What Your Dog Is REALLY Missing On Walks

A lot of people don't give their dogs enough exercise. They don't spend enough time actually letting their dogs exert themselves. And the thing that's really important to remember is that if you are going to exercise your dog, you need to be able to do it in a way that emphasizes your relationship. And this is a big bugaboo for me, because our entire purpose of our McCann Dogs business is we want you to learn how to do something fun with your dog. We want you to do stuff with your dog. And it is heartbreaking and really frustrating when we hear that people just drop their dogs off at doggy daycare or go to a dog leash repark, let their dog off leash, and then just let the dog run around and like completely forget about them as they sit and like scroll their phone. So I recognize people are busy. And some of those things are used because you have a short period of time and you need to exercise your dog. So I do appreciate that. But what people don't get is that that doesn't really do much for your relationship. And what I'm about to show you, just a fun little couple of games that I can do with five, it's going to take me 10, 15 minutes tops. And what it does is it establishes a great relationship between me and my dog. So he's getting great exercise. He's getting good experiences, but he's also learning to listen to me. There goes the school bell. And that's going to go a long way, because if I'm just letting him, you know, run around at the leash repark and I'm not actually doing anything with him, why would he listen to me when we're at home, you know, during the week? So that's why it's important to make sure that you have a few things you can do with your dog. OK, speaking of which, look what I've got for my guide. So when I take my dogs for a walk, I love to bring a tug toy with me. You can use a tug toy of any kind. Obviously, you can use a Frisbee. My dogs are absolutely obsessed with our fuzzy ball tugs. I like them because I can play tug for hours. It feels good on my arm, but I also can play fetch and all kinds of fun things with my dog. So I'm just going to let him kind of boot around here with the toy a little bit. And I'm going to show you a few things that I do to kind of take the edge off. That's not really walking. Now, I will say that if your dog doesn't have a reliable recall and they don't know how to bring a toy back, those are going to be things that you're going to be training your dog to do. I've obviously done a little bit of that training already with him out. Out. Good boy. Get it. So that's something that you need to train your dog to do. But I what I would say that I'm probably not like most people, but here, one of the times, one of the things that I work on with my dogs when they're young, when I'm first teaching them to respond to their name or sit or that type of thing is I teach my puppies from a really young age to have a retreat because I know out that I'm going to use it to exercise them. And that means they're easier to live with and they're easier to deal with. Come on, Fifi. Yeah. See all that good sprinting. Come here, Fifi. Come here, come here, come here. Good boy. Now, one thing that's really nice once you have a dog that has a reliable recall is that I feel pretty comfortable coming here. There's nobody else out here now, which is great for me. But I feel very confident when I take the leash off. I don't really have to worry about him running away. I know he's going to come back when he's called. But if you don't have the same type of trust with your dog, but you still want to give them a bit of freedom, you're going to need one of these. And that's one of our long lines. Now, Five was trained on one of these for probably the first year or so of. Oh, there you are. Where are you? Hi, buddy. The first year or so of his training, I would put this long line on. It's about 21 feet or so, and I would just let him drag it around. And we'd either hold it if I wasn't ready to call him back yet or if I didn't trust him yet, and then I would let him drag it. But this is really, really handy, especially when you're trying to teach your dog recalls or retrieving or things like that until you can have a reliable control off leash. And then, of course, once you can take them off leash, then it's, you know, then it's so much more fun from there because I can actually do all kinds of fun things out here. Let him get good exercise and he's not restricted to that six foot leash or even a 20 foot leash once the training is established. Look at Mr. Guy in the shade. Good boy. Should we do a little bit more? We're not too tired yet. So the other thing I like to do is let Five have a little bit of time just to kind of move around and sniff and get disengaged, because I think it's important for dogs to have some sort of off time where they're a little bit more relaxed. But this is a good opportunity for me, too. I've been talking too much now. I was going to try and do a little recall there. Oh, there we go. Wait for. Yes, good boy. Now, and that is a good point, because if your dog chooses to come over and check in with you without being asked, then, of course, you should probably reward them. What I would like to do is just let him disengage a little bit so I can practice my recall with you guys. So this is really good. Five comfy. Good boy. I have some treats. But this guy loves a kick toy as a reward. Good boy. That's the other good thing when you could take your dog for a walk. Take treats and take a toy, especially if your dog's toy motivated. Now, toys aren't really always the greatest reward for walking your dog, because obviously it's hard for me to reward position if he's tugging like this. But what I can do is use it for attention. I can use it for recalls. I can use it for retrieving out. So get it, get it, get it, get it, get it. So it's interesting about five and most dogs are quite smart like this is he is deliberately trying to find some shade now because we just did a bit of running in the sun. He's hot. So that's another thing you keep in mind when you're taking your dog for a walk. Make sure that you are finding shady areas. I didn't bring any water with me because we're quite close to the house so I can take him back quickly, but maybe bring some water with here with you as well, just to make sure they don't get too hot. We want to be careful that we don't overwork the dogs as well. The other thing that I like to as well, the one thing that I like about walking to a park or walking to an area where you can actually let them run is it warms them up while you walk. This is my agility dog sport brain speaking now, but I can kind of walk him here, run him and then walk him out on the way back. That way, we're not playing a lot of retrieving and things like that and then shoving them in a crate in the car and then going home. It's a great way to get yourself an injury. But it's important that you are making sure you're seeking out some shade. The other thing to keep in mind that when you're taking your dog for a walk is they do need an opportunity. You hear we've talked about this on the channel before, too. You hear a lot of talk about things like sniff walks, because I do think that it's important to make sure that you're walking your dog in different ways. Obviously, going for a leash walk where he is on the leash and he is having to walk at my side, walking with a little bit more attention. All of that is awesome, except dogs also need an opportunity to be dogs, which is why I like coming to a place like this where he can sniff, he can wander around. But I can't do that with a dog that I don't trust off leash. So it's important that I really want to let him be a dog and just hang out and chill and roll around in the cool grass and not have to worry about him taking off and chasing something or getting into mischief. I need to train him well first. That's why it's really important that you don't go through your life skills programs, your walking and your recall training, all of that type of stuff that you have a dog that you can really let be. And then, of course, I can put him on the leash and we can walk back. The walk back is always much more enjoyable than the walk to the park because now they're a little bit more tired. But I think it's important that you have all of those elements when it comes to walking your dog. Just going for that token walk around the block is just not good enough for their exercise, and it's also just not good enough for building good relationship and building good understanding and control between you and the dog. Dogs really need to have more than one outlet. And like I said, controlled leash walking is just not it. Today, we focus on talking a lot about our play portion of the walk, the part where you really tire your dog out. But what happens if you need to work on this part of the walk where your dog actually walks on a loose leash to begin with? We have a ton of fabulous videos on exactly how to work on this skill. So if you want to check that out, click that video right there. On that note, I'm Kayl. This is Five Alive. Happy training.