The objective is to use one hand to successfully close Sadie’s mouth while she frantically chomps at the air and huffs and puffs.
It’s nearly impossible to beat her at The Hand Game. She’s very agile and her reflexes are on point.
One way we try to secure an advantage is to grab at her paws, which she immediately tucks under her chest, forgoing her leverage.
And then we die laughing because she bounds forward on her chest, keeping her paws to herself so we can’t grab at them.
Sadie is the smart one though and has a legit trick in her arsenal that is a game-ender.
The Dead Hand.
When she’s mouthing our hands, sometimes one of her teeth will press into a spot in our hand that immediately makes our hand get that horrific fuzzy feeling. We call this the “Dead Hand” and Sadie is awarded instant victory upon dead handing.
We’ve been playing The Hand Game for years and Sadie wins the game 95 percent of the time.
So that’s how we spent our night last night. Losing at The Hand Game. 
Workout
I have two new workouts to share with you this morning! I did them back-to-back and they left me incredibly sweaty.
First up was a 30-minute incline walking workout with a short burst of five minutes of running thrown in the mix to get my heart rate up a little more:
Once the incline got above 11, I was pumpin’ my arms like crazy to get through it! Incline walking is no joke.
After my time on the treadmill, I hopped off and did a new circuit workout inspired by the 1,000 rep workout I found on Pinterest a few weeks ago.
My circuit focused primarily on leg and abdominal exercises and looked like this:
I wasn’t really paying attention to the clock and took a few longer-than-usual rest breaks, but I think this circuit took me right around 20 minutes to complete.
Breakfast
This morning’s breakfast was a nice change of pace, though it included oatmeal and yogurt, two ingredients that seem to find their way into my morning meal an awful lot.
I ate a bowl of Chobani 2 percent mango Greek yogurt (love this flavor!) topped with freshly sliced strawberries and a bunch of my homemade granola that I made last night.
The bowl looks kind of small in the picture (it is very wide), but there was a crap-ton of food in there! Granola overload… in the best possible way.
Now it’s time to type up a freelance article and a corresponding recipe that I worked on yesterday and send it out! There’s a reason no lunch or dinner popped up on the blog yesterday… because I snacked my way through the day, eating my freelance flops as I perfected the recipe and made a mess in the kitchen. Mmm!
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sadie cracks me up! we play with our pups with our hands too, but we sweep them across the carpet and try to knock their legs out form under them and they end up jumping all over the place, it’s pretty funny!
If I played the hand game with my old akita, Brownie would harumph in disapproval and go lay down. She’s snobby like that.
Sadie cracks me up! That workout looks awesome! Do you plan your workouts before you get to the gym or are they impromtu?
And I thought I was the only person who used “crap-ton!” Guess not. 🙂
That granola looks delicious!
We play “The Claw” game with our dogs, you hold your hand up like it’s suddenly a dog head itself move it around like it’s looking at them, and start to growl at them and have your fingers go into the claw, they go nuts, it’s soo funny, then we wrestle around, but if they get out of hand, I just go ‘OUCH” really loud and they stop and look all sorry. I won’t be having children, but I always make them sit and greet children at the parks, and they are always polite and sweet.
I love the workout, I will have to give it a try!
Love Chobani!! So many favors! We can’t find it in Canada but when we go to the U. S. we buy a lot of it. I find it more filling than other yogurt. Love Sadie and all her pictures. Keep them coming.
Dogs can bring so much joy to a home! Just wait til you have kiddos….. 🙂
great workouts!! the breakfast looks yummy too 🙂
Girlfriend, I was JUST tweeting about a good walking/incline treadmill workout. You’re a mind reader. 😉
Haha. We can easily spend an hour playing hide n seek with my dog. It’s hilarious and she’s really good at finding!
Omg those pictures of Sadie are hilarious!! Love that you guys spent your evening playing this game with her– I want a puppy! And whew that 1000 workout looks intense but kind of amazing! I think I need to try it!
We play a similar game with jasper but we make it look like the hand is talking….so he talks back to it and then we pounce him. He immediately rolls onto his back and wiggles around the floor. Vizslas are hilarious!!
Sadie is so friggin’ adorable!! 🙂
And my legs are super sore from my workout yesterday, that just *looking* at the word “squats” hurts them…haha!
Awh you make me want a dog sooo bad!! My boyfriend was considering buy me a vizla at Christmas but he decided against it as we’re just not 100% settled and may emigrate or move sometime in the near future and it wouldn’t be fair on a dog. He wants to call our first dog Roland …not so sure about that one 😀 How did you choose Sadie’s name?
HAHA love the hand game! My fiancee and I have a game where we try to get our finger in our dogs mouths when they yawn. Gotta be quick!
I love the hand game! We play a game with Charlie when he has a ball in his mouth. Because he doesn’t want to give the ball up, we push his front two feet out from under him and he flops all over the place. Okay, now that I’m typing it out, it’s more mean than it is a game. But I swear he LOVES it! ha!
I play a similar game with my dog Maggie, except that it’s with sitting as close to her face as I can and sticking my tongue out like a lizard. It drives her nuts and she tries so hard to lick my face so that I’ll stop, so the longer I move my face the more she licks! So funny!
What a fun game! This is going to sound really strange but we have a game with one of my cockapoos that he’s loved playing since he was a puppy. I put my hand in his mouth behind his front teeth and he gums my hand. He thinks it is the funnest thing. I saw the comments people made about dog aggression and I think you can’t make blanket statements about dogs. Andy has never once went to bite me or hurt me or shown any kind of aggression towards me. My boyfriend’s parents won’t play tug of war with their dog because they heard it teaches aggression but I play it with mine all the time and they have never ever once exhibited bad behavior from it. I think you have to know your dog and know what it is capable of, and use smart judgment from there.
Sadie is so adorable!!!! 😀 hahaha
Those workouts look great!
Hah I play the hand game with my vizsla mix too! He loves it, but definitely knows how to work the system because any time we actually catch his mouth he cries like he’s being tortured…even though he’s juuussttt fiiinnnne. He knows how to pull at my heart strings. Smart puppy.
We do something similar w/ our big dog, Wyatt – but i’ve noticed that he won’t let us pet his head, instead he wants to gnaw on our hands..which is fine when it’s just us – but when someone comes over and wants to pet his head he won’t let them..and that’s not good.
I don’t think I can make him understand it’s okay to chew on our hands and not other peoples..so I try not to do that with him to much.
I used to play a game with my dog where my hand was literally his toy and I would hide my hand from him and he would go sniffing for it. It was adorable. Like Sadie, he was super gentle and not aggressive, so I knew it was all in fun!
Ha! We play the hand game with our lab all of the time – she is quick, we never win.
Hahahaha, I want to play the hand game! We play a similar one with our dog where we just grab at his paws, but he’s not smart enough to tuck them in. He just gets all crazy and runs around his circles and then barks at us.
that granola looks totally yummy! I love the idea of making my own granola!
My dog just loves to steal our underwear from the bathroom floor every morning when we jump in the shower…….the “game” is us chasing him around the house trying to get them off him. He loves it!! We could just stop leaving the underwear on the floor but he gets a real kick out of it. Dogs are the best!
Sadie’s a thinker! Every now and again my dog wants to play tug with his blankets (he has FOUR because we keep buying them for him…and he thinks mine is his as well…lameo), but now that he’s gotten older (he’ll be 11 in March! Eek!) he only plays for a few minutes at a time before he gets bored and/or tired. He’s not as smart as Sadie, but he is pretty hard to trick!
Don’t you just love the “games” dogs come up with? Our miniature dachshund can make a game out of anything!
Thanks for putting a name to Charlie’s [our new pup] fave game! Given the option of toy vs. hand, hand seems to win out… If only I could be so easily amused 😛
So funny, my dog has the same game! But he takes his winning seriously 🙂 if he was the size of Sadie I think I’d be scared! 🙂
I got a good laugh at work reading about the Dead Hand Game. I will have to step up to challenge her next time I see you guys. I’ll do a similar game with Kona except I try to *attempt* (for all those who think i’m a dog abuser) to smack her on one side of her mouth or chest and watch her snap her head around to try to nip me. While not as daring as the mouth game, I get less injured lol.
Hey there Julie – Love your blog so much!!!! I have been meaning to try out some of your workouts since I started reading and I finally got around to doing this circuit workout tonight. IT WAS AWESOME! Thank you 🙂 I have a feeling your workouts are going to be the #1 motivator to get me in wedding dress shape 😉
I did this treadmill workout today and it was really intense!! Phew. Initially I didn’t realize that some of the intervals would be 2 minutes near the end – that was really tough! Definitely made me work up a sweat – thanks for sharing!!
WOWZERS! I just did these workouts and they were tough!! Thanks for a GREAT workout!!!
Referring to the legs and abs circuit workout, how much recovery time in between activities would you recommend?