Where do you go with your dogs?

I can do a couple of walks from my house, down the road, over the common and around the mountain, back up through a small wood thing. And behind the house up the hill through the wood to the abandoned gold mine. There's a river on the common for swimming

I drive to the beach, which is about 25 mins. We spend a lot of time there in the summer.

I also hunt out walks in other places, so I have a few tried and tested walks I do occasionally, and I sometimes drive into the forestry and walk down the logging roads and explore there's plenty of walks, but a lot are proper walks over sheep country and up peaks, round lakes etc, and take a few hours, so not really every day stuff. Plus not all are dog off lead friendly, and we like walking off lead. A lot of land is farm land and I wouldn't venture on it.

To be honest, this time of year we don't venture far at all. Too dark too quickly!!! It's 4pm now and dusky. So that writes off walks after work completely.

There's no such thing as a dog park!! And we don't even have human parks round here. It's sheep country.

For socialization: Pet Supplies Plus, Tractor Supply, dog park work for Rider, plowing with Josh for Harlow.

For exercise: Running around the back yard, "hikes" at a nearby nature preserve, we bike the Kal-Haven trail frequently in the summer and my family owns an 80 acre farm with a lake so we use that every once in a while as well. Rider and Harlow normally go to daycare 2x a week as well.

Training... Yeah, I'm a major slacker. If I take a class with Rider, I will train 1-2 times a week. Otherwise basically never except for an occasional random shaping session or working on OB junk. Recall training is ALL THE TIME because prey drive and bitch Boxer.

I hate exercising my guys on leash (and it really does nothing for Gusto), so although we do walk around the neighborhood and on the adjacent bike path, we mostly go places off leash. It's a 4 minute drive from my house to the town reservoir, which has a nice easy 1.5 mile off leash loop around it, or about 5 - 6 miles of loops if we go off the main trail. That's our favorite spot, and there is lots of access for swimming in the summer.

There's about a half-dozen other spots we go to regularly, but they don't have as many trails. Although I'm leaving in a half hour to try a new spot that you can apparently get about 5 miles on.

We also have a big fairgrounds about 6 minutes from my house; during the non-fair season, I'll go in the back gates and have huge open fields for walking/chuck-it/occasionally dragging agility stuff out.

I just pulled Gusto out of classes for a variety of reasons, but we have access to some other great opportunities. For winter, myself and 3 friends are renting a HEATED horse barn, and have our equipment stored there. We rent one night a week for a few hours and train. The friends I rent with have a full set of equipment, including rubber contacts. It's as nice as any training facility, with no politics! In the summer, they have a full field set up at their house which they are very generous with.

We also are members of an agility club, which holds weekly practices summer (in a field) and winter (in a non-heated barn), although the drama is sometimes a little too much.

Isn't it amazing how fast you get spoiled with that? I seriously have gotten to the point where I hate leashes, can't figure out how to hold them and the dogs can't walk on them because I spent exactly 0 minutes working on leash manners :rofl1:

Two places I love & wish I lived closer to: Meagan's family farm & Lindsey's park (and the bike ride to the reservoir sounds nice!) I would never go anywhere ever again.

I swore I was going to teach Gusto good leash manners. Meg's are terrible, although she's soft and polite enough that I can give a quiet "hey" and she doesn't pull, but it isn't "trained". Gusto is just...horrible.

I can teach independent contacts and weave poles, but I can't teach a dog to walk nicely on a leash. I accept my limitations.

Well at least I'm not the only one. It's a work in progress.

We had soooo much fun!

Oh, I forgot to note that we have to drive everywhere... Most are within 20 minutes.

I honestly wouldn't enjoy dogs if I had to only walk them on the lead. I find it totally frustrating and boring.

*and probably why my dogs have only mediocre lead manners *

Exercise: Our yard, mostly now. Or my parents house or K's parents house. There are a couple dog parks that we go to when they're quiet/off hours. I still have to check out a local "dog park" that you pay a monthly membership fee and have 24/7 access to the 18 acres of park/pond and a heated pole barn with agility equipment. I just heard about it and want to check it out still.

We also have a cabin "up north" that we spend a lot of time at in the summer. Crossbone loves hiking in the woods and swimming in the lake.

Walking/hiking: We have trails/bike paths near our house. We usually walk (on lead) a four mike loop every morning. Crossbone hates leash walks too...he just wants to air it out and RUN. We walk a lot around town a lot too.

Training/socializing: we walk in town a lot and sometimes stop at the many places to eat so Crossbone gets to hang out and practice being good. We also take him to dog friendly stores a lot.

When the weather is nice I host a local meetup group where we train a little together, sometimes bring some agility stuff so they can play through the tunnels and Crossbone can practice with distractions. Also fun for the dogs to wrestle or play ball.

Agility: We have finally found a club willing to let us in, so I've been taking private lessons this winter & starting more informal classes with her/the group next week. Otherwise we practice in the yard & at meetups.

Training is at home/pet stores. There are no training facilities here.

Dogs are not allowed in any city parks, so for exercise we usually head to the mountains. It is a 20 minute or so drive. If it is snowy or icy,though, my car will not do the mountain, so Brooks heads to the dog park.He's the only dog park dog.

My mothers 10 acre property is a 15 minute walk away, I'll go there to let her offleash or play herding.
Just around the corner from that are the town sports fields, a Rugby field, 2 soccer fiels and a AFL field so most of the time atleast one is empty to play frisbee or work on obedience.

Other than that we just sort of go out places, down to the esplanade along the beach for a walk, to pet stores or she comes to the kennels with me when I work to work on her social skills (aka: don't eat the other dogs)

When I'm actually home during daylight hours, there is an amphitheater down the road that has awesome walking/hiking trails. There is another trail area a short drive away that has a nice area for swimming, but it is one of those places that has next to no people there on "off hours" and after I walked in about two miles and ran into a homeless guy...I don't go walking there by myself anymore. Too secluded.

For training, we did it at the local kennel club. If I have the time/money, I'd like to do agility there.

We like to go to Tractor Supply for socialization and training, too.

I live in an apartment without a yard, so the two of us are constantly going places.
In general, there are 4 places we frequent consistantly, and I alternate it based on what I want to do, and how long I feel like walking to these places.

Tennis Court #1: There is a apartment complex tennis court about a 3-5 minute walk away from my apartment. Noone is ever in it or controls it, but it is very small. I use this when I am in a hurry to get a quick game of fetch going so Leo can burn some energy.

Tennis Court #2: This is a 10 minute walk away and is HUGE. It is also lit at night. I go here if I really want to have a toy play session, especially after work when it is already getting dark.

Middle School: A 5 minute walk away is a middle school that I go to after school hours. It is mostly fenced in and I feel comfortable letting Leo off leash here. Local neighbors bring their dogs here, mostly for a game of fetch, but some to play with other dogs. They are all very well behaved. This is my go to dog-play-session place. That being said, Leo completely blows me off here in favor of playing with other dogs, so we don't go all the time.

Huge Park/Small Dog Park: A 15 minute walk away, there is a fenced in dog park and big grassy areas. Every once in a while, I bring Leo here to play, mostly for variety sake. I like the dogs who come to the Middle School better, but this is a change of pace, and because the fenced in area is smaller, he does listen to me here

Ergggh, so cool. I was looking for something like this this winter. I have a trainer friend who wants to hold some classes too, we were talking about finding something, but we couldn't find anything cheap enough.

Um, it honestly really depends.

There are tons of nice walking trails around here in different areas. My dads house is near the Chesapeake Bay, and there's a few really nice trails and little beaches... ranging from 4-7 miles. Lots of little random parks with shorter trails but huge baseball/soccer fields etc. I utilize quite a few depending on the day and my mood. I always keep a long line in my car and a Chuckit just in case I decide to stop somewhere more 'open'.

I would say his main source of exercise is my dads yard, though, honestly. In the summer, it's pool time almost every day. But he also looovess running full speed chasing the quads/fourwheelers (he's safe, on the inside of the fence) as they race by.

If we're not at my dads, I usually use our 3 acres at my moms place, which is on a hill, for a game of fetch. Running him uphill tires him more. Or we'll go to a local park with some trails and do some walking.

We're not really 'in' to any sports at the moment. I couldn't afford to continue agility during the holidays but hopefully we'll get back into it next month. There is an amazing facility that has EVERYTHING... dock diving pool, sheep herding, disc dog, nosework, treibbal, agility, etc. Really lucky to have a facility less than 30 mins away from me.

Where do you take your dogs, for exercise/training?
- Since they are never off leash, we do lots of long line training in nearby fields (school soccer fields and other open fields in parks). Training also is done on 6' leashes (heelwork, focus stuff, etc.) during walks and in my yard where they are fine to be off leash. We also do the pet store thing a lot as well.

Walking/hiking, do you have to go to a designated park, or is there 'free land' you use? Do you have to drive there, or can you walk from your house?
- We walk in the neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods a lot. Otherwise we are lucky to have quite a few nice parks (though only one is really big with lots of trails) within 30 minutes. I can't get to those types of places during the weekdays now that it gets dark early, but weekends are fair game if I don't have any other dog events.

What about training, particularly if you 'seriously' train, say for obedience/agility/IPO etc etc? Do you do things differently winter vs summer? Are you in a club, training facility, or do you train on your own, where do you do it?
- I try to do training anywhere I can. I will take Jari to trials with Kimma and work with him on focus/obedience stuff, and even do more difficult things like retrieves and get good heelwork after Kimma is done her runs on any given trial day. In terms of where we have classes, we take privates at the facility I teach training classes at. It's an indoor, heated (but no A/C!) warehouse type place with awesome turf flooring. So one day a week we have our hour private split between Kimma and Jari, and the day I teach I bring them both to work on other stuff. Which is handy since I can use the equipment as I'm the only one there on my day. Summer and winter are the same in terms of training time spent, though I like to do more outdoors stuff when it's warmer and more tricks/indoor things when it's cold. Trialing will also probably be heavier in the winter than in the summer starting this year as I learned that Kimma really does not run well in the heat.

The main place we exercise is on my property, or the rail trail behind it. I'm so lucky that we have 9 acres, plus unlimited walking on the public trail just steps from my house. It's dark after work and there aren't any lights, but I just use a headlamp and we only stay out about 30min. I wish Watson were better off leash so I could let him run on our property more, but we manage with long lines for now. He's not the best leash walker in the world either, but also not the worst, and we do walk on leash every day for about 45-60min (less when it's cold and dark). Now that the trail is mostly empty I've started walking him on the long line too. I find that leashed walks actually do tire him out, because he spends the whole time with his nose to the ground. Off leash would be better, but he's not one of those dogs who gets nothing from an on leash walk.

We don't go to dog parks. The only off leash parks around here are small thunderdome style fenced areas. He's great with other dogs and I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to them, but the closest one is $50 per year for out of town residents (I'm in the next town over) which is ridiculous for a fenced in field smaller than the field on my own property. I would gladly pay a fee for a nice large off leash park with trails.

There are lots of places to hike around here (on leash) and we do that occasionally. One of our favorites is about 20min away and a nice quick hike (about 1 mile straight up hill, with more trails if you want to continue) with a great Hudson River view.

For training, there is a nice facility about 10min from my house that offers obedience, rally, and nosework. We've been going there for various classes since he was a puppy. It's a warehouse type space that's heated so we train year round. They also hold seminars occasionally. We recently started agility at a place about an hour away. It's in a horse arena (no longer used for horses) without heat or A/C, but I've decided to stick with it through the winter anyway. Once I get moving, the cold doesn't bother me too much if I'm inside away from the wind.

We go to pet stores occasionally, but the one I like is 25min away so we don't go frequently. Maybe once a month I take him to the big liquor store that is pet friendly, and he works on stays and impulse control while I pick out wine :rofl1:

Yep, that cements it, if/when we move back to Ohio, I'm buying a horse property to turn it into an "ALL DOGS, ALL THE TIME" crazy house of fun.

Same here. The one on Overlook is 10 minutes from the house, but I have no interest in paying that much for mass chaos.

I need to get in on this



ETA: I'm mostly anti-social and I hate the cold. We sometimes go to the pet store, but less now that my work schedule has gone crazy. We like doing the trails around here. There is a 900+ acre multi-use recreational forest not too far from where I am. Dogs are allowed to be off-leash, but there are a lot of mountain bikers and I have seen horse hoof prints, so no way is Huddy going to be off leash there.

This is Iowa... we have no free land. We have some places (state parks) where we can hike on-leash, but for off-leash I had to become a member of a private dog "park" - it's actually mostly prairie and we're usually the only ones there when we go. Membership isn't cheap and dogs must pass the park's temperament test, so it scares away the crazies.

I train in a 7000sf training facility about 40 minutes from my house. Iowa is not friendly when it comes to training outdoors year round.