Originally Posted by Oblada

Lol I suppose it really depends what you do: I see so many people dropping their dogs in the doggy park and sitting there lol and going to the field and just walking mindlessly with the dog sniffing around... well this is not exercise to me!

On lead the dogs are focused, the pavement can be good exercise for the joints (and too much can be bad of course), the dogs follow their owners, they are in the walking/concentration mode; they exercise their body and mind.
But of course properly articulated off lead can be great and can be more tiring: when my dogs are off lead we do training, retrieving etc and therefore the dogs are also focused and concentrated...

The idea I suppose is that exercising the mind of a dog is the best way to get him tired generally whilst exercising the body only can take a long time to achieve the same result...so on lead or off lead the main idea is to exercise both body and mind