Walking Your Dog
by Diane Anderson

Did you know that properly walking your dog every day is the quickest way to set yourself up as your dog's leader and have a happy, healthy, balanced canine member of your family?

Dogs are pack animals and when they live in packs with other dogs there is a hierarchy of leadership. Leadership is established by the animal that can assert the most authority through intimidation and, if necessary, physical confrontation. Once the pack has an established leader, then that is the animal that leads the daily morning and evening walks throughout the pack's territory. These walks are for hunting, watching for other predators who may have wandered into the pack's territory and knowing everything about that territory, mostly by smell.

If you walk your dog every day and make sure it is in a submissive position to you -- it's head at your knee or behind with a "J" in the leash -- then you are setting yourself up as the pack leader. This need to teach your dog the proper way to walk is a good reason to take an obedience course with your dog. It teaches you how to walk your dog without it pulling ahead, sniffing every tree and mouthing every interesting object thus becoming your pack leader.

Dogs also need the stimulation that comes from a walk. A dog's sense of smell is as important to the dog as our ability to see. If they never get to go anywhere other than the backyard or the dog park, they miss out on the highly beneficial stimulation that comes from a long walk in their own territory. It is like the difference between a fish bowl and a lake for a fish.

Small dogs need a bare minimum of 20 minutes of walking every day. Medium dogs need 30-40 minutes and large dogs need 40 - 60 minutes. This may be all at once or broken up into two or more intervals. Be sure to bring plenty of water for your dog if the weather is hot and/or humid. If your dog tends to overheat, take shorter walks more times per day and wet the dog down before starting off.

But, you say, "I don't have time to walk my dog every day." Make the time. Get up 20 minutes earlier. Walk after dinner. Give up a half hour of television. Walk before you go to bed. A dog is a responsibility and, as its owner, you must do this. If your dog were your child would you ignore its basic needs? Both you and your dog will be healthier if you make time to exercise together.

Another good reason to make the time is that your dog will not only be happier and healthier, but most often, bad habits such as chewing, barking and obsessive-compulsive behaviors are alleviated after several weeks of consistent, daily walking.

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Dog-Gone Good Quotes
Properly trained, a man can be dog's best friend.
-Corey Ford

Man is a dog's idea of what God should be.
-Holbrook Jackson

Scratch a dog and you'll find a permanent job.
- Franklin P. Jones

Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails.
-Max Eastman, Enjoyment of Laughter

If dogs could talk, it would take a lot of the fun out of owning one.
-Andy Rooney

A dog is not "almost human" and I know of no greater insult to the canine race than to describe it as such.
-John Holmes

If you get to thinking you're a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else's dog around.
-Will Rogers