Puppy had her first walk - it was bliss!

[Mamabear12]

We have been waiting for this moment for a few weeks. We got our beautiful puppy 3 weeks ago, but had to wait for her vaccines to kick in before we could walk her. We had been carrying her along on the school run, as my dd insisted on doing this every morning :) Plus good for her to to look about. Anyway, our walk today was bliss. And yes, I know 5 mins only for each month. The school run is 5 mins walk. We stopped half way through so she could greet the other dogs we know. She was so happy to finally be able to greet other dogs and play around.

At the moment we keep her on the leash, but when is she ready to play about? I am nervous to just let her free because its dog park with other dogs about running free and because she is a tiny pup, worried if another dog chases her etc. I know some of the dogs and their owners and they are fine

We had ours off lead from the beginning. Even though it made me nervous, we wanted to normalise it and get cracking with recall so that staying near us and coming to us regularly became a hard-wired habit rather than having to find the right moment when he was bigger to suddenly offer this exciting, new freedom. It worked really well and even though his bulletproof recall has now gone a little shaky at 9 months (adolescent rebellion!) I’m confident it’ll return and he really doesn’t go that far from us on off-lead walks.

What breed is yours though? Because I think that makes a big difference. Ours is a lab so has the retriever instinct of ‘checking in’ and doesn’t have a particularly strong prey drive. Not sure our methods would have worked so well on something like a greyhound or a husky.

Also probably wise to wait until pup is a bit bigger to do off lead in a dog park, just because of the potential rough and tumble. Maybe start off with larger normal parks/fields/other open areas with a lower concentration of dogs.

Thanks for the advice. Our dog is a mini Australian labradoodle. So she is a mix of:

Labrador Retriever, Irish Water Spaniel, Curly Coat Retriever, American Cocker Spaniel and English Cocker Spaniel.

Thats a good idea regarding doing the off lead in a different area to the dog park. There are some more quieter spaces that we can take her to practice the recall, like a sports area that is empty some of the time and another green area that is a little further, but usually less dogs go there. She is pretty good with the recall. However, my main concern is as you mention is the rough and tumble with other big dogs, as she is a tiny pup still.