Hi everyone I have a lovely chocolate lab puppy Ava. She's nearly 20 weeks old and people have told me that I should be walking her for 20 minutes a day. Is this right? She can do longer but I don't want to damage her little joints. Thoughts ? Many thanks
Hi @Ava's mum and welcome! The recommendations for walking puppies is open to interpretation, essentially 5mins per month of their life. This is a quote from the kennel club on the subject: "Puppies need much less exercise than fully-grown dogs. If you over-exercise a growing puppy you can overtire it and damage its developing joints, causing early arthritis. A good rule of thumb is a ratio of five minutes exercise per month of age (up to twice a day) until the puppy is fully grown, i.e. 15 minutes (up to twice a day) when three months old, 20 minutes when four months old etc. Once they are fully grown, they can go out for much longer" I would also consider the type of exercise. For example, off lead is good as pups are good at self-regulating as long as they aren't overexcited. Meaning, they will mooch and have a sniff, stop for a rest if needed. This is more difficult on-lead because you are controlling the pace of the walk, not the puppy. Equally, playing with other dogs is very exciting, and difficult to stop when over-aroused. So, all things considered, we need to strike a sensible balance. How I managed this was yes, at 20 weeks old they had a good off lead walk of around 25-30mins usually twice a day, but that was really just a gentle mooch with recall games and learning to ignore other people/dogs. Any dog play was closely supervised, so it wasn't too intense. I was also very careful with stairs, none were allowed to climb stairs until I think around 5 months, and then it was slowly climbing, and not racing around like loons. Certainly no jumping until around a year old.
I agree with what Kate has said, but I'd also underline what she's said that just because your puppy is off lead, it doesn't mean you can go for a route march for 25 minutes. The puppy needs to be able to have the opportunity to sit and do nothing if he chooses, so it's best not to think of it so much as a "walk" but rather "interaction time". So you might be in a park with your puppy playing around you and with you, but you stay relatively still in that time, rather than thinking you have to walk all the way around the boundary. Or, exploring in the woods, but you might only move 500m in that time. Let the puppy choose the pace.
Welcome to you Here is a good article - https://www.thelabradorsite.com/labrador-puppy-exercise-how-much-is-too-much/ .
Thanks for the welcome everyone . I had seen the kennel club guidance but just wanted first hand advice from those have been through it. A good article thanks Boogie. Think I'm doing it right a few longer walks which I'll stop. Ava is just adorable typical puppy a bit nippy bonkers for moments the advice on this forum is a great source of info and reassurance thanks to all.
Hi and welcome from me and my boy Bailey. Right from a week after his second lot of vaccinations we were lucky enough to be able to be in an area to walk Bailey off lead, we let him set his own pace and had quite a few rest breaks - well he was investigating the big wide world. When we walked with my friend and her two dogs after five minutes of running around with them I would head back with my boy (my friends dogs are older), which was no easy task as Bailey thought he could go on and on, when he was small enough I would have to carry a wriggling protesting dog back to the club house, 9 times out of 10 he would fall asleep while I was walking back with him! These days he is out with my OH most of the day, although there are still plenty of rest breaks in between chasing rabbits, birds and squirrels that is!
