How strict is the 5 minute per month walking thing?

[tabulahrasa]

Can I judge it by how far I'd get without my monster puppy? Or is time spent saying hello to people and stopping to sniff things included?

I'd like to know when it runs out. Although tbh I never paid a huge amount of attention

As someone who used to do just that I'd suggest that you don't let your puppy stop and sniff or you'll only have to train him out of it later (like me). I think it's walking time not time out of the house.

Oh I'm planning on actually walking properly very soon - but it was only his second walk and everything is vaugely worrying still, gates that bang are clearly the work of Beelzebub until they're thoroughly sniffed, lol.

I did it as time actually spent walking. I tried to get my pup into the habit of having a bit of a sniff about first, then doing some serious walking. We have some smelly alleys to go down near us, then a nice boring street, so we did the sensible walking on the street after he'd got his sniffing urges out the way . When everything is new to them it's natural that they are going to want to watch what's going on and sniff everything etc. To be honest we probably walked him more than the 5 minutes per month, but in a couple of walks per day so not in one big walk IYSWIM

Not strict at all. Just needs a bit of a common sense approach. Their joints need some stress on them after all. I just made sure that any high impact stuff was done on soft sand or grass.

Walking at puppy speed for five minutes would have gotten me 10 yards. It's taken me quite a while to realise that the sniffing thing is as much a part of the walk as the exercise and to realise that it's her walk so I now let her sniff to her hearts content.

I would have had a demented large breed puppy if I'd stuck to the 5 minute rule.

Cheers - I'm still at the over thinking everything stage... He's not anything close to my first dog so you'd think I'd not be as stressed, but he's my first tiny one, lol