As I mentioned, we’ve been doing a lot of walking for this year’s K9 Kamp. Tavish and I have been supplementing these walks with some fetch and games of tug (with an occasional assist from Bella).
Truth. (via sommeecards.com)
There are a lot of benefits to walking the dog, but I’ve come to realize that whether these walks are actually a good workout depends on which dog I’m walking.
Tavish is a speed walker. He’ll stop to sniff something occasionally, but he prefers to walk with all deliberate speed. Bella, on the other hand, prefers a leisurely stroll.
When the two of them are together, things proceed fine for the first few minutes.
Then, Bella starts to slow down, both to sniff things and because she gets tired more easily. She also tends to walk in a zigzag pattern rather than a straight line. If she ends up in front of Tavish, he acts like an impatient driver in traffic, trying to get around the slow-moving vehicle that’s inexplicably hanging out in the fast lane.
via giphy.com
Needless to say, walks with Tavish are much more of a workout than ones involving the Bellaface.
So, tell me – what’s your dog’s walking style?
Honey has Tavish energy. She goes storming ahead unless she’s off leash. Then she steps every 10-15 feet to make sure I’m still following.
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Rita’s pretty good at cruising along at a good pace. The beagle in her often wants to stop and sniff and sometimes I indulge her (esp’y if I need a rest at the top of a hill!) and sometimes I don’t.
Our beagle was a major dawdler! Walking her was definitely not exercise. She was so stubborn – if I tried to pull her along so she couldn’t sniff or even tried to go a direction she didn’t want to, she’d just lay down in the middle of the street and become and immovable boulder!
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I’ve found that the very traite that makes our beagle want to sniff EACH blade of grass, is also the traite that makes it easy to find her when, on the rare occassion, she gets loose! She can be gone 10 minutes & we find her 2 houses away, sniffing bushes! BOL!!! I LOVE that!!
Same here… Bella managed to slip past us a few times in her younger days, but then she’d always stop to sniff something and we could tackle her.
Ha, too funny! I think walking two dogs is completely different than walking one dog. I think mine like to compete together to see who can pull me the furthest – and Penny usually ends up wining!
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Slow and sniffing when on leash. It drives me nuts! I’ve taken to going on walks w/o them when I truly need to burn off energy. Off leash they are fine because I just keep going and they then run to catch up. But off leash isn’t an option much of the time….
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My sister and I trade off with speed walking. I am usually out front and off road but when I hang back then Katie takes the lead. We always need to make sure that mom is on the move.
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I think our four dogs all have different walking styles. I only walk two at a time, and usually the two beagles, who are like Tavish and Bella. Cricket is full speed ahead, and Kobi pokes along smelling everything (he also starts out good, but then slows down). Our Golden Sheba walks the zigzag pattern. The other Golden, Moses, is pretty focused and most similar to Cricket. Most of the time I walk Kobi by himself, because he is so much slower than the rest of them (he’s the oldest so it’s understandable)!
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When they are both on leash it is a competition to see who will lead the charge. And that generally means I am getting tugged along or I’m working on building my biceps.
Jodi recently posted..Go Check
Oh my. I walked all three dogs this weekend and man! Walking styles are an issue.
First, Lu needs to be first. If for some reason another dog, usually Fe, gets ahead of him, he nearly dislocates my should to get back in the lead. I swear you can hear him saying, “If you ain’t first, yer last!”
Felix is like Bella, zig zagging back and forth smelling everything. EVERYTHING. Kolchak is the only one with even a smattering of manners and I suspect that’s because A: I keep him on the umbilical leash and B: because if he stays by my side, his face is only a few inches from the leash bag, where the treats are. One day he’s going to snatch it and make a run for it – i just hope he’s not wrapped around my waist at the time ;0)
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Haha… walking more than one is really a challenge!
Mom says we are great on a leash. We hardly ever get to go off leash. Good luck!!
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Chester and Gretel are trained pretty well to keep up a decent pace. However, some of the Dachshund that I walk are more of the stop-and-sniff-everything crowd. I have had to get used to that and adjust my walking style (because I tried to adjust theirs first but that only went so far. Ha, ha.)
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