Exercising your dog provides health benefits for both of you
There is a chocolate Labrador in our neighborhood who likes to take field trips.
He slips out his doggy door into the backyard and checks to see if his people have barricaded the rickety old gate sufficiently to keep him away from the great outdoors. If the garbage bin is not placed just so, he seizes his chance and he’s off. He usually heads to a nearby pond, where he swims to his heart’s content until a kind neighbor calls his people and his field trip comes to an end. Until the next time.
His people are missing a great opportunity. Well, not to go swimming in the pond, but to join that Lab who doesn’t view his field trips as “exercise.” He could be his people’s ticket to getting the 30 minutes of moderate physical activity a day that experts recommend for us two-footed types. Our four-footed friends with the wagging tails don’t need much encouragement.
You’ve read it in the paper, heard it on the radio, seen it on TV. As a nation, we are getting fatter, contending with an increasing epidemic of heart disease and falling victim to Type 2 diabetes. We’d go a long way to stemming this tide if we’d just do what our dogs are begging us to do: Take them for a daily walk. Or two.
Two scientists at the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have just published an epidemiologic study of dog walking in the United States. That means they studied a population, looking at their habits, trying to relate them to behaviors that affect their health. They looked at more than a thousand people who, in a 2001 survey called the National Household Travel survey, said they walk their dogs.
They found that 80 percent of the dog walkers took their dogs out at least once a day for at least 10 minutes. Fifty-nine percent of the dog owners took their pets for two or more 10-minute walks a day, and 42 percent took at least a 30-minute walk every day.
Bingo! There’s our 30 minutes of moderate activity! The experts (whoever they may be) say that moderate intensity translates to a brisk walk. Anyone who has ever taken an exuberant chocolate Lab for a walk knows that a vigorous walk is more like it.
Owning a dog certainly motivates some of us to be more active. In our neighborhood, Mr. Jim, a tall, energetic man, is out at least three times a day walking his small but equally energetic pug. One study, by researchers at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, suggested that what they called “dog obligation” motivated dog owners to walk an average of 300 minutes per week compared to 168 minutes for those without a dog to look at them with pleading doggy eyes
Does dog walking translate into measurable health benefits? No one has done the study, but researchers in Australia estimated that about 10 percent of coronary heart disease in New South Wales could be prevented if dog owners walked their dogs for at least 150 minutes a week. It stands to reason that the same would be true in Washington State. Or Idaho. Or British Columbia.
But all this stands to reason. We know that exercise is a critical component in keeping our weight under control. And we know that weight, or too much of it, is a major risk factor for high blood pressure, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. These diseases account for the major health burden of chronic disease that we Americans face. And while we may not be able to prevent every case of these chronic diseases, we sure could do a better job at it than we are doing now.
Oh, by the way, we’re getting that fence fixed this summer. So I guess Ouija’s field trips will diminish significantly. Jeffry and I best get out and take him and his buddy Harley out for more walks. We owe it to the boys. And to ourselves.