The key is to find an activity that both you and your Chihuahua enjoy.