Puppy Visits and Puppy Packages

Puppy Information:

When it comes to puppy exercising, a good rule of thumb is that puppies should have no more than five minutes of exercise for each month of age, two times a day, and this should be decreased in larger breeds.

Walking can be tiring for a puppy and to walk at a constant pace is totally unnatural so it is something we need to build up to slowly over time. Just walking for this short time, puppy walking should be very relaxed with lots of time to stop, sniff, explore and investigate the environment around them. Puppies are growing their brains as much as their bodies and this early exploration of the world around them is vital to their development, keeping continuous structured puppy walking to no more than two minutes at any one time.

Play time in the home counts too 

Despite seeming to have endless energy, puppies are good at self-limiting their own exercise, and so making sure the puppy has plenty of opportunity to run around and play under their own steam is important. If you watch puppies at this age, you’ll see they run around madly for a few minutes and then flop down to rest or sleep.

This isn’t just about their growing bodies, puppies do not have the cardiovascular system for endurance either, so these shorts burst of energy are all they can manage as they are building stamina for the future.

Remember a new puppy is only a baby, and like any baby, their physical abilities are limited. This means that we can cause lasting damage by over-exercising a puppy or expecting too much in the early weeks and even months.

Until a dog reaches sexual maturity – which is different in each breed – their bones are still growing. The growth plates within the bones, which allow them to lengthen as the dog gets larger, stays soft for a surprisingly long time, which is why over-exercising a pup might make them vulnerable to injury. Injuries at this time may not heal properly and can cause lasting problems for the dog. In addition to the soft growth plates, the rest of the puppy’s bones are softer too and so can break easily.

It’s not just the bones that are developing either – these are held together with muscles, tendons and ligaments that are working hard to support the puppy’s growing bones and joints, and they can also be vulnerable to injury caused by over-exercising your puppy or from the wrong kind of exercise or play