I am now realising that dog exercise is not counted in distance but in number of active hours per day, and for a dog like Max this should be an average of 170 minutes and a mixture of walking and running. His Tractive GPS and the app make it easy to see and maintain a daily average.

To get into a routine, I will take him to the dog park in Hasenheide on alternate days. He likes to run around there, and it is a pleasant six km walk there and back, mostly along Landwehrkanal to Admiralbrücke and through a sort of elongated park, so OK in terms of traffic.

On most of the other days, we will go further afield for a nice long walk (+-15 km) in a forest, round a lake or two, or whatever can be reached by public transport.

On top of that, I feed him about half his daily dry food, one pellet at a time, by hand by throwing it into the air, making him jump up to catch it, or making him run from one end of the living room to the other many times. This ought to be good exercise too.

Oh, and at least once a day we walk up to the sixth floor. This should have him, and me, covered in terms of exercise.

Here is Max supposedly making friends with Nigel – a Rhodesian Ridgeback: https://youtu.be/qL6Ft_nRr5E.