Last fall I took up bike riding with Petal. I bought her a WalkyDog from Amazon and got her use to the bike and we were off! Petal absolutely loved it. She loves to run and with the bike I could actually get going fast enough for her liking. Of course she is also happy to run at a more regular pace or even just trot beside me. We both really enjoyed it (even when I felt sore or had jelly legs). Back in February Petal and I moved in with some very dear friends of mine and I didn’t take the bike with me because of storage, plus I wasn’t sure I wanted to try riding it up some of the steep dirt trails up there in the mountains. Plenty of people did it, but I wasn’t sure, so we stuck with hiking on foot and had a wonderful time with that.

A few weeks ago, however, we moved back home. Back to southern Utah with my family and Petal’s canine and feline cousins. While we’re both happy to be with my family again, we fell into a bit of a funk, both of us missing my dear friends that I consider family. We were also missing our routine. So we came up with a new one and part of that new routine is we’ve started biking again.

(If you can’t see the video click here. And yeah, at the end I had to tell her not to run into my iPad, which we were using to record this little clip, because she kept pulling towards it like she was going to grab it for me as we passed, lol, so helpful).

Petal LOVES it and I really enjoy it as well. Petal wears her Kurgo harness (affiliate link) attached to the walky dog. I love to use this harness because it has a wide chest with some padding. I also love it for the sturdy ring on the back that slides up and down the back strap of the harness. This is really useful while biking because I can take just a quick glance at it to see if Petal is keeping pace, falling behind, or wanting to go faster based on where the clip is at.

Then I wear our (favorite because it’s so versatile) leash in a cross body style and clip it to her martingale collar, it stays nice and slack even when she pulls because she pulls against the harness and the walky dog bike attachment. The collar and leash are just for insurance. Say the walky dog falls off after riding down a particularly bumpy road, then instead of running free, I have her attached to me. And yes, this has happened once, but only once and we’ve used it a lot since, so I may not have had it attached properly. Or it was just a freak thing. Whatever the case may be, I was thankful I had a backup.

Biking, when done safely, is a really fun and great way to exercise. It’s an exercise you can enjoy with your dog.

Have you ever biked with your dog? Did you enjoy it? Do you have any tips? Let us know in the comments!

P.S. Yesterday was Lassie’s birthday. He would’ve been ten years old. I miss him so much. I celebrated by having ten photos of him printed in cute little 4×4 squares. I love how they turned out!

That middle one doesn’t look like a photo of Lassie at all, but it is. Looking closely you can make out his outline as he lays outside watching the sunset with me. It’s one of the millions of Favorite Memories I have with him, it is also one of the most recent ones. It was calm and peaceful and beautiful.

Today we are staying fit and joining the FitDog Friday blog hop hosted by SlimDoggy, My GBGV Life and To Dog With Love. Thank you hosts!