Most dog harnesses are the wrong shape

The harness that finally fixed our walks was the third one I bought. The first two weren't cheap and weren't badly made. They were just the wrong shape, and I had no idea, because nobody tells you that harnesses come in shapes.

Here's the thing I didn't know: a dog's front leg isn't bolted to the skeleton the way ours is. We have a collarbone. Dogs essentially don't — the shoulder blade is slung onto the ribcage by muscle and connective tissue, which is what lets them extend the front leg so far forward when they trot.

Put a strap horizontally across the front of that, and every stride pushes against it.

Two shapes, and only one of them works

Stand in front of your dog and look at where the chest strap sits.

Y-shaped. The straps run up either side of the neck and meet in a point at the breastbone, leaving the shoulders bare. The leg can swing forward through open air.
Straight across. A horizontal band runs over the front of both shoulders, often with a nice bit of padding on it. This is the common one. It's the one that gets in the way.

Canine sports-medicine vets have been making this point for years — Chris Zink, who works on exactly this, has linked poorly fitted harnesses to soft-tissue overuse injuries and to dogs quietly changing their gait to work around the restriction. The trouble is that a dog compensating for a strap doesn't limp or yelp. They just shorten the stride slightly, forever, and nobody notices.

A harness that hurts gets refused. A harness that merely restricts gets tolerated for years. The second one is the problem, because nothing ever tells you.

The ten-second check

Do this with the harness on, in the house, before you next go out.

Two fingers, everywhere. You should be able to slide two flat fingers under every strap. Do it while your dog is standing and while they're sitting — a lot of harnesses tighten dramatically when a dog folds up.
Find the girth strap. The band around the body should sit on ribs, a couple of finger-widths behind the elbows. If it's jammed into the armpit it will rub; if it's slid back onto the soft belly it will slip and it's carrying load where there's no ribcage to carry it.
Check the neck opening. It should sit low, at the top of the breastbone. If it's riding up on the throat you've moved the pressure back onto the windpipe, which is most of the reason people leave collars behind in the first place.
Watch from the side. Get someone to walk them away from you at a trot. The front leg should reach fully forward without anything stopping it. If the stride looks clipped, or the leg seems to bounce off the strap, that's your answer.
Look at the fur afterward. Flattened fur under the straps is normal. Red lines, broken hairs, or bald patches at the armpit are not.

Bettle's second harness failed number four and I'd been using it for months. From above it looked fine. From the side, watching him trot, the strap was catching the point of his shoulder on every stride.

Buying the next one

I'm not going to tell you which one to buy, partly because the right harness depends on the shape of your dog, and partly because a chest measurement is worth more than any review. Take a soft tape measure around the ribcage at the widest point, just behind the front legs, and buy to that number rather than to the size on the label.

What to look for

A Y-front that leaves the shoulders clear. This is the single thing that matters most.
Adjustment in at least four places. Two-point harnesses are a compromise on almost every dog.
Both a front and a back ring. The front one gently turns a pulling dog; the back one is for relaxed walking and long lines. A double-ended leash lets you use both and keeps the dog balanced between them.
Padding where the load is, not everywhere. Thick padding across the shoulders is padding in the worst possible place.
A neck strap that unclips, if your dog dislikes things going over their head.
A third strap if you have an escape artist — a neck, chest and belly design is very hard to reverse out of.

Expect to pay roughly $25–50 (€25–50) for something that fits properly. Past that you're mostly buying materials, not shape.

A harness is management, not training

Worth being clear about this, because the marketing is not. A front-clip harness makes a pulling dog easier to hold today. It doesn't teach them anything. The teaching is a separate, dull, ten-minutes-a-day job — I wrote up the routine that worked for us here. The harness buys you the ability to survive walks while the training lands.

One last thing. If a dog who's always been fine about the harness suddenly ducks away from it, or if you notice a new hitch in their stride, don't just loosen a strap and carry on. Sudden avoidance and gait changes are both things worth a vet's eyes on, and I'd rather look silly at the vet than clever at home.

Go and look at your dog's harness from the side, right now, while they're standing up. It takes ten seconds, and there's a reasonable chance you'll see something you've walked past a thousand times.

John

Writes My Dog, My Life — a weekly note for everyday dog owners. Lives with Bettle, who has been through three harnesses and has opinions about all of them. More about me →