excersising your dogs

[krk hunting]

[ryan goodwin]

Keven, I road my dogs when iam not hunting them i start with a mile put them on the box for a mile then back down for a mile and a half then back up for 2 then i road them 2,then the next time i go up i increse the miles on the ground works good for me. Our swim them

[Mike Leonard]

Good advice.

I get a kick out of some of these new guys. They take their dogs out throw them out on a gravel road and start off roading them at ten miles per hour. Ok the dogs are coming along trying like hell to not be left alone. Well let's kick it up to 15 look at them fast sob's. Well they run like crazy and the guy is thinking why crap these dogs are already pretty good, let's just give them a little thirty mile a hour sprint to the top of the next hill.

Well sure they make it, might slip a pad or two, but he says that should do they are ready to go in my book.

Real dog conditioning like human conditioning takes time and a building effort. It is fairy simple for me because my dogs come with me on horseback so they are traveling at an average of 3.5 miles per hour . A non hurried pace but ofcourse cutting back and forth they make more miles that the horse. As they get in better shape kick the horse up to a trot, and then 5.5 to 6 mPH and they are trotting right along. You can condition a dog or a horse much better a trot than at a run, and they can also cover more ground. So at the end of a hard track day, and travel back to camp or trailer they may have covered 60 miles. No not in a straight line, but if you trail a lion or run a bear for several hours along wioth the trip in and out., it can be a long ways. Allways twice as much as the horse travels, and they are jumping at the end of their chain ready to head out the next morning in they are conditioned slow and steady.

Swimming by the way is excellent, just hard to put together for most.

[kb]

anyone use a mill of any sort(dog tread mill)

[Terry Ambrosius]

I have a dog jenny--looking to get rid of it.

[kb]

[Spooky Ridge]

[Calkins]

[Melanie Hampton]

We road ours, starting them off slowly and working them up to longer periods of time.. Ours are not allowed to break a trot in the road.. Because we also road them while hunting so they have to learn to keep a slow steady speed.. Absolutely no foot races!! I also swim them a lot in the summer time.. We live about 2 miles away from a lake.. I will take them down just about every day and swim them for a couple hours.. They would spend all day down there retrieving sticks for you if you let them..

[Vance M.]

[snowy river black and tan]

[Terry Ambrosius]

located in wisconsin

[kb]