We, as humans, love doing exercises. We watch out our diet and calorie intake as a way to complement our exercise because we want to be fit and healthy. Experts have done countless research on how many calories we burn when doing exercises, and many fitness enthusiasts followed through this and started creating their own charts that list numerous ways on how many calories you can burn by pairing it with different types of exercises. Nowadays, there are gym equipment and smart gadgets equipped with tools and apps that can monitor and calculate how much calories we, humans, burn. But what about our dogs? How do we know how many calories our dogs burn? Is there a way to track these activities and calorie expenditure for our dogs? There are many dog activity trackers available, I track all my dogs’ activities with Tractive.
Calorie Expenditure for Dogs
In this day and age, it is a surprising fact that we don’t know much yet about how our dogs, and pets in general, burn calories. Although there isn’t much evidence to back up this system, veterinarians and pet health practitioners follow a certain rule called the 70/30 percent rule. This rule shows that dogs or pets that are enrolled in any weight loss programs that specifically include exercises lose about 70% of their calories mainly because of their calorie restriction, and 30% of their calories because of exercise.
There are extensive amounts of research on how exercise affects the physiological aspects of horses, there exists no such thing for our cats or dogs but there is little to none for cats and dogs. We did a little bit of research and this is what we found out about the calorie expenditure for dogs.
There is one study that shows that a 20-pound dog can burn at least 64 calories after a one-hour walk. This is derived from a dog walking at a 3.7 to 4 miles an hour pace. Although, we owners couldn’t resist giving them treats which then contradicts the results of this exercise. Another thing to consider is that it is highly unlikely for most of us owners to maintain a 15-minute-mile pace, so the burned calorie for our dog would just most likely average lower in a one hour walk. There hasn’t been any studies yet concerning slower walking pace for dogs.
However, there is another study that shows that a 22-pound dog walking on a treadmill can burn around 64 calories in 30 minutes while being submerged in about 10 inches of water and maintaining a 6.8-mile-per-hour pace. It’s good to note that this pace is 2 miles an hour less than that of a marathon runner. However, it is most likely that an overweight dog would find it hard to maintain that pace for around 30 minutes. And even if they reach that pace, it would only result in a mere 64 calories burned.
Tracking Dog Calories With Dog Activity Monitor
Technology has helped us in many aspects of our lives, and it is certainly helping us now in terms of taking care of our pets. Now there is a way to monitor the daily activities of our dogs.
Dog activity monitor is a device that monitors or tracks the activity or inactivity of our dogs. This gadget has a lot of features that can help us determine various things with regards to our dogs. You can use it to monitor when they walk, play, and even when they take a nap. Another helpful feature that comes with this is a GPS tracker, similar to GPS dog collars, for if they get lost, you have a way to find out where they are. I personally use Fi collar for my dogs, it works awesome.
Another interesting feature this product has are to-do lists and messengers. With this, you can keep your dog-sitters informed about any progress or updates you want them to know before handing your dog over to them. In connection with this, this device also has Bluetooth capabilities which means that you will be able to see who is with your dog anytime.
The most notable features that we like about this device are its progress tracker and goal-setting capabilities. We all not only want our dogs to be fit and healthy, but we also want a way to find out if the diet and exercise we give them is working out for them or not. So, the progress trackers are there to track the calorie expenditures of our dogs and how active they are compared to other similar dogs, and the goal-setting capabilities are there to proactively help our dogs to live a healthier and balanced life. And we believe that a dog smart collar is the best way to do all these and keep track of the daily lives of our pets.
What Can We Take From This?
Even though there haven’t been enough studies to explore more on this topic, we still encourage dog-owners to give their dogs an ample amount of time to do exercises and other physical activities as this is very important to help them stay healthy and fit. And even if the calories burned in a certain amount of time is quite low, and the amount of exercise you make them do might feel worthless, with the help of a proper diet and eating habits, it will surely help our dogs maintain the right weight.
Similar to how we want to take care and keep an eye on our health and fitness, we dog-lovers also want and have the need to keep in a track on how our dog is doing and dog activity monitors are just the right device to monitor their daily activities and calorie expenditure.
Exercise and staying active is healthy for both humans and pets, and doing such activities as exercise and playtime also gives us time to bond with our dogs. If you think about it, this kind of effort is not really pointless and a waste of time. Because if you can keep a pace that makes you sweat while walking your dog, and get your dog panting, it is certainly a great way to promote a better and healthier lifestyle, not only for your dog but also for you.
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