Do you vary where you walk your dogs?

Galupy

Galupy

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I take the Galupy hounds to the same spot every morning before work during the week - it's a field away walking from where I live and it's a nice couple of fields and a wooded area to walk through easily before I have to get ready and leave for work.

In the evenings during the week I go to one of two places that are also local to where we live although I have to drive for a short distance to get to each of them.

At the weekends then, I feel the need to take them somewhere completely different. I feel for some reason that they need variety in where we walk from where they go in the week. There is though, no real variety in the type of place we actually walk most of the time - they are generally all woodsy trails (Massachusetts has a LOT of trees :D) with maybe some water for a dip (if Willie is lucky :D) but actual variety in type of walk is little, just in the location of where we go. We often drive for a while just to do this.

So ... do you go to a variety of different places with your dogs or do you go on the same walk all the time?
 
Oh, MA, lovely, especially at this time of year, lucky you:)

Mine? They never go off the property. It depends where the silly beggars last put up a skunk! This week the no-no area is at the bottom end of the exercise track, I tell you, three sprayed dogs and 10' from an irate skunk is a very good reason NOT to go there again for a while!

I actually don't walk my dogs at all, I spend so much time on my feet that I rarely walk for fun, especially in the summer. I run them around the track (me on the quad leading the pony) and them following most days - until the latest skunk episode.

Or they'll come with me in the forest when I am logging or riding - if it isn't hunting/breeding/rutting/mosquito season or there haven't been any coyote sightings recently.

Mostly they just charge around the yard and fields with whatever they have stolen to amuse themselves, currently a horse ball that none of the horses like. In Spring they go frogging in the pond, in Fall they chase turtles, then they have the creek too.

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Mine gets the same walk in the woods-sadly restricted due to early onset arthritis. He knows the routine and the route so takes me.

I vary it occasionally to the river or somewhere else like the yard, but that is guaranteed to end with him having a bath after covering himself in diesel or other filth:mad:. He has no horse sense so I'm always a bit paranoid about him being round horses. Hopefully the pups will have more as I didn't have a horse when Brig was tiny.
 
I take my dog different routes every walk, or if we are doing the same-ish route I reverse it. Our morning walk is always the same-ish four routes, but for evening walks I make use of the wealth of off-lead areas in walking distance of my house, or drive 5 minutes to the beach.
 
I try and vary it every day, for them, and for me, I bore incredibly easily :o
We're very lucky in that we live in the middle of a forest, halfway up a mountain, ten minutes away from a beach :)

I do think it is important that my dogs experience lots of different places, people, surfaces, atmosphere, I would never want them, for whatever reason, to be in a certain situation and it blow their brains.

Enfys, watching my friends' dogs hunt snapping turtles in the creek provides hours of endless holiday entertainment :p
 
Depends how lazy I'm feeling... spoilt for choice around here. The morning/evening walks are usually either up the lane and round the village, or down the lane and round the fields. For the afternoon walks I vary between longer village and field walks, river walks(either way along it) moor walk, cliff walk, forest walk, or walk to villages further afield.
 
Before work I take my boy to the same park, as its at the bottom of our road and easy to get to. In the evening we have a choice of 4 or 5 different tracks through the forrest, or to 4 different parks of varying sizes with loads of nature tracks around them, so he rarely gets the same evening walk twice in one week.
 
I do, I have a little chihuahau so she doesn't take much walking! lol .. Some days she comes to the yard, if not there is a few short walks around where I live which I take her on or sometimes I will drive to 1 of 3 nearby country parks and go for a walk there or the beach if it's not too chilly!
 
I have a German Shorthaired Pointer who I don't actually "walk". She comes to the stables with me every day and runs free for 2 to 4 hours. Plus she comes out riding with me every day, anything from 8 to 15km (she does more as she runs circles round me). If I stay in and school she still runs loops round the arena with me. She gets more than enough exercise so I can be lazy and not walk her - LOL
 
Betsy has the same little walk on a morning, and then her afternoon /. evening exercise will vary.

If she goes on a trip to my mums for the afternoon (2+ hours of hooning around with her puppy friend) she will only have a small walk on a night because she is still just a baby.

On days when OH is off work he takes her out for big adventures (usually ending up in a river!) for her afternoon walk, When he is at work I quite often take her into my work for a walk around the fields to meet horses/cows/pigs/sheep.

We try to vary it as much as possible so that she meets as many new dogs and new people as she can. I had a very lucky escape from a horses hooves at work a couple of weeks ago and I was limpy for about a week, OH was also away with work and B was just taken round the fields for days, she didnt give 2 hoots.
 
Mine got to the yard everyday, run loose for 4hours in the morning up and down the fields leading the horses. In the evening there at the yard again running around bringing in the horses, running alongside the quad. they follow me out hacking.

At the weekend there go to the yard as in the week but also I take my GSP out for a long run with my bf's spointer, they take a lot to ge tired.
My boxer stays home as he doesnt get on with my bf's dog and likes sometime without the GSP.
 
Always vary it, I rotate about 6 diff routes every morning and afternoon. (I get bored of the same ones) as i'm out for hours a day with them.

Also could be walking, running, biking or hacking with them so it's never the same. I drive a short distance to a nearby country park, woods or farmland as I don't enjoy pavement pounding and lead work.
 
enfys said:
Oh, MA, lovely, especially at this time of year, lucky you:)
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Give it another 2-3 weeks and it will be fantastic ... still a little green at the moment but the leaf peepers will be here soon :)

It's interesting to hear how you all handle your walks ... if there is a need for them. I decided today that varying walks has actually turned into an obsession for me. Strangely enough though, I feel more of a need to vary where they walk now I have more choices than I did when there were really only three viable ones during the week without traveling where I used to live. I wish though that we had the fields and moors and such to walk on as well as in the woods (oh, we also have a beach we can go to as well) and I also wish I could offer the hounds some outdoor fun at a yard ... well, maybe one day. :)
 
There are 3 possible morning walks (30 min loops) which I switch around, and I make sure we do a different eve walk a week- so that she gets some new smells to think about each walk. Plus I would get bored too
 
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