Permies Poll: Do you walk your dog regularly?

I know folks have different living arrangements and an idea struck me. Do you traditionally walk your dog(s)?

If not, how do they get their energy out?

I do not have the acreage/location to let my dogs run around untethered. My plott hound is a homebody and does not like to be walked on a leash. We will take walks around the property to check out her favorite spots but she is content to not go on long walks. Her weight/health have been fantastic so I let let my sleeping dog lie.

My dachshund however is the polar opposite! She will refuse to come inside the house after her and her sister go around the backyard and insists that we go out into the world to explore. We will take a walk through the village at least once a day so she can check out the hot spots to sniff.

Our dog is not trust worthy enough to not be on a leash.

If our dog was not on a leash she would go looking for our daughter who does not live here.

I take her out about once every hour or when I remember to do so.

We used to do long walks though in 2020 when I developed a balance problem that was the end of that.

Spaniels & a wolfhound - we have plenty of land for them to roam, but it's not fenced in, and we have too many predators, and are only 1/2 mile by road & 1/4 mile as the crow flies, from a 55mph road. Needless to say, our girls are never off-lead. We don't do long walks, but we do frequent ones.

my dog also cannot be outside our yard without a leash.
He can open the door and go in and out into the front yard by himself to relieve himself, drink water, and occasionally scare off people putting things in my mailbox, but he prefers to stay in my office with me most of the time.
The days he does not go to dog school/daycare I take him for a long walk. Days when it's pouring or work doesn't permit, I'll try to do a training session inside the house instead. Last year I had a few months when I couldn't use my hand and so we didn't go out for walks, and he was fine.
I learned the hard way with this dog, more physical activity makes him more anxious. There was a time we were walking 10k+ a day to "tire him out," but I learned that with a Belgian Malinois this is a losing game....

My dog is a yard guard, she spends most of the night running around barking to keep the coyotes away. She likes walks and sometimes I go for walks and take her, but she spends enough energy patrolling the farm.

An assumption I am making also is that of course I take my dogs out to go to the bathroom. While it is technically the act of walking, I think the intent is different. They go out, go do their thing, and come back inside. When we go for a walk, it is a leisurely stroll where there is a balance of sniffing and traveling.

I'm sure this is different than how other people go about things, but that is what works where I live with my particular set of dogs.

On a walk.

I powerwalk my dogs at least a mile per day during the week and then 3-4 miles per day on the weekend, always on trails in the state park behind my house-summer lake swimming included. they are also let out supervised to run free on our two acres...and also have a large penned area they spend the rest of their outside time in.
I always try to remember that I am their guardian AND their world is only as big as I can make it and so always try to enrich their lives in all ways.

My dog is outside most of the time.  Being a Great Pyr, and recovering from a mysterious condition for which she was treated by daily high doses of prednisone, for almost a year, she rests a lot.

The vet said she needed to lose the extra poundage she put on while on the prednisone, so drive the 1.2 mile round trip to the mailbox and invite her to run.  She appears to enjoy it!  And for me, it’s great that she’s healthy and energetic again.  I try to take her on the mailbox adventure several times a week.

She was so hungry while on restricted calories that she ate some inappropriate things (for example, a nest full of days- from-hatching guinea eggs😔). By getting more exercise, she can have more dog food.😊

We go out a couple times a week for a dedicated walk for a change of pace. But the dogs are always with me going thru the pasture to do pigs or move the chickens. They love following me on the bike to where ever I'm going. I think they get more exercise then most due to our routines and lifestyle. It took a lot of training to trust them off leash. 100% worth the time and frustration to do so in the end.

I don't do many 'traditional' walks with Rock.

He comes outside with me every time I go out to the garden, whereupon he zooms around like a lunatic incessantly. If I do a 'real' walk, he comes with me. And then my neighbour, who has decided she's too old to have a dog of her own, takes him out every day. He's learned what time of day she turns up, and if I go outside with him at around that time he hangs around just long enough to be polite and then runs like crazy up the hill to find her, then helps her in the garden until she brings him home again.

Tonight was a little different as she was down working on the land next to mine so Rock shot off the moment I let him out (she has a biscuit supply in her pocket and food is very important), then after a minute he ran back to me, and kept running backwards and forwards until he'd succeeding in worrying me enough to go and check that everything was OK: Whereupon we chatted for ten minutes and Rock sits around looking smug because he's got us together, like he firmly believes we are supposed to be.

He's quite good at entertaining and exercising himself...



I think I might select 'other' because none of the others feel quite right...

Never. I have a livestock guardian dog (Anatolian Shepherd, weighs around a hundred pounds) in the pasture with the goats -she's only been on a leash once in her life (when I took her to the vet to be spayed), and I can't even keep a collar on her. She gets plenty of exercise out with the goats.

I also have three small dogs - twenty pounds or less - who have half an acre fenced around the house to run around in, and they do. They keep each other busy out there for a good chunk of the day. They do have collars on, but only the Rat Terrier has ever been on a leash. I wouldn't want to take them away from the house on walks, because then if they got loose, they would probably wander farther away from the house than they do now if they get loose (doesn't happen very often, but so far, they've never gone far).

I named my dog 5 Miles so I can tell people I walk five miles every day.

Anne Miller wrote:I named my dog 5 Miles so I can tell people I walk five miles every day.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I do not walk my dogs. I do make a point of not letting them outside together.  I made that mistake once. They turned into 12 years old boys and spent hours running through the fields.

My shelter pup knows the property boundaries and honors them.  There was a learning curve her first year. As long as she is not teamed up with our old dog, she is fine,

Our old dog generally lacks the energy to travel more than 50 feet from our back door.   There are two notable exceptions. We are located behind a cemetery…which is located next to a country church.  The first, is that if the church is having any function that involves food, he invites himself.  The second is funerals. He will quietly sit beside the grieving family during the graveside service.  He is a known fixture to the point that if he does not attend, I will be asked if he is OK.

Last vote in apple poll was on October 8, 2026