Minneapolis/St. Paul Nesties
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Kiz- re: Labs
I do have a question about labs, how old are your labs, and how much exercise do you give them every day to keep them happy? Also, how do you exercise with them? Take them walking/running/play? We know that they need activity, and we want to know more about what that means in terms of time. TIA!!
Re: Kiz- re: Labs
Our chocolate lab Boston is now 7 years old. We got him just before his 4th birthday. He does have some hip dysplasia on one side so we can't run him for too long or he'll get really sore/stiff. That being said, we play frisbee with him a couple of times a day for about 5-10 minutes each time and that is enough for him. When he was younger we ran him a lot more. He also swims at the cabin during the summer weekends but we don't let him go super long. We also take him on walks occasionally and he does well. Obviously a younger lab will need a lot more exercise!
Our (almost) 5 year old German shorthair pointer Renzo on the other hand needs a LOT of exercise or he'll go crazy and eat things. He goes to the dog park 5-6 times a week and runs runs runs!
Even within the breed you will find labs who need more or less exercise. I would bet money though that playing fetch will be on of their favorite activities! :-) We just make sure Boston maintains a good weigh for his frame (He is much taller and skinnier than most labs.)
I love the breed. Boston has a heart of pure gold and wants to be friends with EVERYONE! His tail never stops and his main goal in life is to please his people. He loves to play. I love labs because they are goofy, loyal, friendly, and relatively smart. (But not so smart that you have to entertain them all day.)
eta: A couple pictures of the boy who stole my heart...
oooo have to jump in here. We adopted a lab about 3 months ago and these ladies were SUPER helpful with advice! (FYI here's a gratuitous pic of the little bugger)
I agree that they need lots of exercise. Ours is 1 year old and is still a puppy. He goes out in the morning for a short (10 min) walk. Then he goes out after work for another 10 minutes. Before bed we bring him on a longer walk that's 20-30 minutes. That is pretty good but he does sometimes get a little wound up.
We're doing lots of obedience training so there's usually 15-20 minutes/day of training in the back yard mixed in with playing and fetch. Then the dog park is his BEST FRIEND. He seriously loves it and it's also great exercise for us! We go there every weekend and then probably twice/week. Summer is also great as he swims TONS at the cabin.
FYI we adopted him from Ruffstart Rescue out of Princeton, MN and they gets labs quite a bit! He's a purebred that we adopted at 9 months and I can't imagine our life without him! Good luck with finding your new family member!
My blog: Lake Girl Loves
Adooooooooraaaaabllllllllllllllllllle!
He MUST be a lab...there is a tennis ball in the picture. :-)
Our dog is supposedly a rottweiler/lab mix, but he's totally missing the lab fetching gene. He fails miserably at playing fetch, he's just not interested. He'll chase a ball when you throw it, but then he'd rather just run around with the ball in his mouth than bring it back to you and fetch again.
We think our dog is about 8, which is definitely considered "senior" for a large breed dog. He has hip dysplasia, so it's important for him to get some exercise or he gets really stiff and sore, but the exercise is limited. We take him for 30-minute walks twice a day, that's about all he can handle without starting to limp. He was 6 when he came to live with us, so we didn't experience his young and energetic days.
My family had a purebred lab when I was growing up, and she needed tons of exercise or she would get naughty and destructive. We adopted her at age 1.5 and she just had tons of energy. She got walked 5-6 miles a day and we played frisbee in the yard with her a lot. Without a ton of exercise, she would become destructive. For example, she chewed up a leather recliner once when we had a really cold week in the middle of winter and we had to shorten her walks because of the low temperatures. She was left home alone less than 2 hours and she completely shredded the chair. We learned our lesson about finding alternate exercise options when it was too cold to walk her outside!
Mr. Sammy Dog
Mine is a 13 year old lab/terrier mix. She definitely needed a ton of exercise when she was younger. I'd take her for a 3-4 mile hike in the evenings and play fetch some mornings (she surprisingly was not a morning dog) and almost every evening. I lived with my parents at the time and they had a lot of acreage so fetch involved me hitting the tennis ball with a racket as hard as I could. She would usually run fast enough to catch the ball before it even hit the ground. This wasn't always enough activity so she would destroy things. The destructive stage seemed to stop when she was 3 or so although she does still love shredding toilet paper if we don't close the bathroom door when we're gone.
She just started slowing down significantly in the last year or so with arthritis but she still loves her walks and hikes. She doesn't tolerate heat well so on the really hot days we throw the ball to her inside until she gets tired or bored (we have a really long hallway). On cooler days, we walk for about a mile. In the winter, she loves playing catch with snowballs and just sniffing the snow.
Aside from exercise, mental stimulation - like Kongs - cut down on the destructiveness.
Tired after a long morning of hiking and swimming.
Wow, she could not be more beautiful! Thanks much for all the info regarding how much exercise she gets!!