I know a lot of members here have more than just reptiles for pets, and many of those members have dogs. This subject was brought up earlier by SarahW, and I thought other members with dogs might find it useful as well....
To exercise Zayda, my chesapeake bay retriever X, I used to take her running....that was all fine until I started to have a lot of knee pain, so I had to find a different way to keep her active. I talked with Zayda's agility instructor and she recommended the K9 cruiser to me.
I took my agility instructors advice and quickly ordered a K9 cruiser. It was $50 + shipping. It arrived at my doorstep about 7-10 days later.
Upon receiving my K9 cruiser there was very minimal assembly required. All I had to do was insert the bar between the quick release and frame of the rear wheel of my bike (done simply by loosening the quick release/nut). I tightened my quick release, and strapped the front of the bar to the frame of my bike and I was ready to ride.
At first I was worried about Zayda getting hung up/run over with the rear tire, and getting in the way of my pedals, but with the way the K9 cruiser is designed it makes this pretty much impossible. The end of the metal bar sticks out a little was past the rear tire, and then it only has about 1 1/2 - 2 ft leash attached to the end of the bar. This design keeps them pretty much behind or slightly beside the back tire....the leash will not allow them to reach past that point.
The next thing I was worried about was....making a fool of myself
I thought for sure that Zayda would be able to pull me over, but again, the way this product is designed it is nearly impossible. The only time I have had here almost knock me over was when we were at a complete stop and were waiting for traffic. Other than that, as the rider you can feel any time they try to pull off to the side and all you have to do is start pedaling forward and they will have no other choice but to follow along.
As far as training goes, I had no trouble at all with Zayda or Blake (our blue healer X) I basically attached them to the leash and away we went....they figured it out instantly, but keep in mind that every dog may not take to it that quickly.
With all that being said, I would highly recommend this product to anyone looking for a good way to exercise their dogs. Although it seems expensive, it is worth every single penny! It can be used for large or small breeds. You can also attach an additional leash onto the same bar to run two dogs at once. I tried doing this with Blake and Zayda, and I think it would have worked fine except that they seemed to think that it was a good time to try to wrestle with eachother
Needless to say, I just stick to running one at a time
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