Riding with your dog is a good way to keep Fido in shape. But every dog requires training before you head into the wilderness with it. Otherwise, your dog may wind up lost in the woods or injured.Your dog needs to: Stay with you. Leave deer and other wildlife alone. Keep out of the way of other bikes. Have speed and endurance.

It's best to start when the dog is still very young, around 6 months of age. Remember to start with slow rides and short distances, because the puppy's bones are still growing and fast long-distance running can damage the growing joints and ligaments.First, leash-train the dog while walking and running. Then you're ready to go to the bike. Put the dog on a short leash. Take up the slack, so the dog is forced to run within a foot of your handlebar. (Ride with the dog on the gutter side of your bike.) Ride slowly, giving a quick tug at the leash whenever the dog starts to turn towards a yard, cat, other dog, car, etc.

Once the dog is trained to run alongside the bike, it's time to move the dog to the rear of the bike, so you're ready for those singletracks. Attach a five-foot pole to the leash. Start with the dog alongside you. Say "Heel!" and move the pole back to position the dog behind your rear tire. (If you've already trained the dog to "heel" while walking, this step goes easier.)

Go to the foothills in the early spring, to an area where you know you'll encounter deer. Put the dog on the leash and begin your ride. When the dog makes that first tiny move to go after a deer (and it will), shout "NO" and give a sharp pull on the leash. Continue doing this all spring, until your dog shows no indication that it's planning to chase after deer.

If your dog starts biking with you when still young, it will quickly learn that bikes stay on the trail, so it needs to get OFF the trail when a bike is approaching or overtaking it. If your dog doesn't "get it," you'll need to do some training. Have a second biker come with you. You'll take turns -- one of you keeps the dog with you, while the other rides the bike. Start with the dog standing in the trail, on a leash. As the bike approaches, give a command (for example, "Move!") and bring the dog off the trail. Do this several times daily, over a few days, until the dog (1) automatically jumps off the trail at the approach of a bike and (2) will jump off the trail when riding with you when you say "Move."

If you ignore your dog's hydration, it will die of renal failure. On most rides, your dog is working harder than you are. This is especially true on the downhills. The dog loses heat by evaporation from its tongue, and it may lose a lot of water this way. Think of how much you'd sweat if you were running (at the speed you're currently riding), instead of the dog. Take extra water for the dog. I run water from the Camelbak hose into my hand. For a bigger dog, you might need a small water dish -- for example, the bottom of a 2-liter pop bottle.

A breeze, like the breeze of riding a bike, helps YOU lose heat efficiently. You may feel nicely cool, despite a high temperature. It's because (1) you can sweat, and (2) you don't have fur. But dogs can't sweat. (They lose heat through the tongue by panting. The bigger the dog, the less efficiently panting eliminates heat -- there's a bigger mass of muscle generating heat compared to the heat-losing surface area of the tongue.) The dog may be seriously overheating at a time when you're feeling fine. You need to be very careful about the speed and duration of the ride when the weather's warm.

At mid-day in summer, road surfaces and open rock may get hot enough to burn the dog's paws. If YOU can't walk barefooted on the surface, it's too hot to take your dog. Asphalt and concrete are much harder on your dog's paws than rocky trails. It's because of the sheer forces on the pads as the dog runs. I've found that on the road, if I exceed 12 mph for more than a couple of miles, the dog's paws will get sore. Yet I can do 16-20 mph for miles on singletrack trail. So on the road, or on paved bike paths, I crawl along. The dog will develop tougher feet as you continue to ride, just like you develop calluses on your hands when you work. But it takes time, and it takes continued exposure. If your dog has the winter off, you'll need to start slow and build up again.

On narrow highways with no shoulder, the dog and I take up more room than a biker alone. When the dog is running downhill along the road, I'm biking much slower -- so more cars need to pass me. So it's more likely one of us will get hit. The sight of my dog running behind me can be distracting to drivers. Cars coming the opposite way may not move to make room for the car that's passing me, because they're busy looking at the dog. So if my ride takes me on high-speed roads, for example the main section of American Fork Canyon, the dog stays home.

My Jack Russell has been biking with me since 1997. But when I ride on city streets, I put Jackie on the leash. You never know when another dog will appear -- and Jackie, oblivious to everything else, will step a couple of feet into the road.I don't take my dog on cliff-side rides. I've seen my dog jump to a rock or log, miscalculate, and fall off. I don't want her doing that on the edge of a cliff. Jackie died of old age in 2014, having spent a happy 16 years chasing me on Utah's bike trails.