# Urban mushing with 3 dogs?



## Sibe (Nov 21, 2010)

I have a foster dog, Diesel. He is a boxer. We will have him quite a long time most likely. Go here for his story and pics.

Anyway, I still would like to be able to bike to the dog park. It's so close to home that I have a hard time justifying driving (it's a mile and a half). But I realize I need to be safe. The question is, *is it safe to bike with all three of them?*

My girls both weigh 40 lbs. Kaytu pulls hard, Denali does when she feels like it. I tested out Diesel yesterday, who weighs 60 lbs but needs a good 10 lbs more. Just hooked him up to see what he'd do. He ran next to the bike but didn't seem to want to go in front. He wasn't scared of any of it. Today I hooked up Kaytu next to him and did a lap around the neighborhood. It was like a lightbulb went off in his head. He ran right next to her and he pulls HARD. I added Denali and we biked to the park and it went well. Only trouble was when we had to pass by dogs as Diesel tried to charge right over to them. I had him hooked in between the girls which helped prevent him, as my girls know to keep going. He'll catch on, and we can work on that separately too.

So basically, I have 140 lbs of dog (soon to be 150) in front of me, a 140 lb woman. Denali is a pro at "woah" and Kaytu is nearly there. When I stop I always get off the bike and hold the line, so I'm directly holding them instead of trying to use the bike, and I also have them sit so I'm very rarely having to directly hold back all their weight. I keep thinking 3 dogs is a lot. I always thought 2 was enough for a bike. But my girls are pretty light.. if I had 2 mals instead of 2 huskies that would easily be 150 lbs...

Also *what setup would work best*? Running them in a straight line worked surprisingly well today. (ETA: Straight line as in shoulder-to-shoulder with each other)


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## sassafras (Jun 22, 2010)

I have not yet put all three of my dogs in front of the scooter, but I am toying with training towards that this summer if I can acclimate Pip to the scooter and motivate him to move fast enough to keep up with the others. I just mostly think it would be nice to exercise all three at once, so if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

Anyway, I have done canicross with all three. I tried a standard gangline set up with Squash and Maisy in lead and Pip behind them in wheel, but the neckline gave Pip much woe. So I ended up just putting them in their usual arrangement and attaching his leash to my skijor belt, which ends up like this:



















But if he is ok around the scooter, I may play with that a little bit. I don't know that I would do all three dogs shoulder to shoulder just for space issues where I usually scooter (I don't thing the trails would be wide enough), but I may end up with one in front and then two shoulder to shoulder just behind.


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## Sibe (Nov 21, 2010)

The canicross setup you have pics of is what I was thinking would be better. I have a double line like that for the girls and was thinking a leash would be fine for foster dog. I have the space the entire way to do shoulder-to-shoulder, but issue comes on tight turns as the inside dog basically needs to stop while the outside dog gets pulled around. It's very awkward lol.


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