Thanks.Noobs wrote:I brought my dog (Lab/Whippet we suspect) from the shelter when he was 8 months old. By the time he was 10 months old I had him attached by harness to my bike and running to and from the dog park for playtime for a total of 4 miles running, 30-40 minutes of play, about 2 hours all together. My vet said she thought she saw me from her car biking with him and said "Take it easy" but didn't tell me the "5 minutes per month of age" rule specifically. So instead of cutting back, I just pedaled more slowly. I didn't know about that equation until I read it on this board several months after I'd been exercising him in that way. He hasn't been exercised that vigorously with consistency in several months, and he's now nearly 3 years old. So far I haven't seen anything physically wrong with his legs/joints/etc. ::knock wood::
Since you have a BC it's natural to want to give him as much exercise as you can so as to keep him "out of trouble" as it were. And it's possible that you did overwalk him, but I do hope if you observe him that you don't see anything wrong physically. There are vets and vet techs on this forum who are of course more qualified to answer your question. How old is he now, and have you adjusted the amount of exercise he's now getting? I believe it was Nettle who said a while back that the age that you can stop calculating is 18 months.
Yeah, like you say, when you speak to anyone about getting a BC all you hear is "they need loads of exercise", and I was fully prepared for it before I took the plunge and decided to take a Collie on. He is roughly 12/13 months now and I've seen nothing to suggest he has any problems. He's been to the vets before and they've not said anything. I did reduce the amount of walk time to about 1.5-2.0 hours a day off the lead. He's a happy playful dog, is well behaved and gets incredibly excited when he realises we're going for walkies. I've read up about the symptoms and he's not displaying any at the moment so fingers crossed.
It's just strange that I've only heard the 5 mins/month thing on the internet. I asked questions at the vets when he had his jabs regarding walking (admittedly didn't ask about the length of the walks), but they never mentioned about hip dysplasia being bought on by his infant exercise regime. It is hard to know what you should believe on the internet at times. I know loads of people with dogs, even an award winning breeder and I've never heard anyone say anything about it.
I'll be keeping a vigilant eye on him.