Stop Walking Your Dog

I work with dogs that have big feelings – feelings about other dogs, feelings about people, feelings about the world in general. My first instruction when we start a training program is almost always the same: stop walking your dog. No surprise, I get many reactions. Most of which are mixtures of confusion and worry.

“But my dog needs so much exercise!”

“How am I supposed to tire them out?”

“She loves her walks!”

“He’s going to go stir crazy!”

“Are you sure you’re a dog trainer?”

Ok, so people don’t actually say the last one but I have to imagine it crosses their mind. But hear me out, because while it sounds like it’s going to make things worse, it will in fact set the stage for your dog’s success.

What’s in a walk?

There’s a common misconception that dogs need to walk for exercise. But there’s actually no rule that says your dog needs X number of walks per day for X number of minutes. Or that your dog needs to walk at all to be physically and mentally healthy. Walking isn’t the only form of exercise and under the wrong circumstances, it can actually be bad for your dog’s physical and emotional well-being.

Don’t get me wrong! Walking is absolutely a good form of exercise and can be a way for your dog to access healthy physical and mental enrichment. But the way we walk our dogs is often not the way dogs need to be walked. We tend to walk our dogs on short leashes, in a straight line, down a pre-determined path. But to our dogs, this is like drill practice – obedient, unstimulating, and at someone else’s direction.

Believe it or not, what’s most important for your dog while out on a walk is not actually the walking part, it’s the sniffing. Sniffing is a whole body activity. It involves the legs, the lungs and ribcage, the nose, the brain, and more. And it’s exhausting. It would be more beneficial (and tiring) for your dog to walk 30 feet and sniff the whole time, than to walk a mile and never sniff once.

Exercise for both mind and body

The biggest concern my clients have is that without walks, how will they exercise their dogs? This tells me we need to bring some enrichment into their dog’s life, because there are so many ways to get your dog to use their brain and body. And this can be inside or in the backyard, or even in a small space like an apartment on the 10th floor.

For example, training games like recall, “leave me alone,” touch, and searching for food all involve both the body and the brain. You can also practice loose-leash walking at home where you’re likely to be more successful anyway! Hide-and-seek is another good way to get your dog moving indoors, and the joy they experience when they find you makes it a great bonding activity for you both.

If you think about it, we can’t always walk our dogs anyway because some days it’s over 100 degrees, or raining hard, or there’s an ice storm, or maybe you just don’t feel well. It’s important to have back-up activities so your dog isn’t left without anything to do on these days, so shifting your mindset about your dog having to walk every day is a great life hack that will serve you well in many circumstances.

For a human example, ponder this: if you’re an avid runner and you injure your foot, are you just going to quit exercising all together until you’re healed? Probably not! You’re likely going to find alternatives like weight lifting, using the arm bike, swimming, and other forms of exercise to keep both your mind and body active. Our dogs can have access to a similar variety of activities that make them feel good.

An important word of caution here: not all physical activities are healthy for your dog or will be good replacements for walking. Activities like fetch, chasing a ball or frisbee, tug, and hard running can actually amp our dogs up instead of calming them down. Aim for things that are naturally calming for dogs: sniffing, licking, chewing, and shredding; and do them at a difficulty level where it is slightly challenging for your dog but not so much that they give up or don’t try.

Take a vacation from your problems

The thing that really gets people on board with pausing walks is when I ask them if both they and their dogs actually enjoy their walks. The answer is usually no for at least one party. Either the human is stressed on walks due to their dog’s behavior, or the dog’s anxiety or reactivity indicates they are not enjoying the walk.

If walks aren’t enjoyable for everyone I personally don’t see the point. But the other problem is, every time you go on a walk your dog is rehearsing the behaviors you don’t want: leash pulling, barking, lunging, etc. If the goal is to change your dog’s behaviors, it doesn’t help to keep taking them out to practice them.

Walks can also become a cue for reactive or anxious behavior. If your dog knows they’re going to be stressed on a walk, they get prepared for it the moment you bring out the harness and leash. We are actually priming our dogs to be reactive because walks = big feelings. So when we get ready for a walk we are telling our dogs it’s time to get ready for big feelings, and they start having them internally before we even leave the house.

This leads to possibly the most important reason to stop walking your dog: they need a break. Cortisol is a stress hormone that rises in your dog’s body when they are stressed, regardless of whether the threat is actual or just perceived. When our dogs have big feelings, their cortisol levels rise in their bodies and it can take days or weeks for those levels to go back down from even a single event.

If you walk your reactive or overexcited dog every day, multiple times a day, they are likely experiencing cortisol increases each time they go out. And that cortisol just keeps building up instead of going back down. We need to give them a break from the stress so they can reset mentally and physically. Our own clear-thinking abilities diminish significantly when we are stressed, and our dogs experience the same lack of clear-headedness. We are not going to get good behavior change with stress hormones present so stopping walks gives your dog a much needed “cortisol vacation.” They need to feel calm and safe before we can start working on new skills and reframing triggers. And I would argue that the human end of the leash likely needs a cortisol vacation as well, as the stress of walking a reactive dog builds up in you too.

One step at a time

When I ask my clients to stop walking their dogs it is neither a permanent intervention nor an easy button for behavior modification. The length of the break will depend on the dog – some dogs do well after a week, some dogs need several weeks. And some dogs do well and then regress and we have to pause walks again after restarting them. Learning is not linear and our dog’s learning history and past emotional experiences never really go away.

When we do start walks again it’s with a lot of practice indoors and in other safe spaces. We also spend a lot of time on focus games and rebuilding the bond between the dog and their human. This is a critical piece because if the relationship isn’t repaired, we don’t have much hope for calm walks. The dog practices being successful in learning new skills, and the human also learns new skills for everyday as well as those “just in case” moments lurking around the corner.

It’s through this holistic approach that we help our dogs see the world as enjoyable and safe. We build them rich lives where walks are only one component of their mental and physical stimulation, not their only outlet. So while it sounds counterintuitive, not walking your dog just might be the best thing for them.