Border Collie Puppy Adventure Walk.

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Adventure walks are a foundational part of the Avidog program. On an adventure walk, we take young puppies starting at 5 to 6 weeks old into a safe outdoor area. That might be, depending upon where a person lives, the woods, a field, or the beach- very early in the morning before other dogs are around. The puppies are off-leash. Puppies can be taken together or one at a time. They learn to explore and interact with the world and to follow people. Because puppies have an innate instinct to follow their Mom, they then learn to follow you and pay attention to where we are and stick with us. This only happens from 5 to 6 weeks of age up to 16 weeks. At the end of 16 weeks, their following instinct goes away.

They also figure out, “How do I get over that log, and how do I get through that creek bed?” We're not going to over-face them with problems that are too difficult, but we're going to let them start solving some problems. Adventure walks allow them to experience scents, see rocks, and smell leaves. No matter how good our puppy pens are, they can not stimulate our puppies’ brains as well as the woods, beaches, and fields can. We have to make sure that our puppies are safe and that there are no other dogs around.

Puppies are location sensitive. Their brain is hypersensitized to specific areas. Their pen. Their house. Their yard. They learn a trail very quickly, usually by the second time we've gone down it. Then they disperse more; they scatter more because they know where they are. One way to combat this familiarity is by building several trails in the woods or going in different directions. On the first day, we may go to the right. And on our next adventure walk, we will go the left. And the third day, we walk straight down the middle so that we're continually offering them a different experience, a different approach to the woods.

We don't go on adventure walks in sweltering weather. Puppies don't have the best cooling systems- dogs don't have the best cooling systems, but puppies have even worse. If it's really hot, they are just going to be miserable. We try and do it early in the morning or late in the evening when the sun is not beating down.

We recommend you continue adventure walks up until 16 weeks of age. If you're worried about coyotes and other wildlife, you can do three things.

1. Take your adult dogs, or if you have a large enough adult dog that would be off-putting to a coyote.

2. Take fewer puppies and more people.

3. And/or if you can get helium balloons or something else and tie them to the puppy's collar. It completely changes the silhouette. Silhouettes are important to canids as they're hunting. If you can completely change that silhouette, it’s conducive to keeping hawks away and keep coyotes away.

~ Dr. Gayle Watkins, Avidog