walks and hikes

[Augie Dog]

I don't know if I am letting Augie too much, too fast but, this dog LOVES to walk, run and hike! At 6 months he will bark his head off to go. He will jump up and grab his leash off the counter and shake it then bark like a mad dog!

We started him out by just going around the development, he still had energy to spare. Then we went to one of the parks that had a .8 mile paved loop. One lap is not enough, then it was two, now we are hiking 3 miles+ over hills and thru forest!

I had him on a 16 foot retractable leash, now I have an additional 25 foot lead on top of that. HE LOVES IT! He drives the rabbits nuts when he is there. Aug also knows grasshoppers are tasty! He's only 6 months old, are there any other dachsie's out there that are this active at a young age?

[dutchman]

I'd only had Frank for a couple of weeks and he was about six months old (had just lost the last of his baby molars) when we entered a 3 KM dog run the Fire Hydrant Five (they also have a 5 KM people race I did) that is a benefit for the local humane society. Since Frank was so young and we hadn't run more than 100 yards I thought we would race walk and lined up near the back of the pack. The race is run entirely on paved roads in late April. When the gun went off and the pack started moving in front of us Frank would have nothing of walking. He started pulling so hard on the leash that both front feet were off the ground and his body was approaching vertical as his hind legs pushed for all he was worth. I kept increasing our pace a little at a time till by about the half mile point Frank was running close to full out <IMG SRC="http://dachsie.org/ubb/cwmsmilies/cwm28.gif" border=0>. Every time we would pass another golden or lab Frank would look up at them with what looked like a grin <IMG SRC="http://dachsie.org/ubb/cwmsmilies/cwm9.gif" border=0> on his face then he would pick up the next dog up ahead and we start to real them in. I think we averaged about an 8 minute mile pace and considering our slow start we must have run a sub 7:30 pace a good part of the time. Three kilometers is 1.86 miles so quite a run for a untrained six month old dachshund. I swear Frank thinks he would have won if I hadn't held him back at the start. Before our hot summer weather hit we were doing a three mile walking loop on a regular basis.

Tom

[Penny's Aunt]

Frank sounds like a lead dog to me! Put him as leader of a pack of Malamutes, & he'll run their legs off.

(Maybe that's why dachsies have such short legs???)