Hi everyone My puppy is nearly a year and I am starting to think about his walks one he gets to 12 months. I have been building him up to this point using the 5 mins rule, which means at a year he'll be at an hour but at weekends we would like to go further than that. I know he is still growing at 12 months but how long is it okay to walk him at this point? And how did you build your dogs up to it? Thank you
I think it depends how much of the time he's going to be off the lead, running about and using his body in a way that will help him build up strength rather being on lead, which is repetitive. Cassie was lucky -- she had very little need for on lead exercise while growing up, so I can't advice on how to build up, hopefully someone else will be along.
You want to make sure you're not going to have a "weekend warrior" where the exercise at the weekend is hugely more than during the week, as that is potentially very damaging. Of course you will have the occasional outing that is longer than your average walks, but you don't want to make a habit of having far more activity at the weekend than during the week. But how you build up to greater exercise is as you would expect - incrementally. I've just arrived at my summer home and will be starting to run with the dogs again, but, just like me, they can't go straight into a 10km run after a winter off. We'll start with an easy 2km run and gradually build up the distance and the difficulty, with days off for recovery (so just gentle walks) in between. "How long" is impossible to answer, because it depends on the terrain you'll be walking on, the dog's fitness at this point, how fast you'll be going, on or off lead etc. At a year, I started hiking with my older two, but they already had good fitness from living in the mountains, and we took the walks very slowly at first, with lots of stops for paddling in rivers, swimming, picnicking and general relaxation. Because I like to walk relatively long distances with them, I keep them fit and lean to reduce the impact on their joints. We walk almost exclusively off lead, which means they can move freely and choose their own pace.
