A little over a month ago, we adopted a dog from a Rescue group. Griffin is just over a year old, and fifty pounds of pure muscle. There’s no way I can run fast or far enough to give him the exercise he needs, so I put my fat tire to a new service. Today we did over eleven miles and Grif was running hard most of the time. I still haven’t found his limit.
I need to keep Grif on a leash because he has a ferocious instinct to go after prey of all kinds: rabbits, quayle, coyotes, bobcats, cars, other cyclists… if it runs he’ll bolt after it. (Hopefully some day we’ll train him not to chase.) After experimenting and biting the dust several times, I found that attaching the leash to the bike seat with a biner and a bike tube works pretty well. Because it’s attached to the most stable part of the bike, when Grif tries to bolt and pull, it’s easy to maintain speed and direction. I learned this when I was taught to do bumping drills on the track.