Rescue Labrador - Excercise

[BreeVanDerTramp]

After 8 months of looking we have finally been matched with our lovely rescue dog, a 5 year old black lab (pic in profile). So far so good, he is getting on great with boys. DS1 (age 3) was a bit nervous but is coming round now.

Just wondering if anyone knows how much excercise he will need, our previous rescue dogs have been 10 years+ and crossbreeds so a younger pedigree is new to me. I think I have been doing to much with him, 9 mile walk yesterday and he was pooped, wouldn't be doing this everyday but once or twice a week? On a normal day he is getting 3 walks to beach, about a mile a time? He is a bit overweight but not fat.

Thanks

[DooinMeCleanin]

The most important thing is to keep the mnd busy. Labs are very clever. Are you going to be going to training classes?

[anchovies]

Our rescue lab is nearly 2 and runs with my dh on weekday mornings for an hour or so (dh does 6-10 miles, daft dog probably does double that!) and then usually has a short walk in the evening. At the weekends we all walk together for an hour or two and he usually has a swim as well.

What you're doing sounds fine to me, lots of shorter walks is ideal. Is he off his lead yet? Easy to tell when they're off lead, if they walk next to you they're tired if they're still all over the place they're fine! Just important to build it up slowly so he doesn't hurt himself.

Clicker training does the best job of tiring our lab out though, you can teach them all sorts of hilarious tricks and getting the dc's involved is good fun too.