One long walk vs several short walks

What do you tend to do and why? Does you dog get one big walk a day or do you spread it out over two/three/four shorter walks a day? Is your walking pattern dictated by your own daily routine eg work? Or do you have to walk a certain number of times a day because of your dogs personality/needs? Does it depend on the dog? Is it ok to only walk once a day as long as the dogs day is still broken up by other activities? Or is it cruel to only walk a dog once?

Please discuss

Zulu gets an intense run/walk once a day for about an hour 5 days a week. I call it playing "intense fetch" lol, sounds silly, but we get 2 or 3 balls lined up so he's constantly running back and forth - absolutely adores it.

Saturdays and Sundays I prefer to take him out for a big walk at one point of those days and then he will also get play time outside with his ball (we live with 10 acres as our back garden). There are some days though like today where hubby will be outside all day - chopping logs in the woods, mowing, gardening etc and he will spend the whole day out there running from the house to the woods or wherever in which case by 3pm he is that exhausted I wouldnt even be able to drag him on a walk.

I think though it depends on the dog - some need more than others. Zulu is a happily active dog, but he is equally happy to sleep on the bed all day lol. unfortunately it does have to fit around our work schedule, but we try and give him as much as possible. I'm actually going to start the mornings with 30 minutes of our fetch game now its getting nice which I am sure he will enjoy. He certainly isnt a wet weather dog - I have to force him out to go to the toilet when its raining so that can affect us too.

Mine get 4 walks aday just around the field. the younger two also get a walk around the moor for a hour. its about 4 miles

it depends with jasper how he is on the day as he has health issues that means he cant always go for a long walk. i try and get him out over to a country park to meet up with a friend and her dog about 3 times a week more if i can and both dogs spend over an hour walking around and playing offlead. if i dont go over there i try and get him up to the field i like him to have at least 1 long walk a day but when his health is bad he only goes for a short walk around the block.

at the weekends, we do one big walk in the woods or fields. but most days he gets a walk in the park in the morning and a walk around the roads in the afternoon.

and its not cruel to only walk once a day as long as that one walk is an hour to 2 hours long with plenty of stimulation.

ty and cas get a 40 min walk in the morning to the park and 40 mins around the fields in the eve when we are at work ty did also play in the garden with his boomer ball but this has had to stop at mo as hes just been diagnosed with a deformed shoulder joint which has given him arthritis and makes him lame is ball throwing on walks has also stopped they tend to get longer walks at weekends but still 2 unless both are tired after 1 and playing in the garden and i also try and take cassie to her agility class once a week

At the moment Rupert gets walked just once a day and that walk is late at night. He gets so stressed if we see another dog while out that it's not worth it to be honest. We also keep the walk fairly short as that way it's even less likely we'll run into other dogs. I've given up trying to desensitize him, it's not going to happen while we're here as practically nobody has their dog on a leash or under control.

For exercise purposes we play in the back garden, I set up a jump and he does some jumping, we play some fetch, we play tug, chase and do several training sessions a day. His walk is more to get out and about and see and smell different things than for exercise.

During the week Jake tends to get more, shorter walks. Mainly now because i walk a friends dog Monday - Thursday, twice a day. I take Jake with me, and he gets about half an hour on one walk, and an hour on the other walk. I then go to work in the evening, so if im not too tired i will take him out for another 20 mins or so when i get in. At the weekend i prefer to take him for fewer but longer walks. Today, he was out for 3 hours walking, so that will be him... maybe just a 20 min walk about dinner time.

I wouldnt say to walk a dog once a day is cruel, provided the dog is happy and still gets what they need.

Depends how I feel, the weather and what Im doing
I try and have a couple of days a month with no walks- just incase on day they need limited exercise

some days its 3 - 4 small walks
some days 1 big walk and a few little ones
some days just the 1 big walk, some days we are out all day

I usually walk mine once a day. Sometimes Cooper gets 2 walks a day, but were always out for about 1 hour, our walks are usually 1-3 hours.
Today and yesterday we were up at my horse field doing jobs, Cooper got from 12pm to 6pm yesterday at the field and Harry and Cooper got 12pm to 3pm today,they spend most of their time running around so they get lots of exercise.