Hi All another little question, I know there is no 'right answer' but I see lots of guides on time of planned exercise.... With Rolo he likes to walk slowly so I don't really like going off the time guide as we probably wouldn't get halfway down the street if I did. Any one got any guides on distance walked etc. Thanks
There aren't really any good guides, just opinions. I found this recently (see link below), and have followed it with my puppy - it's for bull terriers, but looking at it I thought it was about what I think is right, so I went with it as a guide. I particularly like it because it covers things that I think are very important, more important than how far a dog walks - like no jumping for frisbees instead just roll balls, and holding tug toys low and so on: https://www.puppyculture.com/exercise-chart.html
Excellent exercise chart! I've always taken Libby on comparatively massive romps though and she's fine (so far!). She loves the sniffing and roaming and eating horse poo. Difficult to reduce it now. Is it damaging? (By massive I mean 2-3 miles not a marathon)
No-one knows for sure. If anyone knew exactly what was ok, or wasn't ok, they'd have made a fortune by now. For everyone who can say my puppy did X from 8 weeks and was fine, there is someone else with a dog with Elbow or Hip Dysplasia beating themselves up because they stopped carrying the puppy up the house front steps when it was 3 months.
We very rarely walk Bailey on pavements - most of his walks have always been on grass. We are fortunate that both the OH and I work at a rugby club, so Bailey has been able to grow up with a very large grass (and mud) area (about 12.5 acres) to roam about on. When he was tiny and we were first walking we just walked (or waddled in his case) around a small area, building up as he was ready. He now does the perimeter of the ground, which is about half of a mile, with ease, but now he is off lead for most of the time and investigating all the hedges and ditches, in and out of the trees and happily chasing rabbits, squirrels and birds. When we are there all day, he is out with the OH round the pitches (collecting cones) and "helping" with collecting rubbish and sticks off of the pitches. When he's had enough into the clubhouse for a rest. Occasionally we walk him to a local park on my days off, which is a five minute walk from home, but as it is a park in the middle of town surrounded by busy roads and a popular dog walking area, we don't let him off lead there, although we use either an extending lead or a long line. We all prefer to be at the club!
