Daily activity

What the questionnaire asks

The activity step asks how many minutes you will spend on walks, play, or training on a typical day, and which of those things you will really offer. Jogging, hiking, and dog sports count as harder work than a leash walk. The question is about your week, not about an idealized dog who matches your self-image.

Under 20 minutes is treated as below a general care floor. The ASPCA says dogs need exercise to burn calories, work their minds, and stay healthy, and that the amount varies by the individual: breed or mix, sex, age, and health. A floor is not a breed block. It means the plan is thinner than ordinary care, so the result is action needed, with ways to add walks, a play session, or a walker.

How a breed illustration is scored

Where the American Kennel Club care text describes a workload in plain language, that description is stored as a registry prior: low, moderate, high, or very high. A gap of one band is a compromise. A gap of two or more, when the dog's described need is higher than the household's minutes, is a welfare mismatch. Extra capacity on the human side is not a mismatch. A person who can hike can still live well with a dog whose registry text describes a short walk.

We only match on traits with a published source. A word like sprinter is not turned into a minute count.

What breed cannot tell you

Morrill and colleagues reported in Science in 2022 that breed explained about 9% of behavioral variation among individual dogs. Physical traits tracked breed much more closely. An published breed descriptions exercise paragraph is a planning prior from a registry, not a measurement of the dog in a foster's kitchen. Ask what that dog does on a walk and what they do two hours later.