Written by guest blogger and student Diana Dickinson – you can visit her blog, which she posts on regularly, HERE.
Every agility competitor I know worries about getting dehydrated when it’s hot. We spend all day at a trial, and it gets hot in the sun, or in the arena, and we drink lots of water and encourage our dogs to drink lots of water. Some of us look for salty foods to replace the salt as we sweat. After getting muscle cramps that woke me up during the night after a long weekend’s trialing a few year’s back, I decided I needed to better understand my body’s needs.
Like so many things about agility, it turns out it’s not that simple. Drinking water is good, but drinking too much water is bad, and drinking too little water is bad. Both problems can cause muscle cramps, too. Replacing electrolytes (salts) lost through sweat is good, but too much is bad and too little is bad. Balance turns out to be key. Based on everything I’ve read, drinking too much plain water without also consuming some electrolytes can lead to problems—just like drinking too little water.
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