If you have a dog, you have an extra level of motivation for exercise.

Welcome to Walking is Fitness. This is a podcast of action, providing a little extra motivation

to help you keep that fitness promise you made to yourself.

Hi, I'm Dave. I've been walking for fitness since 2013, averaging about 21,000 steps a day.

I'm walking right now, and I would love to have you join me for the next 10 minutes.

I'm going to talk about something today that I have not spent any time talking about since I began the podcast over a year ago,

and that is walking with a dog.

And the obvious reason why I haven't talked about this is because I don't have a dog.

I've had one dog in my life, and that was Brownie.

Brownie was a mutt.

I think I was seven years old.

Got him as a puppy.

Brownie couldn't stop biting things, including me and my sisters,

and my parents, for whatever reason, determined this was not going to work and gave brownie to someone

else. So I have not been able to talk about this from personal experience, but I can talk about it

from observational experience and also share with you a little bit of research that if you own a dog, I think you

will find very encouraging. So my home office is in a room at the front of the house, and as I'm working,

I can see the neighborhood activities, and one of those activities that I see every day are neighbors walking their dogs.

There's John who lives the street behind ours. John has a poodle named Jasper. This is one of the big poodles.

And I see John and Jasper walking by my home office several times a day.

And John and Jasper walked the entire circle of our neighborhood.

And I know that because even I have been out walking and have encountered John and Jasper at various points around the neighborhood.

...