by David Aaron White

Created on: November 09, 2008   Last Updated: September 04, 2010

An energetic dog that you have rescued from a shelter or a foster home can be a bucket load of fun. He or she will enjoy racing around your house that is all too small for such a vibrant creature, knocking over vases and dishes, tearing up the carpet, colliding with walls and household residents, and just having itself a ball; however, if you haven't picked up on it yet, someone could get hurt, and hopefully it won't be the dog. Energy is a sign of life in pets, so it's not as if your adopted or rescued dog needs to be any less energetic in order to have a good life in your home; you just need to create a system capable of harnessing such a potentially dangerous amount of energy.

One of the best ways to help an energetic rescue dog is to give it some room to run around in without any major obstacles or hazards. The easiest way to do this is to get a fence installed in your backyard. Although this may be relatively expensive, it saves you the time and energy of having to walk a very energetic dog four or five times a day at a sub-five minute mile pace. Plus, once the fence is installed, your dog will have a sizable piece of land to call its territory and play in. This lets your dog not only have a way to expend some of its energy before coming inside and taking over the house, but to also use the bathroom without taking you along.

Now, the exact opposite of the first proposal works just as well. If you enjoy running, take your energetic dog for a run with you every day and see if you can keep up with him or her. Not only will you have the advantage of having a companion while you exercise, but you can kill two birds with one stone by allowing your dog to relieve itself while you are running and having a good time of it. Energetic dogs like to move really fast, or at a moderate pace for an extended amount of time (little hairballs never get tired, do they?), so you should definitely consider promoting your rescued dog to the rank of "exercise buddy." Speaking of buddies, this also lets you spend some quality time with your rescued dog, which will get him or her used to being around you and better adjusted to its new life. Be careful, though: for at least the first few weeks that you take your dog running with you, you should keep it on a leash. Depending on your dog's attention span and loyalty to you, which probably isn't very strong because he or she is a rescue dog, he or she may run away in a heartbeat unless attached to you by a leash.

Try to keep your dog

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