Running With The Bulls And A Dog Is A Bad Idea Until It Isn't
I spent three years helping people prepare for the San Fermín encierro before I actually ran it myself with a dog. Most of that time was spent convincing them not to do it. The ones who listened usually came back in one piece. The ones who didn't learned their lesson on the cobblestones near Cubillo. Unleashing The Fury Of Pamplona Pooch The Unbridled Spirit Of Running With The Bulls sounds like something you'd see on a meme, but there are actually serious people doing it. They're not idiots. Some of them are well-trained. Most of them are still injured every year.
The Actual Mechanics Of Running With A Dog In The Encierro
The run is about eight hundred meters long. It takes roughly three minutes for the bulls to cover it. Your dog does not move at bull speed. This is the fundamental problem nobody talks about. You need a dog that is already comfortable in dense crowds, loud chaotic environments, and specifically under the feet of large animals moving at thirty kilometers per hour. If your dog has never been herding, chasing, or even just walking through a market where people are shoving each other, they will panic. A panicked dog in the encierro is a tripping hazard for everyone around you, including you. I tried running with my first dog, a border collie named Suki. She had herding instinct in spades. She understood the concept of the run intuitively. The problem was she kept trying to circle behind the bulls and direct them. That almost got us killed. A collie in the back of the pack is invisible to the runners ahead and terrifying to the runners behind. I switched to keeping her on a short leather lead, two feet maximum, and running at the very front of the pack where visibility is highest.
What Actually Works In Practice
Leash type matters more than people think. A retractable leash is a death sentence. I learned this from watching two people get dragged into the crowd near the final turn when their retractable lines snapped against a metal railing. Use a fixed-length leather lead, no longer than twenty-four inches. Clip it to a harness, not a collar. A collar can break a dog's neck if they bolt and the line goes taut at speed. The harness should be a Y-front style with a dual attachment point. One clip for the lead, one for a secondary safety tether you can quickly grab if something goes wrong. I carry both ends separately and only connect them seconds before the run starts. This prevents tangling during the chaotic buildup period when everyone is jostling for position. Hydration is the most overlooked requirement. Pamplona in July runs forty degrees Celsius regularly. A medium dog can show signs of heat stress within twelve minutes of intense exertion in those conditions. I bring a collapsible bowl and water in a separate container from whatever I drink. Dogs are not like humans where you can just share your bottle. Your water has salt and whatever else is in it. Theirs needs to be clean and separate.
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The Counter-Intuitive Part Nobody Tells You
Running with a dog is harder than running alone. Your situational awareness drops by maybe thirty percent because part of your attention is always on where the dog is relative to your legs and the ground ahead. The classic advice for solo runners is to pick a spot in the middle of the pack, not the front and not the back. With a dog, the front is actually safer because you can control the pace and direction without someone else's body getting in the way. Another thing: the cows that come before the bulls are the real danger, not the bulls themselves. Cows are heavier, less predictable, and they don't run in the same tight formation. I watched a cow slip on the cobblestones near Santo Domingo and slide sideways into a runner's path. The runner went down hard. If you have a dog, that moment of confusion when someone falls in front of you is amplified because your dog might react to the sudden movement by jumping or ducking, which throws off your balance too.
When It Completely Fails And You Should Not Try
If your dog is under two years old, do not attempt this. Their joints are not developed enough for the kind of abrupt stops and direction changes that happen during the run. I've seen veterinarians in Pamplona during the festival treat knee injuries in young dogs that were running with their owners. Those are surgically expensive and permanent. Brachycephalic breeds are out. Bulldogs, pugs, boxers. They cannot cool themselves efficiently and their airways are already compromised. The combination of heat, exertion, and panicked breathing is a recipe for respiratory distress that can turn fatal in under ten minutes. I had a friend try it with his French bulldog in 2019. They made it through the first hundred meters before the dog started gasping and collapsing. We had to exit the run mid-pack, which is itself dangerous because you're moving against the flow of twelve thousand adrenaline-fueled people. Even with the right dog, right equipment, and right preparation, there is a hard limit on how many runs you can do back to back. The cobblestones are hard on paw pads. I track my dog's pad condition before every run and if there's any cracking or wear, we skip it. No amount of balms or booties replaces actually letting the tissue heal. I've run with my current dog, a mixed breed named Milo, for four consecutive years now. He's missed two runs total because of paw issues and one because the forecast called for extreme heat warnings. Those were the right calls.
There is no official allowance for dogs in the encierro. Security will ask you to leave if they notice you brought one. The workaround that works most of the time is arriving early, getting positioned near the medical checkpoint at the end of the route, and keeping your dog leashed and calm among the crowd until the horn sounds. Dogs are everywhere already because Pamplona is full of visitors with pets.blend in.
