Exercising puppies for 5 minutes per month twice a day (x-post r/dogs)

[ethanasg48]

So I've been following this rule because I'm concerned for my 14 week old pup's joint health, but honestly, it just doesn't seem like enough for her. She is sooooo full of energy all the time and I want to take her on longer walks to burn it off.

We play all the time, she does puzzles every day and we do multiple training sessions every day, plus the 20 minute walk in the afternoon and 20 minute walk in the evening. And she's just all buzzy all the time. She does take regular naps and she sleeps like a log through the night.

I wasn't expecting too much chill from a GSD but I really think she would benefit from longer walks.

I didn't know about this rule with my last dog. She was still a puppy at 6-8 months but obviously she wasn't as young as this one. She walked for hooouuuurs a day. Unfortunately I wasn't able to keep her to old age and I don't know if this affected her joints in the end. She was a very happy dog tho.

Has anyone ignored this rule? Were there any consequences? Do you regret breaking it?

 

[james9900]

@ethanasg48 Take her somewhere where she can run off leash, and run with her to her heart's content, as long as she wants. Invite over other (vaccinated, known) dogs and have them play together. Take her new places and socialize her - new smells and sights and sounds are very tiring.

 

[ethanasg48]

@james9900 She's still too young to be out at parks I'm really looking forward to that final round of vaccinations! But we did take her to my in-laws the other day to run around their garden and she loved it. Might take her again today. We try and take her to a new place every day, pet stores, hardware stores, new area in the city. Stuff like that.

 

[james9900]

@ethanasg48 Do you have a fenced in yard available to you to use? Or get a 30-50 foot leash and find a field - that's what we did pre-fence.

 

[ethanasg48]

@james9900 Yea we can go to my inlaws to let her run around their yard. We can't go every day because they don't live close enough for that (and we need in-law space lol), but we go when we can. I'm hoping we can pop by today!

When she has her final shots we'll definitely be taking her to run around the park I can't wait!

 

[lucianx]

@ethanasg48 I went by that rule and don't regret it, better safe than sorry. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't GSD prone to having bad hips? I wouldn't risk it.

If she's taking regular naps and sleeps through the night and you're doing all the training you mention it might not be an exercise issue. I have quite a highly strung dog who I had to actively teach to relax when he was young. I followed the method in the 'capturing calmness' YouTube video by kikopup. Basically you just reward them (calmly) whenever you catch them choosing to relax. I also taught my dog a 'settle' command where I would get him to lie on a mat with intermittent rewards ( or 'earning a salary' for chilling out). If he was genuinely relaxed then he'd get a bone or something to chew on as long as he stayed lying on the mat. Doing this kind of thing helped loads with my dog.