How active is the average dog? And do extreme weather events affect their activity? 

Researchers are appealing to dog owners around the world for help.

What did your dog do today? How about your neighbour's dog? From the moment they woke up, to the point at which they curled up in their bed (or perhaps your bed), how did they spend their day? Did they go out for a walk, or a run? Did they chase a ball, or a cat? Did they compete in a canicross race, or train for an agility competition? Did they do as much as they were doing this time last year? Do you know what they will be able to do this time next year?

Surprisingly, we don’t know very much at all about dog activity levels.

Google “how much exercise does a dog need every day”, and one site will tell you this varies from dog to dog. Another site goes as far as to provide breed specific information on just how much your dog should be doing. For example, a Beagle apparently needs over two hours of exercise daily to keep them physically and mentally fit. A canine charity suggests how many walks a dog should ideally have a day. So who do you trust, and which one is right for your dog?

None of these popular, well-respected websites list any evidence base, such as references or sources of information to support these statements.

Go a step further with a search to Google Scholar. Search “dog OR canine AND activity levels”. The results explore how dog ownership impacts human activity levels, walking and general health. The only results relating to the dog’s activity levels, explore the use of wearable technology for measuring step count and distance travelled. We just don’t know how much exercise the average dog is getting, so we have absolutely no idea how age, breed, health status or external factors such as location or weather, impact the dog’s ability to exercise.

Amongst the articles on how dog ownership impacts human health, we see at one point the British tabloids reported the National Health Service was prescribing dog walking to help people keep fit, following a study showing that older people walked more if they own a dog. Sounds good? Perhaps, until you explore the study design. Participants were required to confirm their ability to walk unaided for a minimum of 10 minutes continuously. Ok, sounds reasonable? For the dog owning participants, they had to confirm the same criteria applied to their dog. So sadly, this study is flawed because it excludes all the dog owners who don’t have an active dog. 

The key problem with suggesting dog ownership to improve human health and physical activity levels, is the lack of evidence for normal canine activity levels. Confounding that, we also have no idea how canine factors such as breed, age or health impact activity levels. To complicate things further, increasingly frequent extreme weather events such as record breaking heatwaves like those seen in parts of Australia in 2017 — and the UK, Canada and Japan in 2018 — may also impact a dog’s ability to exercise. We just don’t know. 

In planning our next research project, we hit this wall. To get past it, we need to know: how active are our dogs? What affects their ability to be active? It’s always interesting when some of these really fundamental questions have been overlooked in the field of canine science, and we’re excited to learn more.

Participate in the online survey

Through our online survey we are investigating activity levels in dogs of every age, every breed, from all over the world. We are asking owners to share their dog’s health status so we can investigate if certain health problems impact a dog’s ability to exercise. It may sound obvious that a dog with a painful hip won’t want to walk as far as a healthy dog, but what about a dog with long-term itchy skin, or epilepsy? Does their disease impact their exercise routine? 

We also want to know how the weather affects dogs. How are the heatwaves affecting dog’s activity levels? Are they exercising at all, or is the risk of heatstroke too great? At the other extreme, what happens when it snows? Do some dogs love the snow and exercise more, or do they get too cold and refuse the leave the house!

Share your dog’s activity levels

We would like all dog owners to complete the survey, no matter how old, young, or healthy your dog is. The survey can be completed as many times as required, so if you have more than one dog, re-start the survey for each individual dog. If you feel a question doesn’t apply to you, leave it blank, or leave a comment. 

Please access and share the survey using this link: https://ntusurvey.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/investigating-dog-activity-levels 

The results

The survey doesn’t close until the end of 2018, so you’ll need to be patient while we crunch the numbers, but all results will be shared via the project blog, at https://heatstroke.dog/ 

Any questions, please get in touch via heatstroke.dog@gmail.com

Yep - that adult (green coat) having more fun than any kid? That's me.

Hey Julie,

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• If coping can be achieved easily with little effort and resource, energy and time use – welfare is considered OK. 
• If it fails to cope or coping takes much time/energy/resources, then welfare is obviously poor.

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• The welfare of a sentient animal is determined by its capacity to avoid suffering and sustain fitness.
• Not only will welfare mean control of pain and suffering, it will also entail nurturing and fulfilment of animals natures.

From within Stafford:

• The welfare of an animal relates to its subjective experiences of life.
• We can never know the subjective experience of a dog but we can be reasonably sure of its physical condition and can use physiological, behavioural and immunological parameters to give some indication of an animal’s experience of suffering and pleasure.
• The strength of these emotions may be measured using physiological and behavioural parameters that appear to be common to many mammals including humans.
• Interpretation is always subjective.

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How would you rate this dog's welfare compared to the one below? (source)

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Instead, I think I prefer to say that I understand ‘animal welfare’ as a state of an individual animal which can range from negative to positive and is influenced by its physical, behavioural, environmental and affective experiences. I’m also quite prepared to change this understanding as I continue to learn. 

What ‘good animal welfare’ refers to may need to wait to be a topic for another day!