When you take your puppy for a walk, you can increase its happiness, find items, and visit places like the park and café. You might even meet people whom you encountered with StreetPass.

List of Walking Paths

Below is a list of paths that you can take your puppy on. If you can't find one of the paths, just go on more walks until you find it.

Taking Puppy for a Walk

To take your puppy for a walk, tap Go Out at the bottom-right of the screen, then tap Walk. You will see your puppy in the top screen, and your puppy's silhouette will be in the bottom screen. You can put your stylus on the leash to pull the leash around. Your puppy will run quickly if you hold the leash near the top of the screen, and will walk slowly if you hold your leash at the bottom of the screen. You can get your puppy to go left or right by dragging the leash in that direction.

Cleaning up Poop

If you don't clean up after your dog, your neighbors might be unhappy with you. To clean up poop, keep an eye on your dog, and if it poops, the poop will appear as a green blob in the bottom screen. Tap on the blob, and you will automatically scoop it and throw it away.

Finding Items

Occasionally, there will be gift boxes along the path. You can see them in the top screen, and you can see their outline in the touch screen. Steer your puppy toward the box, and he or she will pick it up and bring it to you. Tap on it to receive the item.

Sometimes there are even hidden items in patches of grass, so be sure to have your puppy walk through the grassy patches along the way.

In addition, people you have met with StreetPass, and possibly the other in-game people, might give you a gift if you meet up during the walk.

Finally, you can get items by going through cones. There are sometimes cones set up on the path. You must have your puppy go in a zig-zag pattern between the cones without touching any of the cones. This can be tricky. Hold the leash near the bottom of the screen to make your puppy walk slowly. However, don't hold the leash too low, or your puppy will stop walking and look at you, wanting to walk more. As your puppy slowly walks, use the leash to guide it through the cones. If you get through without touching a single cone, then a gift box will appear at the end of the cones. Walk your puppy over to it to get the gift. You might be unlucky and walk across a spot that your puppy wants to stop and sniff, which will probably make it bump into a cone. There is no way that I know of to avoid this.

Meeting Neighbors

As you go for your walk, you might find a neighbor walking his or her dog in the other direction. To meet up with that neighbor, just steer your puppy toward his or her dog. The neighbor will talk to you, sometimes giving you information and advice.

If your puppy gets along with the neighbor's dog, your puppy might want to spend more time with that dog, and you will be asked if you want to go to a park or the café. If you say yes, you can spend some time at the location, and your dog can play with the neighbor's dog, which can help your dog earn more points from happiness.

Note: to spend time at the café, you must buy a food item that your dog and the neighbor's dog will share. The prices range from $5 to $7. If you don't buy anything, you have to leave the café.

Going Places

The route that you take a walk on is chosen randomly for you by the game. Depending on the route, there might be some places that you can stop at. Look for signs with arrows pointing to a place to either side of the road. Just steer your puppy over to that sign, and the game will ask if you want to stop at the location. The possible locations include the Park, Café, Gym, and more.

You can prolong your walks by strategically having your dog spend time with the neighbors. For example, if you are in the mountains and you go to the Café with a neighbor, you will end up downtown, and from there you can go to the seaside. Then, if you meet another neighbor who wants to go to a different location, you can prolong your walk even more.

Keeping your Puppy out of Trouble

There are some things that your puppy is not supposed to do while on walks. This includes: peeing anywhere but in the grass, rolling around in puddles, eating garbage, harassing birds and fireflies, and so on.

Sometimes, your puppy will turn around and look at you for no reason. Usually, this means that it is about to do something bad! To correct your puppy's behavior, swing the leash around WHILE YOUR PUPPY IS STANDING STILL. If you try swinging the leash around while the puppy is walking, then you will yank on the puppy and might reduce its happiness points. If you do it properly, your puppy turns around with an exclamation mark over its head. When this happens, feed your puppy a treat to reward it for discontinuing its bad behavior. After it eats the treat, the puppy will continue walking.

The more you do discipline your puppy, the less likely it will be to get in trouble in the first place.

Your puppy will want to run after birds, fireflies (note: grass with fireflies never has hidden gifts,) and will want to run over to trashcans and trash on the ground. When the puppy starts running toward these things, put the leash near the bottom of the screen, off to the side (in the direction away from the thing that you want your puppy to stay away from.) Your puppy will want to keep walking toward the offending object, but having the leash near the bottom of the screen will make your puppy alternate between veering away from the object and walking toward it. If you start this before the puppy gets too close to the item, then the puppy will never reach the bad item and will soon continue on the walk. NOTE: In order to make your puppy do this, you might need to do some cone slaloms to get it used to walking at an angle when you put the leash near the bottom of the screen.

Secret Path

After you have visited Town, Downtown, the Seaside, and the Mountains a number of times, you will start seeing a sign that has a silhouette of a blue person walking a blue dog, with a light blue background that has a green curved stripe on it. This sign marks the Secret Path. The Secret Path has a bunch of gifts; much more than on the standard paths. There are different secret paths depending on which location you reached it from. The scenery matches the type of path that you were walking on when you found the sign for the secret path, and the recyclables that you find on the secret path will correspond to the scenery (wood from the mountain secret path, plastic from the seaside secret path, etc.)

Rare Barc Shops

When walking your puppy, you might see a Barc sign. This is a supply shop that has a different selection from the standard Barc shop that you can reach from the Go Out menu at home. There are different Barc shops on the different walking paths. For example, one of these shops sells things like Bonnets and Pompadours, while another one has a Witch Hat and Bucket Hat, and so on. See the list of items in Nintendogs + Cats to find out what items you can find at these stores.