Walking

[Brewster]

My lab is now 3 months and I wanted to know when I should start walking him? Are his legs and hips ready to walk around the block for an hour? Thanks

[Trickster]

[ Are his legs and hips ready to walk around the block for an hour?

Yikes!! absolutely no way. That amount of walking could seriously damage a young puppy.

Ever heard of the '5 minute rule'? the '5 minute rule' is a rule of thumb for exercising designed to protect growing puppies -- 5 minutes of exercise per month of age. So at 3 months old, your pup needs 15 minutes per day.

I made a long post about exercise in the 'Our Best Advice' thread. You might want to check it out.

It is VERY important not to over exercise a youngster. Save your one hour walks until he is a year old.

[Brewster]

Thanks for the reply. I thought that might be the case.

[steveandginger]

Please keep in mind before I post this that I am a new puppy owner myself, and trying to learn all I can.

Having said that, I read somewhere that there is a difference between FORCED exercise (i.e. jogging, with the dog on a leash where he must keep up with you and cannot stop, and thus you are totally dictating the pace and duration of the exercise), versus, say, an off-leash walk around the neighborhood where the dog is constantly starting and stopping, are two different things entirely. I was of the opinion, and it was reinforced by what I read, that the "5 minutes per month of age" rule is for FORCED exercise, not for a start-and-stop, off-leash walk.

For myself, Misty is 12 weeks old; she and I will walk around the neighborhood frequently. Our walks will range anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes all the way up to 1/2 hour to 45 minutes. If she starts to tire (I notice that she is "running low on energy,") we'll stop. If not, we keep going. I leave it up to her, and it seems to work fine. However, in contrast, today on our walk we ran into another persons puppy, and so she and Misty began to play together -- very vigorously, with both of them chasing each other around the yard, jumping, etc. In 10-15 minutes, they both were spent and laid down in the grass to take a rest. This seemed to me to be more the type of exercise that the "5 minutes per month of age" rule applies to. Again, my understanding was that the "damaging the young pup" issue with exercise was with FORCED exercise, where the muscles, joints, bones, whatever are not mature enough in pups to handle forced exercise. Of course, I could have misunderstood, and perhaps Trickster is correct. Anyone else have any info on this?

Steve

[imported_gabbys mom]

You can damage the bones/joints through any kind of exercise at that stage. The bones are very soft.

My vet (who is also an orthopedic specialist and accomplished surgeon) really stressed that at 3 months old, you should be walking for no more than 10 minutes/3 blocks.

[steveandginger]

gabbys mom --

I really appreciate the info. I guess my question would be, should I then STOP her, when she is playing vigorously on her own in the yard, after 10 or 15 minutes or so? I guess if I let my dog outside, and she walks/romps around the yard, chasing blowing leaves, finding sticks, whatever, that I was thinking that this was a similar level of exertion that she would expend on a liesurely walk. And I have never even THOUGHT of stopping her and bringing her inside after 10 minutes of being outside playing on her own.

Thoughts?

Steve

[imported_gabbys mom]

Honestly, someone with more scientific knowledge would be better at this than me.

What we have always done is this: in the am, take the puppy out, walk, roll a ball, etc. After 10-15 minutes, go inside, let them nap/chew/whatever. Then midday, do some training practice (this always tires them out). then, if they are awake in the evening, go outside, do 10-15 minutes of exercise and come back in.

I often found that exposing a puppy to different situations made them more tired...ie, sitting with her at the cafe and letting strangers pet her tired her out even though she wasn't doing anything.

[DFWLab]

I think we had been overenthusiastic in walking our young puppy at 2-3 months. We would go 15-30 minute walks around the neighborhood as well. 1-2 miles. he never showed any signs of even being tired. but i think that is the nature of labs in general. I saw an adult lab blow his leg out at the park on a retrieve, that got up, and dragged itself to retrieve the frisbee(even thought the owner was begging it to stop) and crawl back, and sat there wanting to CONTINUE!!! It's an impressively stoic breed.

My puppy got to not eating much at all, and the vet prescribed some pain meds thinking he was being fussy from some pain, and we cut way back on exercise, and it seemed to help.

I had read SO much about labs being so high energy and needing all this exercise, i just overdid it early on. I hope there was no longterm damage to my puppy.

[steveandginger]

gabbys mom and DFWLab,

Interesting information. I have also heard about the "high energy, need lots of exercise" reputation of labs, so I'm trying to do what's right without overdoing it. I also have assumed that some of our dogs "behavior" issues may be due to LACK of exercise, so I was trying to make SURE to do walks...

Who knows!! :

Like kids, these things need to come with an instruction manual!

Steve

[Trickster]

You can damage the bones/joints through any kind of exercise at that stage. The bones are very soft.

I agree. And yes, I am pretty sure the 'rule' is for forced exercise. But I still think 45 minutes EVEN if off leash is too much for a 12 week old. Never let the puppy be the judge. If the pup is tired out from ___ minutes of walking, it is too much.