kutyuska ,
To answer your question about what I do when I walk my dogs:
I have 10 hunting breed dogs , 8 are hounds and 2 are setter mix. What I do in part depends on the season as we have a lot of snakes down south and our activity in summer is more protected than in winter unless we are in a clear field or park setting. For the most part I walk my dogs one at a time down the streets around our home keeping them with me and not letting them stray into the woods and thick brush or rocky settings. This works fine and we play ball and mostly just walk together. If going down a road with tall grass I make them walk by my side and talk to them and give a few treats as we walk down the middle of the road. No late day walks close to dusk. I have spent much time working with my dogs for off leash training and have a very good recall , however , for the safety of the dog I always place a training collar on the dog I have out to make sure my recall is as close to 100% as possible. This safety is rarely needed. When I take my dogs to town or other area they are always leashed for safety.
Winter is very different here as when it gets cold it gets really cold. We can walk anywhere without fear of snakes. This is the time of year I will let them run and track until we get cold and need to go warm up. During the very cold I limit my dogs outside time and will put them up in their heated kennel area as sometime we have single digit temps coupled with winds of 10 to 20 mph so the wind chill is quite severe. All of my dogs get attention and love everyday while in there yard/run section, this is fairly large with 3 or 4 dogs to each section. One or two dogs are selected as dog of the day everyday so I can spend out time and give individual attention with each dog and work on training whjch as you know is an ongoing process and they love it. As you can see the cold weather is a time of great freedom for us and is only limited by my ability to keep up , being an old senior retired dog myself.
................................................................................................................................
I called our Vet clinic and inquired about the Rattle Snake Vaccine.
Our Vet does not recommend the Vaccine at this time and feels that the dogs need to come in for snake bite treatment anyway. I think this has to do with our part of the country and the type of snake is almost never known, having said this , I know we do not have the many Western Diamondback rattler that you have in calif so your Vet may feel differently. I have not been able to find anyone around me that uses the Vaccine , however , I did find some that have had dogs treated for snake bites and the dogs recovered fine , but we do not know what kind of snake it was.
.................................................................................................................................
Good Luck and please post how things go for you and Ace.
Best , oldhounddog