I recently saw a cartoon of a person walking with her dog by her side in perfect heel position – and clearly not enjoying the experience. The dog’s thought bubble said, “Whose walk is this, anyway?” 

Sadly, this exemplifies the all-too-common approach to dog-walking: go out, take the obligatory march around the block, let the dog stop to empty his bowels and bladder, and march back home. Besides being boring, the dog gets very little exercise or mental stimulation on this kind of walk! 

Fortunately, more and more dog lovers are realizing that, for maximum value and enjoyment by both species, a dog needs to go far beyond the around-the-block bathroom walk. For more fun on your walks with your dog, check out the following types of walks and select the ones that are most suited to you and your canine companion:

1. The Scent Walk (also known as a Sniff Walk or Sniffy Walk). This one is easy, and your dog will love you for it. To maximize your dog’s enjoyment, select a quiet walking site where you can use a longer leash. Plan to go slowly. Just stroll around with your dog. Take your time and let your dog choose where to go and when to stop and sniff. 

Scent work is a great enrichment activity, empowers your dog by giving him choice opportunities, and is very satisfying and calming for him. It is also surprisingly tiring. Even a relatively short “sniff walk” can help your dog be more relaxed and less likely to engage in unwanted behaviors when you get back home. A longer sniff walk may wipe him out for the rest of the day! The Scent Walk is becoming increasingly popular as owners see how happy this style of walk makes their dogs.

If you can’t find an optimum grassy walking site, simply allowing your dog plenty of opportunities to stop and sniff on your leisurely walk around the neighborhood can be much more fulfilling for him than the traditional bathroom march.

You can supercharge your scent walk by going to your walking site before you take your dog there. Leave him in the car if safe/cool enough to do so, leave him with a walking companion or leave him at home, while you go out first and widely broadcast treats or kibble around the walking area. Now watch him have an even better time as he sniffs out the treasures you have tossed. (Remember to subtract an equivalent amount of calories from his meals so he doesn’t tank up from all the sniff-treat fun.)

2. Canine Parkour Walk. Parkour can add a great element of fun to your dog’s walks. You’ll need to find a walking site that offers a variety of objects – natural or human-made, urban or rural – that you can invite your dog to negotiate during the walk. You can combine it with a scent walk, too! 

Objects can include rocks to jump on and off of, fallen logs to walk on or jump over, stumps to balance on, various playground equipment to navigate (kids have first dibs), pipes to run through, benches to walk across, wooden or stone fences to jump on or over, and so on. 

Some trainers now offer Dog Parkour classes, and your dog can even earn titles from the International Dog Parkour Association. Parkour is fun, tiring, and a great confidence-building activity. For more information, see dogparkour.org.

3. Fast Walk. This is a walk on steroids, and a favorite of joggers and bicyclists. While this kind of walk does provide your dog with more exercise than a boring bathroom march, there are some important safety considerations to keep in mind:

• Consider the limitations of your dog’s breed or type. Some breeds are more athletic and well-suited to a fast jog or bike ride, but brachycephalic (flat-faced) and heavy-bodied dogs are poor candidates for this type of exercise, especially in hot weather.

• Your jogging or biking partner needs to be well trained so he doesn’t bolt in pursuit of a squirrel or another dog and pull you off your feet or your bike. See “Jogging With Your Dog Improves Overall Fitness and Health,” WDJ February 2009. 

• Start out slow – and talk to your vet. She can tell you if your dog is a good candidate for jogging or biking and can help you create a gradual training plan so your out-of-shape canine pal doesn’t suffer injury from too much, too fast, too soon. Dogs who are young, obese, or who have medical challenges may not be good candidates for jogging or biking.

• Stay off hot pavement. Your shoes or bike wheels protect you from the heat, but air temperatures as low as 77° F can turn pavement into a hot plate that burns your dog’s paws at 125° F or higher. It takes only 60 seconds or less on pavement that is 125° F for your dog’s pads to burn.

• If you want to bike with your dog, you will need to train him for this – don’t just hop on your bike with your leash in your hand and go! There are a number of products that will attach the leash to your bike so your hands are free to control your ride – and you and your dog will need to practice with these before going for longer rides. For tips on readying your dog for this type of exercise, see “Bike Riding With Your Dog,” March 2009. 

4. Off-Leash Walk. Last but by no means least, I consider the Off-Leash Walk to be the epitome of dog-walking fun. 

Dog trainer and behavior consultant Sarah Stremming coined the term “decompression walk,” meaning an off-leash walk (or walk on a long line) in nature, allowing the dog to move freely, pause, sniff, and just be. Decompression walks can benefit every dog.

If your dog can be trusted to come when called, and if you have a location in your area where dogs are legally allowed to be off leash, this walk gives your dog the kind of autonomy and freedom that can come closer to fully meeting his enrichment and exercise needs than almost anything else: He can just be a dog. He can run fast, sniff whatever he wants, jump in the creek, and make all his own choices about which way to go and what to do. It’s also easier on you – you don’t have to handle the leash, keep it from getting it tangled around brush, or worry about your dog pulling. 

I discovered the joys of off-leash walking with my dogs when I lived in Marin County, California, where dogs were allowed to be off leash in the vast expanses of county-owned open space in the hills between towns. My dogs and I spent hours hiking on Mt. Burdell on the north side of Novato. It kept me and my dogs sane, and I have countless fond memories of our time there. 

It was there that I realized an important fact – one that I share with all my clients to this day: A leashed walk is an exercise hors d’oeurve for most  dogs. When you take your dog for an off-leash walk he will run miles for every mile you walk and relish all the added enrichment benefits. There’s not an on-leash walk that can come close to comparing with this experience. See “How to Train Your Dog for Off-Leash Walks” in the March 2019 issue of WDJ for training tips.

If your community lacks off-leash open spaces, check out Sniffspot (www.sniffspot.com. The company contracts with landowners (they call them “hosts”) to provide access to private spaces – some fenced, some not – where people can take their dogs to run for a small fee.

Alternatively, you can use a long line to walk a dog who can’t yet be trusted to not run off. You can find long lines up to 50 feet long online (just Google “dog long line”) or make one yourself if you want a longer one. Note that it takes some practice and skill to learn how to manage the line and its propensity for getting tangled around things, but you can still use it to let your dog be a dog.

HEELING IS GOOD, TOO…

Of course there are times when your dog does need to be able to walk politely by your side on a leash, and it’s important to take the time to teach him to do that. Read more on leash walking here.

Handicapped Dogs Enjoy Walks, Too

Even dogs who are non-ambulatory, disabled, or who need to have their activity restricted enjoy being taken for walks. The enrichment experience can contribute to their mental health, especially for dogs who are otherwise “shut-ins.” This will require that you find an appropriate vehicle for your dog – such as a wagon or stroller, or a trailer or sidecar for your bicycle – and train your dog to stay in it. Since you will be pulling, pushing, or pedaling, a seat belt is a good safety measure, to make sure he doesn’t leap out at the sight of some compelling distraction.  

Take a moment to ponder a miracle: We can reach across the great species divide and convince a dog to do something utterly unnatural – like walking slowly at our side, with a weird thing around his neck. Even more amazing is the fact that we can make this moment feel great to the dog. How? By starting with the universal gateway: Food. Food in the form of treats is the basis for positive reinforcement dog training.

Food is a gift to cross-species communicators: It’s fast. It’s clear. It’s happy. Use food to tell your puppy, “Yes! That’s exactly what I mean!” and pretty soon your puppy ends up having all sorts of positive feelings about you, about training, and finally about that weird walking-by-your-side thing. You’re on your way to a very well-behaved dog who also happens to be a joyful best friend. 

FOOD MOTIVATED POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT DOG TRAINING

Folks will sometimes tell me they can’t use treat-based positive reinforcement dog training because their puppy isn’t food motivated. I ask the human what they’ve tried so far. That’s when I get the blank stare. I prompt: “Fresh chicken? Cheddar cheese? Dried fish? Vienna sausages?” 

“Oh, wait,” they say as the realization kicks in. “I can give them that stuff?”

Fantastic! We don’t have a training challenge. We’ve only just begun.

The key tool in a positive-reinforcement training arsenal is the reinforcer. You need to put thought and effort into it. You know that one brand of shelf-stable chicken treats that you’ve been buying at the pet store since Day One? That’s not going to do the trick when you’re out on a walk and your pup hears the siren song of another dog across the street! 

BEST DOG TREATS FOR POSITVE REINFORCEMENT TRAINING

To set yourself up for a lifetime of focus from your dog, you need to create a pattern of being the best game in town. It’s easy to earn that designation with a piece of kibble when you’re in the boring old family room asking for an easy sit. But as you progress to more difficult tasks and more distracting environments, you’ll have to work your way up what I think of as the “treat hierarchy ladder.”

Discovering your dog’s treat hierarchy will take a bit of investigation. (Your dog will be all in for this key step in the training journey!) The point is that all dogs are not the same, and some have strong preferences. I knew a dog who loved chicken, but couldn’t care less for turkey. Knowing exactly what makes your dog’s knees go weak with glee comes in very handy as you train. (Plus, it’s cute.)

Just to get you started, here’s what’s on my own pack’s ladder these days, roughly in order from lowest priority to highest:

1. Their own daily kibble
2. Some other dog’s kibble
3. Most store-bought training treats
4. Cheddar cheese
5. Cut up sweet potato, microwaved and dried a bit
6. Bits of apple, red pepper, sugar snap peas, and kale. (Even better if they’ve watched me cut it up and know it was part of my own salad. Seriously.)
7. Feta cheese
8. Hot dogs
9. Freeze-dried liver
10. Fresh chicken breast
11. Canned cat food
12. Dried fish

A policy of using the lowest-rung item you can get away with allows you to bring out the big hurrah when you really want to make an impact. I save dried fish for when I call the dogs in from barking at the foxes who are just beyond our fence. They zoom back, even with those rude interlopers out there taunting them! But if I used dried fish for daily training, soon I would not have the dried-fish tool to combat the fox situation. Whatever’s top rung on your dog’s ladder should not be used for everyday training – and don’t expect the lowest rung to allow you to compete with, say, a running deer. 

Mind you, form matters. You obviously don’t want to take a can of cat food with you on a walk, but it’s a perfect high-impact reward for a dog who’s being calm around the new kitty in the kitchen. When you know you’ll need a handful of reinforcers that are easy to deliver quickly and precisely in a challenging environment like a busy walk – i.e., not sticky, or falling apart – the store-bought treats can be best. Sometimes soft works better than crunchy, because needing to chew something can slow down the rhythm of your training. Bottom line: Be ready to put in some time experimenting and have a training bag with sections for different items.

Oh, you’re worried that using “human food” will teach pup to beg? Um, don’t tell pup it’s human food. If you feed pup a Milk Bone off your plate at the dinner table you’ll be teaching him to beg. Begging is situational. 

NOVELTY MAY BE YOUR DOG’S FAVORITE FOOD

One of my clients reported that her dog was no longer interested in training. I asked what she was using as a reinforcer. “Fresh boiled chicken!” Hmm. That’s a good start. Then she said, “I always use that.” Ah-ha!

Just because it was the most incredible taste sensation last Friday does not mean it will have the same appeal next Tuesday. While some dogs do have always-and-forever favorites, others are more thrilled by novelty. If you sense a lack of interest, remember to keep changing things up.

3 WAYS TO MAINTAIN YOUR DOG’S DIET

People worry that using food to train will interfere with a solid diet and cause the dreaded intestinal dismay. Of course that can happen if you aren’t careful, but normally it’s not an issue at all, for three reasons:

1.  Use teeny tiny pieces! I mean miniscule. Basically a whiff, plus a bit that touches the tongue. We are not feeding our dogs here. We are creating a happy thought for them. Just a moment’s experience of that feta cheese – “Wait, what was that?” – is enough for a pup to be all in with training. Pea-size is a good rule. So think about it: If you reward your dog two dozen times in a five-minute session, that’s about two tablespoons.
2. Watch the poop! Every now and then a dog will have an unwelcome response to a particular item. Just remove that treat from the ladder. In the meantime, use sweet potato bites and boiled chicken to train with – since that’s one of the things a vet will tell you to feed a dog with the runs.
3. Do the shuffle! If I’m doing a whole lot of training with one particular dog, I will use half of her normal kibble and half other yummies. The pup doesn’t know which treat she’ll get at any point in training but is willing to eagerly play the lottery because sometimes it’s her favorite. (When I do that, I do keep the super-duper special food separate in the pouch so that I can use it when I need to.)

ISN’T THIS JUST BRIBING WITH DOG TREATS?

Sometimes – often right before they get addicted to positive reinforcement dog training –owners question this emphasis on food. They feel like they’re bribing their dogs. They have a sense that their dog should just want to listen to them and obey. They ask about the old-fashioned methods where treats are not used.

You know what’s used in those methods? Fear. “If you don’t do what I ask, you’ll experience something bad.” Is it just me, or is that the approach that should be raising questions in an owner’s mind? 

There is no in between. There’s no mind-meld training where you use neither a carrot nor a stick. No method where this member of another species automatically wants to do weird things like “shake” at exactly the time you want him to. It’s a carrot or a stick. 

I have no qualms with using carrots, and plenty of them. Yes, I scale back to an intermittent reward schedule. My dogs generally do as I ask and half the time get only a kind word and a nice butt scratch as a reinforcer. But, gosh. Why wouldn’t I want to make it extra fun for them to spend time with me training? Why wouldn’t I be grateful for a little thing I can do to make us both enjoy training equally – my pups enjoying the treats, and me enjoying the progress?