I don’t know about you, but I love a good challenge.  Not the crazy challenge like tugging with your dog for an hour (you try tugging with a 90 pound lab, I spent more time on my ass than I do at my job and that’s saying something.)  No I like the type of challenge that pushes me to do a bit more than I normally do, which is why I jumped at the chance to participate in K-9 Kamp this year.

This year’s K-9 Kamp was “Do More.” 

Peggy’s e-mail said, “Do half an hour more than you’re doing now, two to three times per week.”

Jodi’s said, “Do half an hour more than you’re doing now, three to four times per week.”

I listened to Peggy.

Last night we sat around the campfire and held paws and sang Kamp songs, and reflected on the last three weeks of Kamp.

Okay, it was really me, holding their paws, they could have cared less.

There’s a lot to consider when taking up exercising, especially when you’re doing it with your pet.

Sampson and Delilah are older dogs, 9 and 7 1/2 respectively, they walk every day and maintain a healthy weight.  The challenge was to do more than we were currently doing.  I tried to do this in two ways.

The first was to increase our walking time. Our walks during the week typically last between 25 minutes to half an hour.  Since our park is fairly small we can normally get to the entrance from just about anywhere within the park in five to ten minutes.  Normally at the 25 minute mark I head for the entrance.

To add some times to our walk, I rounded up.  Let’s say we got to the park at 5:41, I would note the time as 5:45 and not turn for home until we’d actually hit 6:15.  In this manner I added anywhere from five to fifteen minutes to each of our week day walks.

On the weekends I wouldn’t turn for home until we’d hit the forty five minute mark.

I also tried to add a bit more intensity to our walks.  The great thing about our trail system is the difficulty of the trails.  We have easy trails and hard trails.  Normally during the week we stay on the easy trails, leaving the harder ones for the weekend.  But this was K-9 Kamp and we were supposed to challenge ourselves, so we made sure to hit the harder trails four and five times per week.

We also used the obstacles we encountered to challenge ourselves.

No more sneaking under the fallen tree!

Why do you keep saying, “Up, down, up down?”

No, I would have to say our biggest obstacle this year was the weather.  The first weekend it was so hot and humid the dogs barely wanted to walk for half an hour.  On those days I really had to limit their walks, and make sure to stop for water breaks as well as making sure the little pool was full for when we got home.  Those days we kept our walks to 30 minutes.

Ah, a nice refreshing dip.

The next weekend it rained. We had a lot of rain.  Normally speaking Sampson and Delilah don’t mind walking in the rain, but we had a couple of really bad, rainy days.  When my dog stands in the back of the car and looks towards the park and you can see him debating getting out of the car, you know it’s crappy weather!

We did get wet a few times.

We had so much rain in the month of June that by the 15th we were already at 75% more rain than we normally get in the month of June!  This made for some really wet areas on our walks and some of the paths actually had water running down them.

Sampson didn’t mind, he took the opportunity to cool off in some of the running water.

Zoomies count too, right?

When I first got the challenge I thought, how can I do more?  I mean we walk every day.  But a few minutes here and there add up.  We added about 2 hours more per week to our walking routine.

Which I think is pretty darn good.

How about you?  Did you take the challenge?  How did you do?

Many thanks to Jodi Chick and Peggy Frezon for including us as a featured blogger in the K-9 Kamp Challenge.  Don’t forget to visit our hosts to share your Kamp experiences and enter in a chance to win an awesome prize valued at over $200!