Daily Doggie Exercise … no excuses !

In my last entry I talked about my daughter, her husband, 2 dogs and chickens coming to visit. As I mentioned I love having them with me but there are a few drawbacks.

One thing is that their dogs, as well behaved as they are, are used to having room to run and play. My house is situated very near a busy road and unless they are piled in the car and taken to a dog run they get little exercise.
But wait ! I have a treadmill that I use daily. Why can’t they do the same? We decided to give it a try.

It turned out to be a two person job but the dogs took right to it. It worked like this … we turned the treadmill on to a brisk pace and then my son-in-law situated one of the dogs on the very back end of the runway while still holding her tight and not letting her down. My daughter in the meantime settled in front of the treadmill machine with a small piece of carrot in her hand. As soon as the dogs were released they tried their darndest to run and get that carrot. It was amazing how well this worked.

Of course they outwitted the machine but they still had to do a lot of peddling to make it to the end and doing it over and over gave them plenty of exercise.

It was hysterical to see them scramble but when I tried to get an action shot it turned out to be nothing but a blur so I had to settle for these. I’m sure your imagination can picture it though.