Can dogs be overworked

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Peter7917

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How much exercise is too much exercise? I've started taking three of my dogs out with the bike. Two lurchers and a whippet. All between 2-4 years old and all fit.

We have an hour normal walk so the elderly dogs get their walk but afterwards I've started taking these youngsters out with the bike for 1-2 hours. They are having to trot/canter(is that right for dogs?! Haha) pretty much the whole way. We stop once in the middle for 20 minutes or so. In the break they chill for ten minutes before playing like they normally would. They sleep the rest of the day when we get home. Is this too much exercise?
 
Considering that your dogs, at their oldest are only 4 years, that's hardly elderly. I have a 10 yo collie dog and he gives me a full day of work. Breaks in work or exercise are taken, obviously. Few dogs will put in effort for sustained periods in excess of a few minutes, but just as football players will 'work' for an hour and a half, so they rest between the needed bursts of energy and the same applies to dogs.

if you have coursing dogs, I'd be most surprised if considering their fitness levels, you could outstrip them on a bicycle, flat out possibly, but over a 4 hour ride-run, I'd bet that they'd have the better of you! :)

Alec.
 
Sorry I explained poorly, I've got an elderly collie etc also. The 2-4yos are the ones that bike. Just needed reassurance that I'm not damaging them!!
 
I wouldn't do any longer than 15-20 minutes without a quick rest stop but mine is a larger framed breed doing high impact sport.
I warm him up in a walk, do intervals of fast trotting, I keep him in a trot as it's most economical for his breed and I do give him a rub before and after and try and keep him on the soft verge as much as possible.
I do mix this up with other exercise and he has been heavy work like I say.
With your types of dog I am sure they are well able for it and I'd rather see dogs paggered and happy than overweight and understimulated. I wouldn't do it with a St Bernard for example.
 
Build up the fitness levels gradually, and the recovery rate following an energy-burst will tell you all, and then when you have what is clear muscle-definition, then you will have fit dogs. Pad condition, and that depends upon the surface, is also important, is also a fitness indication.

I'd expect 'fit' dogs to run at a mid pace for them and beside a bicycle for 3-4 hours, breed dependent, and when 'fit'. Human fitness and that of animals are very similar in that it's to do with energy expenditure.

Alec.
 
Thanks that's interesting.

I would class them as fit however this is I guess different exercise to what they normally get.

As an indication of fitness though, we can be cycling say 45 minutes and if I slow up too much they will lose focus on the bikes and dart into the woods or they will start to play with each other while following, pratting about etc. To me this should in theory mean that they aren't exhausted and are more than capable of carrying on.
 
I'd suggest Peter, that your dogs are fit! At least, they're perhaps fitter than you, if they lose interest and don't ask for a break!

I once watched a programme about wild dogs in Africa, and over a 24 hour period (though probably much less), a 16 week old pup followed the pack for 40 miles.

Alec.
 
I don't think the aim should ever be exhaustion, and don't forget a dog's drive can carry it through tiredness or pain.
With some dogs you won't know if lasting damage has been done until it's too late because 'they seemed fine/they wanted to carry on' - same as horses who try to keep running on a smashed cannon bone as they're so jacked up.
I'm not saying this is the case with your dogs at all, but some dogs, usually the dafties and people pleasers of this world, could of course be overworked.
 
When I was rehabbing from my accident I walked, a LOT! A minimum of 50miles a week fell walking. To get to the open flat land we had to go a mile up a ridiculously steep hill first. I did a couple of hours 4 days a week, 4 or 5 hours 2 days a week. I walked, the dogs ran! This was with a middle aged, 5ish whippety lurcher, and a 2yr old working bred whippet. I'd come home limping and shuffling, they would still be galloping and playing!

They were incredibly fit. The youngest went lure racing at the time and was unbeatable, partly because hes phenomenally fast, but partly because he was so fit.

My OH runs with them now. 5k, steady jog on a lead and they come home tired. They find the slow sustained jogging much, much harder than hours of off lead running
 
As exhaustion is met, so the occasions reduce. Exhaustion is good for animal and man, until the point of super-fit is reached, and then there are risks.

Very few 'sport' dogs ever reach a fitness stage of those which 'work'. The simple hours being put in being the reason.

Alec.
 
OP, how much is too much is for you to judge.

I have experience of two dogs 'worked to death'.

One was a working pointer hired to a shooting estate. I was called in as an expert witness after the dog was found dead in the kennel. The gamekeeper said the dog had jumped out of the kennel once, so he had tethered it and it had jumped the fencce again and hung itself. The vet report stated there was no sign of trauma, i.e. bruising, so it could not have hung itself. We usually run a team of dogs when grouse shoting and run them in relays. The estate had decided to economise and just hire one dog. Working ponters and setters will literally work themselves to death if allowed, just as a Thoroughbred horse will die before it gives up (e.g. Dick Turpin and Bess. Or Little Blackie in 'True Grit'). My diagnosis, confirmed by others, was that the dog had been worked to death.

The second fatality was a lurcher run on mountain hares for the first time. It coursed a hare which went to ground (as they can do). In searching for the hare, another fresh one got up and the dog coursed that one. That happened several times. Hot and out of breath, the dog eventually gave up and came back to it's owner. About 30 minutes later, a stream of excrement came out of it's anus, like water out of a hose pipe. The vet was called but he said the dog had a collapsed liver and there was no point in bringing it in as it would be dead within 10 minutes. He was right.
 
A couple of our spaniels come out hacking with us, no problems, and we don't hang about.

Have taken them out with the bike as well, as long as they are fit for purpose - which they obviously are - then I think its great :)
 
I think so long as they've been brought to that amount of exercise gradually (as they seem to have been) then I can't see the problem. Dogs, depending on the breed, are long distance runners. Wolves and African hunted dogs, will chase down prey at speed over miles and miles to the point of the preys exhaustion.

I guess there are breeds that shouldn't do this, eg. Pug or Great Dane or other such things.

I plan on doing long distance walking and some harness things with my Tamaskan girl, who descends from Husky/Malamute/Utonagan/GSD. Because she'll be a large breed, I'll wait until she's properly grown up and fit before I start any of this.

I think so long as good water is provided and adequate rest, they'll be fine :)
Dogs have and still do work a lot harder than a few hours following a bike!
 
Have ran 20miles with mine and have many friends who regularly do marathons plus further with many breeds.

I bikejor (dog pulling bike) up to 10km a time with a small break in middle.

But also take them out for a few hours a time loose.

Just consider temperature, humidity , hydration, if we are out for longer than 5 hours I find a small snack helps (but mine is very acidy when hungry). I normal just give boiled egg or chicken not a dog biscuit.

BUT

just remember once at that fitness they need the exercise.
 
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Toffee44 said:
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Just consider temperature, humidity , hydration, if we are out for longer than 5 hours I find a small snack helps (but mine is very acidy when hungry). I normal just give boiled egg or chicken not a dog biscuit.

BUT

just remember once at that fitness they need the exercise.
Click to expand...

Absolutely right and well said. I've seen and had dogs which have gone off their legs (collapsed) with heat exhaustion, and the sooner that fluids are introduced, so the quicker the recovery. One particular occasion and with a collie when water wasn't available for a couple of hours, it took him 3 days to properly recover, and he had a week of no work at all.

In some ways, it seems that the fitter the dog so the greater the risk.

Alec.
 
Food is a good suggestion. Our labs get fed at lunchtime on a shooting day - half a tin of chappie each - and their energy levels remain constant all afternoon. A lot of people recommend kronch I think it is called? A high energy bar for dogs.
 
I was going to ask if anyone used that.
I have got some to try with Mrs Spaniel for flyball to keep her going throughout the day, but wondered if anyone had had any good results with it?
 
I know a couple of people who use it. Can't remember if it was here or not but someone described it as Kendal mint cake for dogs.

I usually just crack an egg or offer a foil tray of dog food on comp days or if we're up a mountain but he brings a lot of energy naturally. The Kronch stuff would probably send him to the moon.
 
I suspect that the debilitating effect upon dogs of work, and from what we're doing with them would depend on the degree of effort involved and concentration too. Dry Rot's pointers, for instance, and on a day on the Hill grouse shooting, just as working sheepdogs, would call for effort in spurts. I know that dogs doing TD work, and when it's sustained, find it tiring over lengthy periods, and they're really only travelling at the speed of the person on the other end of the line. I feel that concentration on the part of the dog plays a significant part. Dogs which for work or sport, and which pull sleds, just as hounds which are hunting, tend to be 'paced' by their handlers, perhaps. How the routes of serious duration are dealt with by 'sled' dogs and their handlers, I'm not sure. Again, perhaps a balance is what's required. I wonder if any in-depth research has been done which addresses the question, does anyone on here know?

Dogs which are lopping along beside riders of horses or bikes, and once fit, would be 'paced' by the fact that however fit, neither horse nor bike-rider would be able to last as a dog which is truly fit, I wouldn't have thought.

Alec.
 
I have used the Kronch pemmikan, and Yumega energy tablets, both to good effect. I've no doubt that in some dogs it would be the equivalent of sticking an unnecessary rocket up their backside. :p

Short distance sprint racing in the UK is a world apart from long distance races elsewhere in the world so I'm not really qualified to comment but there are some fantastic videos somewhere showing a musher preparing food for a drop, discussing the reasoning behind the choices and I think some commentary on their fittening and preparation work too - I'll dig them out when I get back from work.
 
Blackcob - can you tell me how you use the Yumega tablets? I've tried them for a lazy show bitch, but with almost zero effect.
 
The instructions suggest giving 30 minutes after exercise but I've also given them directly before a run. They're basically just dextrose tablets so it's a quick sugar hit, I wonder if some dogs are more sensitive to it than others, same as humans? I find it seems to help with an afternoon 'slump' if we're at an all day competition.

The video I was thinking of was by Dallas Seavey - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4eUn7pmqLM - that's a food based one, there's some training and race commentary in the other videos on the same channel, interesting stuff.
 
I use Pemmikan for trialling dogs and on long, cold wet days picking up particularly if we do a duck a drive - works really well but need only a little given or they turn into monsters (or as I've seen it phrased - "I may as well have taped the choke open on a chainsaw and chucked it into the Rhodies, would have had more control of it too")
 
It's not a stimulant - there's nothing it that could be considered a stimulant such as caffeine etc

"Ingredients:Lard, vegetable fat, fish meal, dextrose, corn, barley, brewer’s yeast, rice, sugar and garlic. Kronch Pemmikan contains 24% protein and 59% fat."

It's just a more convenient way of carrying and feeding an energy boost - like the lardy honey we used to use a lot on big grouse days
 
All of our cycle routes are planned near water so we can stop every so often to offer drinks. I don't take dog food but we always stop half way for a picnic and they always end up sharing with me ;)
 
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