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?

@faerietales and @AzureShark ours is the same - she gets out every day for an off the lead energetic sniffy walk at least once - usually twice. In the winter we may take her out for a lead walk or down a lit up park space we can let her off in - but depends on the weather and it's usually more for our benefit than hers.

She also loves a lie in.

We've just been out for an hour and we probably walked 2km.
That was a bit of pavement, track, onto a big meadow. Lots of sniffing and mooching, watching a roe deer in the lower meadow, had a slow walk back. All on a 6ft lead.

So, what's important - time or distance?

(Giant breed, not high energy, 1 year old, heavy double coat)

Depends a bit on the dog though, one of mine is a medium Romanian rescue, he’ll happily do real long walks, but to him out is out, so if like someone’s ill or whatever and he only gets short walks for a while there’s no issue, doesn’t need any extra activities and is quite happy to just chill for a few days with you

The other is a working bred collie, he needs other stuff to do if there’s a run of short walks or he starts finding stuff to do 😂

Neither. I'll vote for quality over quantity any day.
Your dog has had a lovely interesting walk that has stimulated her senses, engaged her brain and exercised her body. That's far better for her than pavement pounding for three hours at 3kph.

Thank you! This is really helpful. Interesting point about the neutering as well, I’d assumed it was just age but maybe this is playing into it too.

If I don’t take my dog out in the evening he wakes me up at 2am needing a poo 🥴

But is that a full walk or just a quick trip outside?

Mine just poos in the garden - presumably because that’s all he’s ever known? He will poo on walks as well if we’re out and he needs to go, but he’s quite happy to use the garden.

Same with ours @faerietales , garden or on a walk. It makes life so much easier.

I walk my 18 month old golden retriever for an hour. But it’s in the woods, so a hell of a lot of sniffing goes on. She can’t be off leash as her recall is good, but not if she sees a squirrel. She’d be off into the undergrowth and it’s an old mining area, so it’s not worth it. She’s on a long line though so she has more freedom. She’s only walking to heel on the 5 min walk up there and back.

Once a week we book a secure dog field for an hour where she’s like Usian Bolt the entire time, never stops running and they have dog agility things, so she climbs and has a blast.

Now she’s 18 months we are going to add in a half hour trip around the park in the eves.

I’d like to walk her more, my previous golden got more but she pulled me over chasing a bird when she was 11 months old, and she hurt my back. I’m still going through investigations (may not have been entirely her fault, they think there is underlying), so I can’t push myself too far.

Some dogs are just funny about it, one of mine doesn’t like to, he’ll only go in the garden if he’s really desperate

I’ve also had dogs that do the opposite - they don’t like to go while on a walk and will try and wait till they get back to the garden

My dog will poo in the garden occasionally but only if he’s desperate, I’ve only got a small garden so not sure of that makes a difference.

Plus I work all day so no option but to walk him in the evening, sometimes it’s a quick ish walk but usually an hour.

I don’t wear a Fitbit or anything so no real idea of distance 🤷‍♀️