What distance are you all walking your dogs

[Crispsanddips25]

If I google, it just comes up with the standard one hour per day exercise. What distance per day are you all doing with your medium sized dogs?

I’m with you @AzureShark - as someone who works with dogs I don’t know a single owner who walks their dogs as much as people seem to do on here, and we’re talking a real mixture of ages, breeds and lifestyles.

Most of the higher energy breeds get about 1.5 hours a day split across a couple of weeks, the others get an hour - either as one main walk or a couple of shorter walks. One’s without a garden will get a couple of toilet breaks thrown in as well.

My own working breed (beagle) gets about an hour a day - he can happily go for more but it doesn’t change his behaviour in any way. He can also happily skip a day without it changing his behaviour as well.

My in-laws think we short change our dogs as we don’t do a regimented hour twice a day at the same time in the same place every day of the year 🤣 No variety. No training. Just park. Twice a day. Same people. Same dogs. I’d rather cut off my own head!

Haha 2 to 4 hours a day??

I have a Westie. (Enough said really 🤣 )

He is 14 next month and will sometimes deign to go out for a walk. Sometimes he will walk to the end of our front path, sit, then head home.

He will not leave the house if it is:
wet
windy
hot
cold
snowing
misty

If we do get out, he will go half as far as he wants and stand with legs akimbo, anchored to the spot, until I go back past him and head for home.

We manage 40min (just over half a mile... yep a whole one mile an hour) a few times a week. He's healthy, correct weight for breed and size, he's simply happiest pootling round his garden.

As a trainer the most balanced dogs I know have an outlet for their breed traits. That isn’t always ‘walks’. It can be mental stimulation, games, company etc. That said you do need to keep them fit for whatever you want to do with them and they do need some exercise but that doesn’t require being out half the day (unless you enjoy it).

Dogs generally thrive on doing.

I think you've hit the nail on the head, @faerietales , this is part of the problem.

It's the comparisons, all the claims of "three hours of free running, whatever the weather" that makes the rest of us feel inadequate and guilty, and that we are letting our dog down by doing less.

@SpanielsGalore Usually it's deer but this was clearly a cat intent on the local vole population, sitting in the middle of the wheat! I love hares – we often flush them by mistake as they like to lie about in the open, the weirdos.

For walking, (not active play or messing around in the garden) I average an hour a day and 3-4 hours at the weekend. According to her tracker, that equates to 2 to 8 miles for the short walks and anything up to 16-20 miles for the weekend ones. But she's hyper and runs everywhere off lead. As soon as she starts walking by my side I know it's time to turn back. When she runs along side my bike she just keeps going and we only stop when I get worried about her paws getting ragged.

Then again she'll also quite happily spend a day with very little activity if needed. As long as she's happy (and that's measured by her not playing up) I keep an eye on her weight/shape and adjust her diet slightly leaving her to adjust her exercise as and when suits her.

My Romanian rescue (Labrador sized, 4 years old, 23kgs) and new rescue Boston x Frenchie (small, 11kgs, 9 years old) have a good 1-2 hour walk in the morning (bigger dog largely off lead, titch on longline) and a further 45 minute evening walk. They seem perfectly happy with this, settling down afterwards and snoozing.
Both would walk further but I’m cautious when it’s warm. Bigger dog has dog walker twice a week, spent off lead doing zoomies from what I hear and see. They have access to the garden all day as well.

Echo this. 15 month old lab.

As others say it depends on breed/age. My two late Bassets generally got an hour a day, but it’s mostly sniffs with them, or checking their wee-mails as my husband called it so it wasn’t a fast walk. However if as a family we were doing a longer walk, they’d happily waddle along quite a distance when young, even if it was slow as they sniffed every blade of grass. But they were scent hounds so it was to be expected.

When I looked after a friend’s flat coat retriever for a weekend it was a bit of a shock. He wanted to go for hours/miles and was then ready to go again when we got home. I was exhausted!

I think I used to be that person. We walked religiously for an hour every morning and evening whatever the weather, because I had bought into the philosophy that that's what a dog needed.
I am older and wiser now. 😁
We walk when and where and for as little or as long as we feel like. If the weather is too bad, we don't go out at all. Animals in the wild would be sheltering in a hedge somewhere, not marching round the park for two hours.
If they miss a day for whatever reason, so what? They have a garden to run around in and each other to play with. When I only had one dog, she'd bring me a toy to play tug or we'd do agility or retrieves in the garden.
I believe my dogs are happy, healthy and well cared for. If someone wants to judge me because we haven't been for a walk yet today, then so be it. (Two are sleeping draped across my lap and the third is snoring by my side, so I don't think they are bothered. )

And you know what they say. All you get by walking a dog for 6 miles a day, is a dog that wants to walk 7 miles.

You are very wise @SpanielsGalore , this makes a lot of sense.
Thank you 🙂

I always remember a vet saying to me that a dog doesn’t know how much it walks so if you walk them 15 mins or 3 hours at a time they wouldn’t know the difference. It’s about taking them out and yes I agree letting them go on sniffing walks. I have a large breed and try to vary the routes (usually off lead rurally where we live) to get the different smells.

That was probably mainly me. Apologies, I didn’t mean to offend. I mentioned breed-specific enrichment in an earlier comment. I have a working line lab. He’s been bred to be focussed on his handler and dependent on them for instructions - it’s what makes labs easily to train. But it means that on walks, while he’s happy to sniff and run around independently for short periods, he always checks in/ comes back to me and wants to interact. So I do a lot of interacting with my dog, to the bemusement of owners with more independent breeds.

I remember saying that about my first two spaniels. They would be a little vocal in the car, as they were excited to go on a walk. If we were going on a long journey, it could get annoying. Soon found out that giving them a 5 minute run round the field first meant they'd settle. They thought they'd had their walk, so were happy to snooze on the journey.

2 year old 20kg rescue whipador. As a minimum she gets 15 mins round the block morning and evening plus 1-1.5hours including the park in the afternoon.

I'm feeling inferior. I have 2 dogs. A 10yr old cockapoo and a 6yr old poochon.

I walk them in the afternoon after I've finished work. They get between 30mins to 45 mins walk. Both lead work and off lead romping.

They generally don't go out on weekends because its too peopley and they are arseholes ... so we go to my parents house as they have a paddock.

@WutheringTights no offence taken, don’t worry! I just think it’s very easy to generalise based on the needs of your dog, that’s all.

I often think that those people who insist their dogs need 3 hours a day are just people who have trained their dogs to expect 3 hours a day 🙈

We deliberately never got into a routine with our dog - some days he’s out for two hours, some days it’s thirty minutes. Some days he gets two walks, some days he misses a walk. Sometimes his walk is at 7am, other days it’s not until after lunch.

He seems perfectly happy - has never been destructive and never pesters to go out.

Almost 12 year old Staffy, she has a 15/20 min very slow still warming up for the day walk in the morning, upto an hour, weather dependent, in the afternoon and DP takes her to a golf course in the evening in the car and she manages about half an hour trying to run about with the other dogs!

we have to walk her away from the garden as she she will not poo near the house, she hates most weather conditions that are not dry and sunny.

It's always been like that with ours, @faerietales , no set routine; it varies depending on weather/season, work, health (ours and theirs) etc. We're not great at rigid routines anyway. It's always worked for us, never had any boredom issues or excessive barking. They've always been content with a long walk some days but not others.

You are right, a lot of it is probably conditioning. It just makes life so much easier if the dog is not expectant and is content to go with the flow.

I often think that those people who insist their dogs need 3 hours a day are just people who have trained their dogs to expect 3 hours a day

This is it exactly. People make a total rod for their own back, unnecessarily. And they think because a dog is still active and running after an hour, they need more when that's not the case.

I know that our spaniel can walk for 15 miles a day, a steepish hike of about 8 hours over hills - because she's done it, a few times. She doesn't break a sweat and could easily keep going even further because she is as fit as a fiddle. It doesn't mean she needs it though!

Absolutely @CoubousAndTourmalet - we decided from day one we didn’t want a dog who needed an evening walk everyday due to our working patterns - he’s probably been out at night less than 20 times in his 7 years - and hasn’t exploded yet, despite MN’s insistence that dogs must go out every evening 😉

I have a very energetic 1 year old cockapoo and we do an hour on an average day but that will include her running in circles for ages, launching into bushes, wheat in the field, the sea, sniffing, begging friends with other dogs etc. So distance i don't really take in to account. At the beach for example I don't need to walk very far at all as she just runs in huge loops and tires herself out

Absolutely @AzureShark - ours can happily go all day (and has on holiday or on long hikes) but it makes no difference to his energy levels or his overall happiness - he’s just as content with an hour on the beach or a slow, sniffy walk round the nature reserve.