About our dingo walks: how far & the native wildlife we see

Text reads: dingo walks; about dingoes and exercise. Image of an Australian dingo with its tongue handing out.

One of the questions I had at the start of our rescue journey was how long I should walk my dingoes. If you’re thinking of adopting a dingo or what dingoes are like as pets, find this article useful. You might also want to check out my articles and videos: Dingoes as pets: 10 reasons not to get a dingo and Adopt a dingo: one reason you might want a dingo.

Both of our dingoes are adopted, wild-born Australian dingoes. Rusty is now three years old and Jalba is one and half years old. In the wild, they can cover about 40 kilometres a day and they can run at speeds of up to 60 kilometres per hour. In the home, dingoes can become restless and destructive if they don’t get enough exercise, so getting some good exercise is super important.

So how do I walk my dingoes?

Taking our dingoes for a walk

How far do we walk our dingoes?

When I’m short on time, we’ll literally do a quick lap around the block, which is about 1 kilometre, and this is sometimes enough to tire them out.

Usually, we walk for about an hour, covering anything from 2 to 4 kilometres. Sometimes we’ll run short distances and they’re really great at slowing down when I want them to. I never let my eleven year old run with Jalba, because dingoes run really fast and it’s easy to end up getting dragged by them.

During our walks, we let them have a really good sniff and explore, it’s important for them and really tires them out.

Sometimes we’ll go for a much longer walk, and they seem to love those too. I’ve done a 17km walk with Rusty before.

Four images. First image includes two Australian dingoes wearing harnesses, one dingo is sniffing the other dingo. Second image is of two Australian dingoes on a grassy hill. The third image is a dingo looking over a grassy field with trees. The fourth image is of two Australian dingoes on leashes walking across a wooden bridge over a river.

Where do we walk our dingoes?

If we absolutely have to, we’ll walk them around the neighbourhood. This isn’t the ideal place to walk them due to the occasional dog off lead or owners who can’t control their dogs. We know of a boy whose dog attacked a labrador down the road, we’ve seen adults with poor control of their off-lead and on-lead dogs and we’ve seen dogs off-lead in people’s front yards.

Dogs in front yards are uncommon where we live and when they’re out, their owners are usually out with them. But, it does make us and our dingoes uneasy, it only takes seconds for an off-lead dog to approach our dingoes and chaos to break out.

Bush reserves

We have quite a few bush reserves in the area so we’re really grateful for these, especially our favourite tracks where we’ve never seen any dogs at all and not many humans either. These tracks give our dingoes plenty of stress free time to explore, climb rocks, fallen logs and sometimes go through ponds and lakes.

Unfortunately dingoes and dogs aren’t allowed in National Parks in Australia, but they’re allowed in regional reserves, so I’ve also taken them up around Bells Rapids.

We’re hoping that over time we can train them to be calmer when walking in neighbourhoods, but there’s only so much we can do about dogs and their owners, so the bush reserves are fantastic.

A man walking an Australian dingo on a leash through green bushland.

How often do we walk our dingoes?

We aim for everyday. If we don’t walk our dingoes, it can go either way, either they’ll sleep the night as normal, or they’ll be up for an hour or two, galloping around the backyard. So we do our very best to walk them everyday, but they probably miss about 2 walks a month if we’re busy, sick or if it’s super super hot. Lately they’ve been missing a couple of walks a week but and they seem to be doing okay, their behaviour has been manageable without a walk.

What do we do if we miss a dingo walk?

If we don’t go for a walk, we’ll make sure our dingoes are busy with enrichment activities at home. Absolute Dogs has some great ideas, same with Shay Kelly’s books and Facebook page. On a given day, enrichment activities might include 2-3 of the following:

Frozen Kongs
Frozen ice blocks or metal muffin trays with low-value food frozen inside
Kibble hidden in cardboard boxes, old wrapping paper, cardboard rolls, egg cartons etc.
Kibble sprinkled around the yard
Training such as orientation games, the “nothing” game etc.
Flirt pole
Or simply running around with our kids in the yard.

How do we walk two dingoes?

Walking two dingoes is definitely a challenge. My wife managed it a couple of times but on the last time she did it alone, the dingoes had a fight and she’s never walked them alone again, which is fair enough. I’m the only one that walks both at the same time, but ideally, I walk one dingo while my wife or one of our kids walks the other.

The challenges with walking two dingoes are that they can fight, so it’s important that we’re able to separate them, they’re also super strong and the leads can get tangled.

So if there are two of us walking the dingoes, we try to stay a few metres apart, so they don’t bump into each other and to keep them separate in case they react to something, like dogs or lizards. We need to stay in sight of each other though, otherwise the dingoes get anxious and won’t go any further.

Walking two dingoes alone

Each dingo has a harness and martingale collar, and the lead is attached to the back of the harness. Dingoes are super super flexible, they can escape from collars and harnesses, so it’s important to choose the right type.

Someone asked how I hold their leashes. Watch this video below and go to 12:34min to see how I hold the lead. Holding it in this way gives me better control, since it locks in place, and it also gives me a free hand to pull the slack and stop them from getting tangled up. I’m keen to see how others hold their dingo or dog’s leads, especially when they’re walking more than one.

What do we see on our dingo walks?

I’ve been able to see some incredible wildlife out on our dingo walks. We see these animals in zoos and animal parks all the time, but to see them out in the wild, only a few kilometres from home, is truly amazing.

We’ve seen wedge-tailed eagles, a sand goanna (AKA Gould’s monitor), wild rabbits, bob-tailed lizards, western blue-tongue lizards, emus, dugites, tiger snakes and loads of kangaroos. One day, most of the bush that we’re walking through will be replaced with houses, schools, roads, a train track, sporting fields and an industrial park, so we’re soaking it in while we can.

Australian wildlife: lizards, snakes, eagles, kangaroos, emus, rabbits. Image of a large monitor lizard climbing a tree, a kangaroo in a field looking at the camera, a wedge-tailed eagle sitting in a tree.

Walking dingoes

So if you’ve adopted a dingo, or you’re thinking of it, I hope this article and my video has helped in some way. You might also be interested in my article and video about adopting a dingo.

If you have dingoes or have worked or volunteered with dingoes, I’d love to hear your experience walking with your dingoes and how you do it, comment below!

INTREPID WORLD