Dog guilt

[stonkytonk11]

Does anyone else feel like this - I'm feeling so guilty now that winter has arrived and my pup doesn't get walked as much. She is 2.5 years old and will get an off load (40 mins ish) and two on lead walks on the pavements as I'd normally walk her later in the afternoon in the forest but too dark now. Makes me feel so guilty like she must be bored but with miserable weather and dark afternoons it's not possible to keep up the level of exercise she'd get in say Spring/Summer. Am I being ridiculous?! We do other activities like enrichment games and the kids will do tricks etc but it feels like it must be a long day for her...

Is she a breed that needs to expunge lots of energy? We are fewer walks too time wise but she's often out in the car and has a Lilttle roam, state garden, plays with our cats / family we throw toys and play

Can you walk her earlier? Or could you use a light-up collar?

I used to walk my dogs before work off-lead in the dark, and the collars were brilliant in both senses.

Mine gets the same amount of exercise no matter what time of year, but we deliberately never got him into the routine of going out in the evenings.

He gets an hour every morning and then during the week he also gets 30-60 minutes at lunchtime/early afternoon. At weekends he just gets one walk mid-morning.

He's five and spends his evenings sleeping - if I tried to take him for a walk now he'd probably not even move

Maybe I need to get a light collar and just take her out off lead somewhere late afternoon...the only place really nearby is a national trust place that she goes to every morning but I'd find that creepy on my own in the dark to be honest. She does potter in the garden, meet doggy pals now and again in the park. Going to go get a collar so we have options 🙂

I feel like this sometimes - we did tricks and enrichment in the evening but it sometimes felt a bit repetitive. I then found a good scent work trainer and did a training session with them and that's been great to do in the evenings - it really tires him out more so than enrichment and it means we can mix it up every day what we're doing. I also like that we didn't need to buy loads of stuff for it and am just going to do a 121 session every 4-6 weeks to keep us progressing and can do the rest at home. (We do also do a weekly agility class but obvs can't really practice that at home in the evenings).

I'm still doing evening walks because that's when he shits and he absolutely won't shit in the garden as that's fucking gross as far as his opinion goes 😂 It's pretty safe where I live though and I'm surprised how the tons of dog walkers you get summer evenings drops to 2 or 3 regulars come winter.
I actually like the solitude of the night air and it helps me digest my own evening meal (i don't shit outside don't worry😂)....... Not so much the fighting with a poo bag, wind and my phone torch, but yeah it's not so bad. 😭 i think🤗

I used to take mine to a doggy park of an evening. There were activities and the dogs played together.

As in an indoor dog park.

Indoor dog park sounds amazing! I still do an evening walk as I really enjoy that ritual as does she but it's the pm walk that I am missing, used to go on a 3km forest/trail but now it's just a trot around streets. Scent work sounds good, what kind of things does that involve?

My dog is happy with our evening walks.
Plenty of hedge or bin sniffs as a bedtime story.

I'm doing the same with mine.

Off lead exercise in the morning and at lunch time (that I sometimes switch for a long walk if I'm in the office with him), and a quiet quick evening walk to unwind + mental activities before he crashes on the sofa for the evening (which is bliss, he's only 14 month old so I still have very vivid memories of him being a dick in the evening)

At the weekend, we have a long off lead walk, and if it's a VERY LONG one, we may even skip the park altogether the next day and just have short walks. I always made a point that I needed to be able to NOT exercise him some days (in case of heatwave, injury, this kind of stuff)

I have a light collar but honestly, despite being in London, I really find my local park totally unusable at night, and a bit creepy. It's pitch black there. Maybe I should stop listening to horror podcasts.

Like a PP, I've noticed that the park is getting quite empty now, I wonder where are the dogs that I used to see everyday when the weather was good!

Sign yourselves up for a good, reward based training class one or two evenings a week.

My pup can walk miles now she’s older. An hour agility class has her sleeping for the rest of the day!

You can just do searches for food or a toy around your house if you want to keep it simple or if you go to a trainer they'll get you on a specific scent - for us we're using Kong so to train we have a tiny bit of Kong they gave us and then I use his dinner to reward it and just hide it around the house or sometimes in cardboard boxes. Def worth speaking to a trainer though if you want to do it properly but if you just want to have some fun start off hiding food around.

Light-up collars and head torches are your friends. I work long shifts and sometimes can only walk when it is dark.

I did accidentally find a group of naughty dogs one evening in a local park. It was a group of walkers who only walked their dogs after dark due to lack of recall and over excitement meaning they couldn't be offlead around other dogs. My foster dog at the time was overjoyed. He could normally only find a handful of dogs per week allowed to play with him on walks. This was six dogs all at once all playing and running together.

I'll have to take big dog and see if they're still meeting up. He would also love it.

It's worth having a wander and checking local parks. You might find your own group of naughty dogs.