We’ve worked quite hard at getting Beanie to walk to heel, but there are times when she still can’t resist pulling, such as when we’re entering the park at the start of a walk.  Lately I’ve been feeling that these few moments of successful pulling (successful in the sense that it gets her closer to her desired destination) are undoing a lot of our hard work. I found a post in the Dogsey forums about harnesses and to my surprise a lot of the posters reported that using a harness had reduced their dog’s tendency to pull. I don’t know why – maybe when the resistance is against the chest rather than the neck it doesn’t trigger the opposition reflex quite as much? Regardless, we decided it was worth a try and started searching.

I quickly found plenty of harnesses that actually claim – in some cases even guarantee – to reduce pulling, but I rejected most of them for various reasons:

• I’m wary of harnesses that use plastic clips – one such harness caused the death of Beanie’s sister Ruby
• I don’t like harnesses that fit over the dog’s snout – they look overly restrictive to me
• Checking through customer reviews, many of the more promising models have big problems with chafing

After a while Susan happened on the “Easy Walk No Pull Harness” made by a company in the US.  This has the leash attachment point at the front – over the dog’s chest. The idea is that when the dog pulls they’re forced to turn in towards their owner, and so learn that pulling doesn’t get them anywhere. On closer examination I found that the harness uses the dreaded plastic fasteners… but it’s designed so that you can attach the lead to both the collar and the harness at the same time. I hunted down a UK seller, and ordered one.

Well that was a few days ago, and I can report that the harness actually works – Beanie just doesn’t pull when it’s on, and yet it doesn’t seem to cramp her style in any other way. I remove the harness completely when she’s walking off lead though, just in case there could be any chafing problems. I’m hoping that after a long enough pull-free period Beanie will just accept that walking nicely is the way to go, whether the harness is on or not.