[pct-l] Dog Health Incidents and Prevention

[Luce Cruz]

On Sun, Mar 13, 2016 at 2:28 PM, DayLate07 . <dthibaul07 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Here is a pretty good, albeit somewhat pro dog, write up of health issues
> with dogs on the trail.
>
> http://www.postholer.com/faq.php#dogs
>

I'm glad I had a chance to read that. There were a couple of things I did
not know that I was happy to learn.

Humans are endurance animals, most other animals are not so good with
> endurance activity.
> If you take a dog on a thru hike, you need to be willing to hike your dogs
> hike, not to hike your own hike.


I know the breed is carefully chosen and the training is very carefully
done, but the Iditarod is an endurance dog race.

I think that dogs can be conditioned for long work days as long as the
proper breed is chosen and the individual dog's health is good. Shepherd
breeds can work all or most of the day once conditioned for that much work,
and they are moving much faster than dog walking speed when working with
people on horses.

I'm not sure I would be thrilled about carrying all of the dog's food, too,
since they can't carry more than about 10% their body weight as a general
rule. On long stretches, that is a lot of extra food. I suppose that if a
hiker and dog team had support during their trip meeting them at road
crossings and/or trailheads, the support could also relieve the dog of long
walking if needed. It seems that without the risky caching of extra dog
food along the way (animals sniffing out the cached dog food and trying to
get at it), it would be very hard to thru hike without some support to help
get the dog food to the hiker and dog, and there will be a lot of it
consumed. The dog will get hiker hungry, too.

-- 
Luce Cruz