I read an article in the Washington Post the other day about walking your dog. The gist of the article was that failing to take your dog on walks can be detrimental to your dog’s physical and emotional well being.
I agree – and I suspect the majority of dog owners don’t walk their dogs regularly.
I’m not judging anyone. Even I, a dedicated dog owner who strongly believes in the benefits of dog walking, who loves going for walks with my dogs, who lives in a beautiful area for walking, who is healthy and has healthy dogs . . . even I often fail to walk my dogs.
I was a lot better about walking my dogs regularly when 8-year-old Woody was young and needed daily exercise in order to behave well at home. When he was a youngster, he needed double-digit miles per week of off-leash running if I didn’t want the house to be chewed apart. Today, though, he’s perfectly behaved whether we get out for walks or not.
Two-year-old Boone has been lower-maintenance. He would love more walks than he gets, but he doesn’t fall apart behaviorally if he doesn’t get them.
I do have the advantage of living on two completely fenced acres, and my dogs can run and play outside any time they want. They do play daily chase games and do a few laps of the property every day – but the overall mileage of those activities isn’t anything like a walk. And the stimulation they get from exploring our property isn’t nearly as enriching as going someplace else and sniffing new places and seeing new things.
Is it the fact that I live in a rural area? I feel like it’s far more common for people who live in urban and suburban areas to walk their dogs daily than for us rural dwellers?
Does the number of dogs that a person owns affect how often they get walked? I wonder if owning more than one dog decreases or increases the number of walks the dogs receive.
What about you guys? How often do you walk your dogs, and what factors affect your dog-walking habits?
