Animal Welfare Professionals

I recently purchased some Victoria Stillwater harnesses that have a back clip and two front clips for use with the shelter dogs. I find they work well to negate the power of the strong pullers. I do work with the dogs on pulling, via red-light, green-light, redirection, etc., and am pretty successful with that over time. But for some dogs, the harnesses give me some insurance against me getting a shoulder injury. I can walk the Bloodhound with a regular harness, but I can steer him with this one if I need to, and I'm far more likely to be able to keep him under control if he decided to bolt for something. 

I like the design as far as good padding for the dog, BUT I do find them tricky to get adjusted, so I only use a harness for a particular dog once I get it fitted for them. Are their harnesses that are equally good but easier to adjust?   Thanks.

#Behavior,TrainingandEnrichment

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Eudora Watson
Volunteer
Potsdam Humane Society Shelter
New York
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Hi Eudora,

Occasionally we get a harness donated called a "Sporn Mesh No Pull " harness that works really well for tough pullers. You can usually search up "Cinch Harness" and it'll be one of the first to show up.  We also typically use Martingale collars on all of our dogs while their in the shelter and sometimes we'll send it with the adopters if they're strong pullers. We only use harnesses that are donated unfortunately, so we have a random mix of harnesses and usually we use them on dogs that choke themselves when walking on a collar or have sensitive tracheas. 

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Ky Crawford
Animal Care Attendant
Little Traverse Bay Humane Society
MI
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We started out using the Sporn harnesses, but found that very excitable dogs could still keep their body facing whatever they were too excited about and lunge toward it - the back attachment made it hard to redirect them. We still kept a few around for teaching dogs to walk on a leash, but for general walking we used two things in tandem: an Easy Walk harness and a martingale collar.  The Easy Walk has a ring at the front, which means that it helps with pulling and you can turn the dog's body toward you instead of allowing them to continue to lunge toward something. 

The only problem we had with the Easy Walk alone is that the harness can slip down to their elbows and particularly rowdy dogs can pop their front legs over and get out of the harness. To counteract this, we had volunteers to clip the leash to both the harness and martingale collar. Once we started doing this, we had great "head control" over where the dog was facing and never had a dog get out of the harness and collar. 

Feel free to reach out if you want more info! I have my old volunteer handbook somewhere with photos, instructions, and explanations of how this works. 

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Marilyn Wheaton
Client Services
AnimalsFirst
Leesburg VA
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