Well you all know how our human loves to make sure we get to display natural behaviours and get to do doggie things. She thinks it is very important if you want us to be happy and healthy, which we are. Our vet always gets so excited when we visit because he gets to listen to our hearts and feel our pulse – they are very strong and he says we are the fittest, most athletic dogs he sees! 
*Pfft* Who ever said Danes are slow and not athletic obviously hadn’t met us!
Our human also thinks it’s import to keep us fit and healthy because it could help with our longevity. Lots of Giant breed doggies have a reputation for not living very long (Obviously sickies that we have no control over don’t count). We wonder whether it might have something to do with what other reputation giant breed doggies have…being very big and lazy. We have seen lots of humans keep their giant breed doggies over weight because they are big dogs and are “supposed” to big and heavy. They also don’t give them much exercise because they are lazy and don’t “need” it. Exercise and weight is very important, just like in humans!:)
Anyway, getting back to us having the opportunity to behave like real wild dogs,well not real wild dogs, we didn’t go hunting or anything. We could have had the chance but we were too busy sniffing a log…
As you guys probably don’t know (we haven’t posted about it yet), we are now fed on a raw diet. Our human Laura buys food from the Raw Essentials Store once a week and made friends with one of the ladies (her name is Haylee) who works there. They get on really well! Haylee is also a dog trainer and works in a very similar way to our human. Haylee has a dog called Reid and we all get on like a house on fire. Haylee and Laura have plenty of things to talk about and laugh at, because Reid is a little bit of a weirdo just like Jasper is a bit of a weirdo and they do the same stupid things and pull the same special faces. Have we ever shown you a picture of Jaspers “special” face?
Here is a sneak preview, you see his one eye?! We will show you a full frontal “special” face another day.
As the title of this post states this was a pack walk and since our human is used to having 4 dogs with her she would use the term “pack walk” for a common number.
This pack walk had 7 dogs and 2 humans 
From left to right: Flo & Sam (Hungarian Visla's), Red or Redford when he is naughty (Staffy), Reid (Pointer x), us (Great Danes) & Bailey (Chihuahua)
We were all very well behaved on our pack adventure through the forest. We all took off chasing a rabbit, but as soon as our humans whistled we turned around and came straight back. Whenever we hear Laura whistle we turn around and come running straight away, she taught us from a very young age that a whistle means “I am leaving and if you don’t come right now you will be left behind”. We learnt it very quickly as well, do you know how?! When we were just 12 weeks old she never waited for u, she left us behind and we learnt very quickly what the whistle meant! She makes sure she is very consistant with its meaning as well – she can’t whistle and then stay in the same spot, because then we would realise that she isn’t moving off and wouldn’t come as quickly. Everytime she whistles she must move off like she is going somewhere else. It all comes back to her liking to use ways of communicating that are natural to us. If we had another dog as a pack leader then they wouldn’t stand around waiting for us if they wanted to leave, they would give one signal that they were moving off (sometimes no signal) and then they would go and because the rest of the pack didn’t want to be left behind they would quickly follow.
One moves off, they all move off
The forest we went to was Woodhill Forest, Rimmer Road Access. We have been here many times, it is so great when you want to have lots of space to run and investigate and do natural doggie activities; like disguising your smell so prey can’t tell your there, marking your territory by peeing on everything and making scuff marks at the base of trees!
Here’s what we got up to…
Lot's of exploring and playing with both dog and human - how can you resist a pine cone being hurled through the air?!
We found a large puddle to drink out of and splash around in!
We also participated in simple obedience for a tasty treat! Yes we know that is not natural, but hey, we are domesticated :p
Our pack walk was a total of 2 1/2hours long and it even ended with us having to walk nicely behind our humans for the last 15min. Most of us were really good at that, the one exception was Redford. He came along with Haylee (her sister is his owner), he’s a pretty good little boy except he has shocking leash manners. But luckily teaching dogs their leash manners is one of Laura’s favourite things and within about a minute Red was trotting along nicely behind with the rest of us!
As you can probably guess we were very tired after our adventure into the wilderness to unleash our inner wolf *Hee Hee*. We came home, ate our dinner and then crashed for the rest of the day :p
We hope you guys get to experience these sort of walks, they are great!!
Wow! It looks like you all had fun! My human, Ellie, also believes that exercise is important for any dog! In fact, my brother, Rocky, just posted about exercise in my blog last night! It is important for us doggies to be fit and healthy!
~Treasure the Dachshund
I love pack walks through the forest! Our pack does it all the time! It’s a great mix of exercise, discipline and affection – in that order, as it should be. Momma says she loves it too, it lets us bond even closer and share a very special and primal ritual. It’s priceless! I think it’s awesome you guys get to do it too, Laura is a smart human
. Oh, and nice photos, made me feel like I was there.
Talk again soon,
Bob
Ooh you can’t beat a good pack walk with friends, we love the wide range of doggies with you! Although mum is biased and says you two were the prettiest
Slobbers
xxx
Hi guys, what a great post! I see we have a few things in common! Our mum also feeds us raw meat diet, has done this from when we were still quite small. She reckons our coats are shinier, teeth cleaner and we are healthier and happier. Naturally we agree with all of the above
She also arranges a group dog walk about once a month, she calls it a “twoofup” because it’s all done on twitter. She’s not that bad for a human (don’t tell her that!). So we regularly walk with Golden Retrievers, another Great Dane, a Springer Spaniel, a Sheep Dog and every now and then we get new friends. We love it!
Mum would agree with yours about dogs having to display natural behavior. It would have been nice if more people were like her so we would have less issues with dog walkers that keep their dogs on a leash and shout at us to go away. Seriously, we just want to say hello. Sometimes they are just so rude!
Anyway, our paws are getting tired from typing so catch you again later.
Slobbers xx
Seems you had a wonderful day!!
-Lilli-
What a wonderful outing. But what happened to Bailey? She sort of disappeared after the group photo at the beginning. Must be hard for her to keep up with all the big dogs. Does she play with you all? Are there any other little dogs who go on these adventures with you, so Bailey has someone her own size to wrestle with?
Jed & Abby
Hi Jed and Abby,
You you guys are very observent that Bailey disappeared! Hmmm, how can we put this nicely? Bailey is…ummmm…Anit-social! She doesn’t really participate in anything while we are on walks, she lags behind and tries not to be part of the pack. She chooses to walk way behind, it’s not because she has short little legs – she can walk and run way longer than we can!! Admitedly though she is starting to walk as part of the pack!
Nope Bailey has no small dog friends, she scares them all away, as we said before she is very anti-social and snotty. The only dog she will play with is Jasper, but it’s only at home and when no humans are watching!!
Great to hear from you!
Licks and lots of slobber,
Lexi and Jasper the Danes
We are so jealous! That pack walk looks like lots of fun!
Oh Llexi and Jasper – my human was nodding her head vigourously the whole time as we were reading the beginning of your post. She so agrees with everything your human believes! It is so true – so many giant breed owners use only excuses to keep their doggies lazy and unhealthy. They use the same excuses were training to – and explain away their dogs out of control bad behaviour by saying that they are “too big” – as if brute strength comes into! I think both your and my human proof that you can be a very small human and still control big dogs!
Hsin-Yi says that she is really sorry we left New Zealand for lots of reasons but one of them is because she left behind so many good doggy friends like your human! She always comes to read your blog posts and then wishes that she could spend more time with your Laura, talking doggy training and other doggies stuff – and going on walks with you together! It is so much more enjoyable when we spend time with people that have the same standards and beliefs in dog manners and training as we do. It’s just not the same talking by e-mail.
Anyway, that look like the most fantastic walk and I’m always really grumpy at Hsin-Yi for not taking me to that face when we were still in New Zealand (although to be fair to her, she didn’t actually know about it!) And it’s wonderful to see how you can have a whole pack of dogs behaving so nicely!
Slobbers,
Honey the great Dane
PS.writing a lot of comments one after each other is one of the worst things for my humans RSI so she is trying to use her Dragon speak software to do them as much as possible but it is so frustrating –grrrrr! – it often gets so many words wrong so please excuse me if you read anything that seems a bit funny. We try to read back over our comments before we submit them but sometimes we miss a few words!