Woodland Walks With Josie & Edie
Woodland walks with josie & edie
For us, walking Josie and Edie in the woods is very normal and something that we do almost daily. For some, they have a lot of reservations about walking their sighthound in the woods where there naturally is a lot more wildlife to contend with than there might be in a local park and that is something is something we’re all too aware of. We’re often met with a shocked response when we say we take our dogs off lead in the woods as it’s presumed that Josie and Edie are constantly on the hunt killing anything they come across. Even though that’s not true we’re very aware that we have to manage their natural-born prey drive and this is how we happily walk in the woods and manage their instincts.
why do we walk in the woods?
Before Josie and Edie came into our lives we always enjoyed going for a walk in the woods so it was pretty natural for us to want to enjoy those same walks with them once they came into our lives. We live in the North Nottinghamshire countryside and are surrounded by a vast array of woodland to explore so it seems silly not to make the most out of it. As well as it being somewhere we enjoy to walk scenery wise it’s a place that we personally feel safer walking Josie and Edie in comparison to a park. It’s not the only environment that we walk them in as we’re fortunate enough that just outside our house is one of the county's largest walking routes as well as a country park but Josie was hurt there by another dog walker so I don't feel that safe walking there. Personally, for me, I feel a lot safer walking in the woods even though there is the wildlife and horse rider risk to contend with as I find the type of dog owner you meet in the walks are a lot more friendly than the owners that we’ve generally met elsewhere.
what are our walks are generally like
As walking in the woods is so normal for us we’re now at the stage where the walks are very enjoyable and 95% of the time they’re completely stress free. However, any of you who are familiar with these blog posts I write will know Josie used to be quite a wanderer and if she spots a deer before we do she will chase it but these days, it’s very rare that she disappears in the trees and I truly never thought we’d get to this point. Edie is brilliant off the lead, she happily trots around by our feet and she never really goes anywhere so we don’t have to worry about her at all unless she’s followed Josie into the trees but she’s never gone for longer than a few seconds. Something that I think is important for every dog owner to discover is what distance they're happy with their dog being away from them on a walk. Edie generally walks very close to us and will stop and have a sniff in a bush and then come running back whilst Josie is slightly more independent and walks around 20ft in front of us so we can see perfectly well what she’s doing and she’s not so far away we can’t call her back at that distance. She now walks with us more than ever at the moment and she’s almost 3 so we’ve really noticed a huge difference in how she is on walks which has been wonderful. I don’t expect either of my dogs to just walk by my side on walks and I encourage them to sniff and explore at their own pace (to what I feel is a safe extent) as I think that’s important for them as a walk is for them, not for me.
should you walk a sighthound in the woods?
As I said, we’re often greeted with a shocked response that we take Josie and Edie off the lead in woodland. Whilst I do realise why people are often shocked that we do this in what is probably their idea of heaven and an environment full of plenty of temptations I don’t believe it’s something that it’s impossible to do with a sighthound. However, I’m all too aware that for a lot of dogs (not just sighthounds) it is not possible for them to be off lead in such an environment especially if they are active hunters or have been used as working dogs in the past. We’ve had both Josie and Edie since puppies so they’ve never been encouraged to hunt and we’ve worked incredibly hard to manage Josie’s instinct to wander. It’s easy to forget that almost all dogs have the instinct to chase something whether that be a squirrel or a deer. I’ve met countless amounts of dog owners (not one of them with a sighthound) who cannot take their dog off lead in the woods because of the amount of times they’ve been gone for hours upon hours when they’ve chased something and it’s never something we’ve had an issue with to that extent. The longest Josie has ever been gone for is around 10-15 minutes and whilst to me, that is far too long to not have any control over my dog it's nowhere near as bad as some people have experienced. When she has been gone that long it’s typically because she’s eating something she shouldn’t as she will nearly always vomit afterwards.
josie’s wandering
I often worry I’ve painted a slightly unjust picture of Josie on our Instagram as in reality, she’s a brilliant dog. She does lean into her instinct on occasion and that’s ok as it’s up to us to manage those natural behaviours and by constant positive reinforcement it’s something that we’ve worked on so much over the past year especially. Josie very rarely wanders these days and if she does it will absolutely be in a spot that she’s chased something before (she’s an extreme creature of habit which makes these situations a lot easier to manage). In those spots depending on her general mood that day which we can now read pretty well we’ll either lead her on past that area with us with the aid of the treats or put her back on lead until we’re in an area I know she’s safe in. There are a few things we do that we believe help Josie a lot and they are;
Keep her on lead for the first few minutes of the walk, even though in a lot of places she could just be off lead straight away I prefer to have on some on lead time at the beginning and at the end of the walk.
We reinforce recall as soon as she is let off lead with treats and praise.
Regular check ins are really important so we call their name and reward and repeat that throughout the walk. When walking the dogs by myself I talk to them a lot as I find this is something else that helps.
Pay close attention to her body language, you can easily tell when she’s going to dart into the trees as she does a very quick scamper and she will usually come back with enough excitement from us and we do put her back on lead in those instance until her body language goes back to normal.
We go on a different walk daily and have around 10 or so spots that we rotate through, once Josie gets too used to her environment that’s when she will start to wander. I’m aware how much of a luxury that is for Josie and Edie and I’m so happy I’m in the position to give it them at this stage in their life.
We use falconry bells on Josie’s collar so that not only can we hear her if she’s snuffling around in the tree’s (which we’re ok with) but it can let any animals in the area know that there is something around and since using bells we’ve had a huge decrease in Josie’s wandering and if she does then we can hear her which is incredibly reassuring.
your questions
This post idea was a suggestion from our pal Lolly the Whippet and then I put a story question option out to ask if there were any specific things that you’d like to be covered in this post and these were the most frequently asked questions:
sheep?
If we know there is a high risk of encountering sheep on a walk we will absolutely not take Josie off lead and keep a really close eye on Edie but we do not allow either dog off lead around any other animal apart another off lead dog. It’s incredibly important to us that we respect any other animals that are in the area that we’ve chosen to walk in.
do you regularly recall them?
Yes, absolutely! As we are constantly working on our recall we check in with both dogs a lot whether there is something to recall them from or not. We reward them for not only responding to their recall command but also checking in with us of their own accord.
how do you get your attention back if they’ve spotted something?
To put it quite simply, we don’t. We’ve had some fluke incidences of recalling Josie away from a deer but they’re few and far between. When Josie and Edie have chased something typically Edie will be back within a few seconds and Josie will follow, they don’t chase until they’ve caught it and lose interest very quickly. We don’t encourage chasing wildlife at all and we’re very alert on walks so we can recall them when we think something is around and put them back on their leads but that's not always possible and we just handle the situation as well as we know how to.
how to you get them back if they’ve chased something?
We wait, we don’t continually call Josie’s name as I don’t believe this is something that helps with recall at all but we do shout her name every so often so she knows the general area we are in. We never move from the spot that she left us from and we’ve never had any issues with her being unable to find us.
how do you deal with coming across deer?
We’ve not any issues with Josie chasing a deer in a long time now thankfully (which I do think is down to her wearing her falconry bells) but over the years we’ve learnt the type of trees deers are typically hanging around in on the walks we go on so we always keep a close eye on her. On the odd occasion one has popped out and we’ve spotted it before she has we always put her back on the lead and wait a good 5 minutes to take her back off lead as well as use treats as a distraction method.
have they ever killed something?
Josie has only ever come back with a squirrel once and we have no idea if she killed it or she found it as it had no puncture marks and she dropped it at our feet. She had absolutely no interest in eating it and was quite happy to come away from it (on lead) which I’ve been told by many is probably not what she would do if she had killed it. Apart from that one incident we’ve never had any issues with Josie and Edie hunting, we joke J is only is interested in the chase as she won’t even eat treats with fur on them so I don’t believe her interest in ripping something apart is that high but I take as many precautions as I can to stop from that happening.
