How much to exercise your new puppy

top tips

Puppies are excitable little furballs of fun.  Active puppies are healthy puppies and exercise is important for the wellbeing of your pup.  Keeping your new arrival active is advantageous for overall health and their relationship with you.

Regular exercise is important for the overall health of your dog and helps to prevent obesity and health issues associated with this.  Exercising also helps to build up a bond between yourself and your puppy and vital for training. Scheduling exercise will also help with housetraining building up confidence, important socialisation with people and other dogs.

A lack of exercise can cause destructive behaviour and lead to other negative behaviours.  Simply playing in the garden is not enough exercise for a puppy, and short walks regularly should be part of your exercise routine.  

Puppies do require less exercise than an adult dog. Too much exercise in a puppy can, however, cause joint damage, particularly in larger dog breeds or for breeds prone to joint problems.

Puppies should increase exercise by 5 minutes per month, per age, up to twice a day. As an example, a 3-month-old puppy should have 15 minutes of exercise each day, 20 minutes at 4 months, etc.

Forced exercise should be avoided e.g., excessive running as this could lead to long term health problems.  Try to restrict your puppy from jumping or climbing (even stairs) too, as this puts a strain on growing bones and joints, especially in large breed puppies.  

We would suggest if your puppy needs to use stairs, you carry your pup early days, as joint problems can occur with to much use of stairs as a puppy.

Watch out for excessive tiredness in a puppy as this could be an indication that they have had too much exercise.  Indeed, the opposite is true also in that being destructive, not sleeping could indicate not enough exercise.

All dogs are different, so it is a case of creep and go and take note of how your puppy is. Also, your breeder will know the breed type well and you can always ask them too.