# Growth Plates



## belf1125 (Aug 21, 2008)

Hello all,

We have a 4 month old girl vizsla who is, of course, full of energy. We definitely do our best to get her daily exercise in. However, I recently read in some places that they should not walk for more than twice their age in minutes at one time. So her being four months, should we only walk her 8 minutes at a time? From the same source, I also read they should only walk on dirt or grass and to avoid cement, sidewalks, etc. for their first year? 

Everyone who owns a vizsla knows what the "rodeo" look is, right! When she gets that look, we know she needs to burn some energy so we either take her for a walk or play games with her in the yard or in the house. Once in awhile this happens at 11:30pm and we are trying to head to bed. So when she was about 2.5 months old we took her downstairs to our treadmill and let her walk about 3 minutes at a good pace and she loved it! We have done this several times over the last month and a half, but never more than 3-5 minutes at a good walking pace or slow trot. Do you think this is hurting her growth plates? That is definitely the last thing we want! We figured though that at least introducing it to her at a young age would make it easier for later on in her adulthood. Please let us know your thoughts! If you do discourage the occasional use of a treadmill, feel free to offer other suggestions to add to her daily walks, and playing with her indoors and out. I find we feel we're a rock in a hard place because this breed has more energy early on than its growth plates can handle. How do you know where to draw the line between getting a dog enough exercise and not hurting its growth??????????????


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## spicyvizsla (Nov 10, 2008)

sounds like you've had some pretty interesting nights for the last 3 months. hehe we had them too (our female V is now 7 months) and we still have them. what we try to aim for is wear her out daily and monitor her nap times throughout the day and if you get her on somewhat of a schedule then she should start to get in bed the same time you want to. of course you can't expect her to hold her bladder as long as you can, so you will more then likely have to get up at least once during the night to let her out. do you crate her or does she sleep with you?

as far as her growth plates..
we had troubles with this as well because we live in an apartment in the middle of a big city and although we live in a fenced in one building complex with an attached fenced in parking lot, we only have less than half and acre total of grass for her to potty and run. so we do let her run freely around on the pavement of the parking lot. we end up throwing her kong wubba for her on the pavement and she runs nearly full speed out there. i don't think it has really negatively affected her growth plates. and the other thing is she had a pediatric spay (they say the big thing about spaying so young is that the dogs growth plates close at a much slower rate) and so if it was bad for her..you'd think she wouldn't be on a normal growth rate as of now; considering she's been running off leash on pavement since she was 2 months. i think the treadmill might actually be better than running on concrete or pavement because it has at least a little more give than hard ground. how tall is your girl now? and how much does she weigh?


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