What kind of exercise do your dogs get?

[addictinganimal]

Heya, folks!

I find it a shame that not many people in my neighborhood, as well as friends', walk their dogs or give them any exercise at all. There are a couple of Australian Shepherds down the street that are stuck in their backyards all day, and a Border Collie I only see tied to a stake in front of his house. :msnshock: These are high-maintenance dogs requiring a ton of both physical as well as mental stimulation. Even a slowpoke Basset Hound needs exercise! Regardless of breed, dogs need OUT.

Tank comes with me nearly everywhere I go. He's with me at school, home, outside, and at any events I can take him to. :msngrin: Every afternoon, at the very least, I take him for a good walk. Alone, it's an hour plus, but for the last two weeks I've been volunteering to take the neighbors' underexercised, overweight dogs as well, which shortens it to half an hour. (They can't go for too long.)

We play Fetch, Tug-of-War, Hide-and-Seek, wrestling, etc. at night, and have training lessons all throughout the day, doing a longer session in the afternoons. If the weather is too bad to go out, or if he's feeling especially hyper, we'll do our Freestyle jumps in a non-training way. [No treats, just pure energy-spending "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" time. ]

We also do 10 minutes of Agility before and after class at school each day. Not much, but hey, it gets some energy out until we can do more. :msnohyes: On Sundays we go to the dog park for a few hours. We're always looking for more sports and activities to do, so it's not always the same old routine.

What about you guys? Maybe we'll get some ideas from your posts. :msnwink:

 

[Jean Cote]

That's awesome!

I usually bring my dog every day for a training session at the park by my house. I train them to do tricks and stuff, and usually end with some retrieves. My border collie always comes home extremely tired, and happy!

But it's true, since it's been getting colder and wetter, I haven't been getting out as much. Everything is muddy right now so I'd rather play tug inside until the snow falls down, and then we can start going out for walks. Nothing beats the air of a winter night, I love it.

In the summer, my dogs run around the pool non-stop, I guess that could be considered exercise. LOL

 

[addictinganimal]

Ahh, thanks for the reminder! I edited in that we go to the dog park on Sundays. :dogsmile:

That's cool, Jean! Do your dogs swim? Tank hates water. :msngiggle:

 

[CollieMan]

Until it got dark early, she was walking three times a day. Now that the daylight hours are fewer, she gets a 1.5 hour walk in the morning, and a one hour walk in the evening. She then gets up to six training sessions per day to tax her mentally, as well as physically.

I am more concerned about my dog getting mental exercise than I am physical. The thought of a bored Border Collie in the house fills me with dread!

 

[l_l_a]

We usually go out twice a day, once in the morning and then again in the evening or late at night. I like to pick two of the following activities per day: playing games in various parks, free-running and exploring in parks or fields or wooded areas, going for a "civilized" walk on leash through the streets, going to the pet store to do some shopping, hiking (limited to weekends), working out with me (trail running, or sprints in the soccer field), playing with other dogs in dog parks. We randomly mix some training in with all of these activities. The games we play outside involve running, chasing, retrieving, tugging, finding things.

We especially relish being outside in wet and cold weather because it usually means no one else is out so we can have the whole park or trail to ourselves to run around like two nutcases, and I don't have to be constantly on my toes watching for other people or dogs or bikes or skateboards (otherwise I always have to be ultra alert to these potential distractions so I can give him instructions to ignore them or come back to me, in order to maintain the public peace).

 

[l_l_a]

I agree with you, Addictinganimal, that it's such a shame that those dogs you mention hardly get any activity. It's even worse when they are high-maintenance dogs, like you said. herding and working breeds are definitely high-maintenence.

I wish I could take my dog everywhere with me like you take Tank, but unfortunately public places are less accepting of big dogs, so the only public places we can go to other than parks or trails, are pet stores. I take him to outdoor pedestrian malls too, but recently we've been getting "kicked out" even though I have never seen any sign saying no dogs allowed, just some security guard or police officer coming up to tell us that. I have also taken my dog to coffee shops to sit outside, but a lot of them have also "kicked us out" saying no dogs allowed, period

 

[kim80]

i try to take my boy out for an hour walk everyday, but with having 2 kids under the age of 3 and a partner that works 11 hour shifts, if i cant get out thru the day i take him to the oval late evening to have a good game of ball, now it is coming into the warmer weather i would really like to get out more with him, as he is a diabetic it makes it hard, but the good thing is that when i can not get out at all i just put him on my treadmill and he loves it. but it will never replace a good walk outside...

 

[storm22]

when i have time we have 2 walks a day roughly bout an hour or two depending on which way we go, 1 in the morning and when i get home from work i do abit of mental work (when he calms down he still gets all huckle butt when i get home) and go for another walk or run.
during the weekends though we go for bike rides and usually a horse ride to which he loves running with us at a canter,and sometimes i can take him to work so hes next to me all day walking next to the horses there (he really just comes to see all the kids not to be with me im sure of it)

 

[tx_cowgirl]

I take my dogs for a walk/jog at least one hour a day. I'm always looking for new things to train them, and we train about three-four days a week. I give them a couple days off from the training and fill it in with just fun time. Fetching, agility even though we don't compete, anything. I think that this can be beneficial to some dogs, because many of them can feel a little overloaded by the constant day-to-day training. During stock show season they get more exercise than usual, because they run my lambs through a series of 2+ foot jumps. This is both mental and physical stimulation for them, and they love it. They hang out with some of my friends' dogs sometimes, and they follow me around town a lot. I try to make sure my dogs get plenty of daily exercise. For those of you who are familiar with dog psychologist Cesar Millan, he states that dogs require at the very least 45 minutes of exercise a day. He takes his 30+ dogs on a 3-hour jog/walk every day, sometimes longer. They really like it, and they are all physically and mentally fit.

 

[marieke]

I take Guus for a short walk early in the morning. My boyfriend than takes him with him to work (at his own company). They have this huge terrain where he can walk around freely. There's grass, little hills and water so lots for him to examine. In the evening I take him for a 30 minute walk which will be 60 as soon as he's a bit older. When we come home he takes a nap, after that I train with him.
In weekends I take him on 4-5 30 minutes walks every day, plus we have puppy training on saturdays which will be free style lessons in a few weeks. We're nearly finished with puppy training.

 

[lurchergirl]

Our dogs get one hour a day, 40 minutes of that is off lead in the country park (the rest is road walking to and from the park). Our pyrenees doesn't go off lead but is on a long flexi lead in the park.

They all also go to training class one evening a week (individually). In the summer, they often go to obedience competitions at week-ends (except for Troy that is).

Vera

 

[k9player]

We try to take our dogs out every day, but there is usually one day a week we don't manage. Several nights a week we do traing of one sort or another, agility, flyball or tricks. We also spend a lot of time at dog parks, and other parks. All of the dogs love frisbee, recently we have spent a lot of time at a football oval with a shallow 18 metre wide creek. The dogs love to swim and catch/fetch frisbees. When we don't manage to get out we try to spend some time trick training or doing a little agility in the backyard.

Exercise is very important for the mental and physical health of dogs... especially Border Collies (we have three). It was really dificult a couple of months ago when Delta injured herself, she neede to be on crate rest for six weeks, then a week just walking, then running, and only know is se allowed to start jumping again.