I have two young dogs with lots of energy that are a bit to handle once it comes time to go walk a little. Together they weigh right at 140 pounds and with eight legs that is a lot of torque pulling on those two leashes. I needed help if I was ever to handle these two together for the walks we all enjoy. The leash and collar combination was doing nothing but choking the younger one while the older one likes to jump, real high. She’s very good at it. So I started researching training devices to help with the pulling and I have always liked the harness setup for dogs as it distributes the weight a little better for more stable control by the handler.
A regular harness has the leash hook on the back of the harness. This creates what is called a ‘natural opposition reflex’ which is a natural tendency for the dog to pull. Think dog sled teams and the way they are hooked up to their harnesses. Obvious if you want to correct pulling with the harness a better design is the ones that hook on the chest area which pulls the dog to the side when the pull too much.
- The first harness we tried was the Coastal Control Ease Training Dog Harness. The harness fits over the neck with two straps that run under the front two legs, around the chest and connects to the rest of the harness on the back of the dog. The Coastal harness comes with a special lead that has buckles on both ends and the harness has o-ring connectors on the chest area and on the back. Hooking the lead in both connectors at the same time gives very good control over the dog and if the dog does well you can unhook the back connector and just use the chest connector. As mentioned before when the dog reaches the end of the lead they are pulled to the side which breaks their concentration on plowing forward and brings their attention back to the handler which is proper training.
- The next two harnesses I was actually presented with at the same time and settled on the one explained next. The Sporn Pull Stop Harness was the one we did not try but I liked the way it was built, the girl at the pet store said people loved it and the design made lots of sense. The Sporn harness is designed similar to the Coastal in that it has two straps that come from the chest area down and around the front two legs connecting to the back of the harness. However instead of connecting to the back both straps run through an o-ring and the leash connects to the ends of the two straps. This design creates pressure on the chest area when the dog pulls which is something that dogs find very uncomfortable quickly learning what causes this pressure; the pulling. Another nice design of the Sporn was some padding on the straps in the chest and under the legs to prevent any chaffing.
- The last one I tried and eventually the one I decided on for both is the Premier Easy Walk Harness. The Easy Walk is designed so there are no straps running under the legs. Instead there is a strap that goes across the chest horizontally and the leash hooks to the front of it. The one feature that sold me on the Premier was the Martingale design of the chest strap. A Martingale collar is a collar that has a design that allows the collar to close when pressure is applied but only so far so that choking does not happen. This design on the harness produces the same pressure on the chest area that gently tells the dog to stop pulling.
All these harnesses work on the problem of a pulling dog. They are all made of strong nylon webbing and come in various sizes for all types of dogs. The ultimate goal of using any training device is to eventually get to the point to where you do not need it any more so mix sessions with the harness and eventually without.
