Stop gradually — a fit dog cannot retire overnight
A dog who has worked hard all season is an athlete at peak fitness, full of conditioned muscle, strong habits, and an expectation that the day means work. Stopping abruptly produces the classic off-season problems in the first fortnight: barking and fence-running in the kennel, chewed bedding, weight piling on a still-enormous appetite, and a dog who invents jobs — herding the children, policing the postman — because her drives have nowhere legal to go. Taper instead: shorten working-style exercise over two to three weeks, drop intensity before duration, and let her body and brain land at maintenance level rather than falling off a cliff.
The goal is a dog who ends the off-season sound, lean, and sane enough to step back up when pre-season conditioning begins, not a dog who must be rebuilt from soft and frustrated.
Keep the kennel day shaped like a working day
Kennel routine is her clock, so keep its bones: out for a toilet break and leg-stretch at the usual first hour, the same feeding order and times, the same midday check, the same evening settle. Working dogs are deeply comforted by kennel rhythm, and changing everything at once — new times, new neighbours, new bedding arrangements — adds stress to a period that already asks her to adjust. Clean, dry bedding matters more in the off-season, because she is lying in it for far more hours; check and shake out bedding daily and wash it on a rhythm, since damp bedding against a resting dog's coat and joints undoes the point of rest.
Use kennel time for the care the season crowds out: thorough grooming sessions, nail and foot care, a proper hands-on check for the lumps, strains, and worn pads a working coat can hide, and a vet visit early in the break for anything you flagged during the season.
Exercise that maintains without rehearsing the job
Vary off-season exercise so fitness continues but job-specific pressure lifts: free running in safe fields, swimming where it is clean and permitted, steady lead work on slopes, and play she chooses rather than tasks she must perform. Boredom, not tired muscles, is the off-season enemy of most working breeds.
Watch how she spends her energy. A dog who settles after her exercise and sleeps deeply is balanced; a dog who paces, woofs at nothing, or dismantles her kennel is under-occupied, however many miles she covered, and needs mental work or company added rather than raw distance.
Food, weight, and the repair work of rest
Step her food down as the work steps down, in stages matched to the taper, and then watch her ribs rather than the scoop: you should feel ribs easily under a thin fat cover, and any drift upward is easier to correct in week three than month three. Weigh her every couple of weeks through the break if you can — kennel scales or a vet's — because a working dog carrying extra pounds into pre-season conditioning is a dog at risk of injury.
Then defend her rest. Deep, undisturbed sleep is when a season's micro-strains repair, and kennel dogs in busy yards often rest badly through the day. Give her a genuinely quiet block — ideally the hours she would have been out working replaced partly by settled kennel time with the yard calm around her — and resist filling every gap with activity because she seems at a loose end. Joint-stiff older workers especially need the off-season paced: warmth, soft bedding, gentle daily movement rather than weekend heroics, and a vet conversation about supporting ageing joints before the next season is contemplated. Owners can lay the whole tapered plan out in KinsLe, where Care Teams schedule the reduced exercise, kennel checks, and grooming duties across the off-season so her balance holds week after week.