3 advice for more enjoyable autumn walks with your dog

I'm sure you've all wondered how you can make autumn walks more meaningful for your pet. Here are some tips to help.

Finally, the days when we didn’t want to go out with our pets because of the terrible heat, because there was a risk of heatstroke and our dogs were not that active, are over. We had to plan when we could take him out in cooler weather (or already), so it may have taken a bit more logistics to fit in a daily walk, and it may not have been as enjoyable. From mid-September onwards, however, the weather is becoming more and more conducive to more leisurely walks for a while, which is good for both owner and dog. With a free weekend, a raincoat and a few hours of exploring the world is no problem, and I’m sure your pet will be happy to accompany you. But it’s not just the planned, longer walks that have become more accessible, for many people the weather has perhaps even made their daily routine easier, at least when it comes to walking the dog. Here are some advice to make everyday autumn walks more interesting for your dog.

Leave the routine for walks

True, routine is important for most dogs, but not in all areas of life. A good example of this is walking. It can be very good for your pet to have fixed points in his schedule and to know that he can go for a walk with his owner, say, every morning after he gets up. But if we always follow the same route, it can get boring for us and for our dog. How much more exciting if we change the directions a little. That way, the same morning walk will be more interesting and your pet will enjoy the adventure more.

Let your dog sniff around on autumn walks (too)

Let’s face it, walking itself (as a form of exercise) will not be physically and mentally exhausting enough, especially if you are taking your dog out “only” for health reasons. In the pressurised pace of everyday life, we sometimes forget that routine walks can become boring after a while. It can happen that if we only focus on getting as far as we can in the time available to us, this will unfortunately not be enough for most dogs in the long term.

Many people get annoyed when their pet stops to sniff around, even though this is how dogs explore their environment. In fact, they often live in a world of smells, so sniffing is an important part of their lives. So much so that it even has a stress-reducing effect, and can even help boost confidence. It’s better to walk just 1 km in 30 minutes, but allow your pet to explore the environment at its leisure, than to walk 2-3 km in the same time, at a brisk pace, with only the obligatory defecation breaks.

Sometimes he can drive

If you have time and you’re not in a hurry to get home, you can let your pet take the lead for a bit. (This is closely related to the previous tip to let your dog sniff around.) Let him decide where to go, when to stop and when to start walking. After all, walks together are primarily for our dog’s benefit, so this small change can add a lot to the quality of the walk.

It is important to do all of these things in a controlled way. Take it in turns. There is nothing to add to the first tip, because it is mostly a matter of time, opportunity and mood, how much you can or want to change the route you are used to. The second tip was to let your pet sniff. This should not be thought of as dragging us from tree to tree to get to the interesting smells. Rather, take him (if you have the opportunity) to interesting places, on varied routes, keep him on a loose leash and allow him to explore a spot for up to 1-2 minutes. Give him the opportunity to do this and introduce walks of this kind. Of course, he must learn that he cannot always sniff everything. That there are times when he has to walk alongside the owner, on a loose lead, in a structured way. But if there is a balance between the two, it is very likely that the latter will be easier.

Last but not least, let’s talk about when the dog leads, not the owner. Here again, it is important not to jerk and to keep a loose leash. One of the most important goals of this exercise is to improve communication with your pet. So that our dog learns how to signal when he is interested in something, and how we can tell. How to tell him when it’s clear and when to turn back. This is perhaps a little more advanced in dog training and is more for educated dog-owner pairs, but definitely worth experimenting with.