exercise and behavior questions

Question
"I have a 7 month old female yellow lab whom we keep outside on a 15 foot tie out during the day and in a crate during the night. She is full of energy and loves her walks. However, I was wondering how many walks a day and for how long we should be taking with her. Currently, we take her for 3 walks during the day (one short in the morning, one long in the evening, one short before bed). The short walks usually last about 20 minutes and the long about 45 minutes. Is this too much or too little for a 7 month old dog? She seems to be doing very well with this routine.



Also, we have been having issues with her spilling her water bucket. We will give her new water and after taking a few drinks, she will put her two front paws in the bucket and knock it over. After doing this she looks at us. I'm assuming that she is doing this for attention? When she does this, we do not immediately refill her water (as we do not want to reinforce this behavior). Do you have any ideas why she is doing this and what would help?


Thank you.

Answer
Hello The walking and exercising your doing for her now is perfect since she is cabled she cant run aboutand get alot of exercsie when shes out there so the walks give the needed exercise. As for the water thing labs love water and playing in ones water dish is fun...she looks to you afterward to refill it so she can do it again! its great fun for her, the best thing to do is get one to two Large dishes that can not be tipped over the stainless steel ones are great....the ones with the wide bottom and smaller top work best since they are near impossible to flip over...but these must be placed in the shade as they get rather hot.