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The Case for HarnessesIn their years of experience in dog rescue, Emily and Libby have been on a never-ending quest for how to best work with rescue dogs. In this episode, they discuss some of the reasons around-the-neck collars can be injurious or painful to your dog, the ways they pose health risks, and the counterintuitive ways it sets back your dog's training. If you're using a collar for your dog, give this episode a listen for the ways harnesses can ensure better, more humane safety and smoother training.
Article 1: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16611932/ Article 2: https://phys.org/news/2020-05-collars-neck-injuries-dogs.html Best puppy harnesses: https://www.whole-dog-journal.com/puppies/best-puppy-collars-harnesses/ Balance Harness: https://www.blue-9.com/shop/BalanceHarness Ruffwear Harness: https://ruffwear.com/collections/dog-harnesses/products/front-range-everyday-dog-harness Freedom Harness: https://www.2houndsdesign.com/product-category/shop-now/freedom-no-pull-harness/ |
Episode Transcript
Emily 0:09
Welcome to pod to the rescue.
Libby 0:11
Rescuing the dog is just the first step. We're here to help with everything that comes next.
Hello, and welcome to pod to the rescue. I'm Libby.
Emily 0:21
And I'm Emily.
Libby 0:22
And this is a mini episode about harnesses. So at Summit dog rescue, we adopt all of our dogs with a harness, they all come with harness to their forever homes. Emily, why is that?
Emily 0:35
Well, we've been doing this for over a decade. And back in the day, we just used a collar. And I remember someone saying, try a harness, try a harness, and I bought a couple of inferior harnesses, and they slipped all over and the dog pulled and I thought this, this is really not great, it's not worth it. Over the years, we tried a couple of really excellent harnesses out and they make a huge difference in your ability to walk the dog. We can get into all the details, but there's safety reasons and health reasons, really huge health concerns with walking your dog on a collar. leash, walking in general is probably one of the most difficult skills a dog needs to learn. In our human world. Like I always tell people, if you go out to the country, or dogs or just you know, running around or you go to Mexico and you see the little street dogs, they don't walk in a straight line at a certain pace, you know, not at all, not at all. And then we bring them home and we're like, okay, you know, scruffy, you are going to be tied to me on a six foot leash and you're gonna walk down the street and you're not going to pull and you're not going to stop to sniff you're just going to walk there next to me, like a little soldier. And it's difficult, it's like really difficult. And so a front clip harness is what we prefer that what happens with the front clip harness is when the dog starts to pull, the front clip starts to pull the dog towards you, when the clip is on the back, which a lot of people are like, Oh, I'll try a harness and they use a bat clip. That is that engages oppositional reflex it's actually like sled dog action. So
Libby 2:22
okay, what is it? What is oppositional reflex mean?
Emily 2:25
Okay, okay. So it's just a natural occurrence. Like if I push you, you're naturally your instinct is going to be to push back. So if you know, if the dog feels the leash pulling on their back, that reflex will kick in and they will go harder. So I think that's one reason harnesses get a little bit of a bad rap.
Libby 2:46
Yeah, I think with the front clip, it just, it helps them understand a little bit better where their body is in space, at least that's kind of what I feel when I'm walking Daisy.
Emily 2:58
And well, all of my dogs because all of all of the Fosters I've met over the years have been wearing for unclip harnesses. It's kind of hard to visualize, but if you imagine a dog pulling, pulling, pulling, but there's something attached to their chest, it's turning them Yeah, it's kind of turning them back. And I think that gets to the concept of why dogs, Paul, one of them, one of the reasons we discussed is they don't usually walk in straight lines at a set pace. Secondly, pulling is actually what we call reinforcing. But the you know, layman's term would be rewarding. So we walk pretty slow. And so they pull and they get, you know, to where they want to go faster. So they get to that, they get to work faster, they get to smell something, they get to go meet somebody. So so we are training them to pull if we let them pull us,
Libby 3:52
you know, and I feel sometimes that we get rescue dogs who have some of our dogs have maybe never been on a neighborhood walk in their whole entire life, you know, they've been chained up in a yard or they've been living in a kennel for two months at a shelter and they're just so excited to smell all of the things and this can last a really long time. So it's super helpful to have a tool in your toolbox you can use along with training to teach them to walk politely and Alicia
Emily 4:28
Exactly. Gigi calls it power steering. Which I think is really great. front clip harness is power steering. That being said, not all front clip harnesses do the job. So we have three that we think are the best. We like the freedom harness. It's made in North Carolina, which is you know, Made in America. Gotta love it. We love the balance harness,
Libby 4:54
my personal favorite.
Emily 4:55
Yep by blue canine and then we like the rough wire harness the front range, I think is the best, that one doesn't have a great front clip. So I don't recommend the front range if you have a massive polar. And with all of these, we're going to have another micro episode on also how to get your dog to, you know, check back in with you and be rewarded for not pulling
Libby 5:19
totally, because like I said, it's just one part of the puzzle. You know, it's not like you can't slap a harness on your dog, and suddenly they don't pull, it's just one way to help them learn. And I you know, I always say that it has to be used in conjunction with some training.
Emily 5:45
So one other reason that we really promote harnesses is there's just a lot of health concerns with walking your dog on a collar on a flat collar or a choke collar is even worse. You know, the the neck is extremely delicate, there's your trachea in there. And then you've got your spinal cord, there's been so many studies on the severe risk of injury to your dog.
Libby 6:18
So a study led by a canine scientist at Nottingham Trent University looked at the potential impact of pulling on the lead and the related pressure on the neck, using a variety of color types and styles. The study found that with all of the color types and styles tested, even those that were padded, or they had their are white, they were wide, the pressure exerted on the neck would be sufficient to risk injury to the doc, no single color tested provided a pressure considered low enough to reduce the risk of injury when pulling on the lead. They found. Yeah,
Emily 6:53
significant, significant, even the best type of collar is putting too much pressure on the dog's neck if they pull on the lead. And this is risking injury was one of the conclusions. And they suggested that collars should be used for ID tags. But that dog should be walked on a harness or loose leads that avoids any pressure on the neck.
Libby 7:13
Yeah, and so it just kind of combat comes back to that if you if you're using just a collar or a chain collar, and you know, you might have a super well behaved dog, but all dogs at some point are gonna lunge after a squirrel or something like that. And, you know, it's just it's why risk it. I know my first dog before I wised up and started using a harness with him, he would slip his collar going after squirrels all the time. And it was like so dangerous for him to run out into traffic. You know, it's just so much more secure to have a properly fitted harness.
Emily 7:54
There's also that study out of the University of Wisconsin about, you know, any pressure on the neck can increase intra ocular pressure, which can lead to can lead to glaucoma, or weak or thin corneas. And they recommended that no dog should be walked in a collar and walked on harness. Yeah, it's so interesting, because like, remember the grain free publicity about that which, you know, the jury's still out, but that got so much press because there was a big industry behind that information. So, unfortunately, the harness industry isn't, you know, a big enough industry to get the attention, the mainstream media. And so this is kind of information that dog owners just don't know, it's not out there. I didn't know it 10 years ago, and maybe even, you know, seven years ago, I was probably still walking my dog in a collar. Now, I just I never I don't leave the house without a harness on my dog.
Libby 8:57
Yep. I mean, either never. Okay, so what else can happen? What are the other health risks Tracheal collapse, we we've seen that in a few dogs who have come in to the rescue, right? We're in the past, they've been just walked on a collar exclusively. And,
Emily 9:11
yeah, we've gotten a lot of dogs with Tracheal collapse, turns out that the trachea is just cartilage. And it's the windpipe and you know, your air goes in and out. And apparently there's some weird technical thing about when the air is being released, then there's low pressure. And so if you jerk your dog at the same time that they're breathing out, you're really increasing the chances. trachea just, you know, crashing it's like cardboard, you know, it's like it's like stepping on a cardboard. Yeah, we've gotten dogs in it's more common in small dogs, but also aging dogs. So we've gotten dogs in and it's a telltale sign is a persistent cough that doesn't go away, especially when there's any pressure on the trachea. So then when we've had those dogs that cough a lot and they're like, you know, raspy because, you know, Oh, yeah.
Libby 10:01
So is there any kind of treatment,
Emily 10:03
you know, there's some sort of like stent that they can do, they can do a surgery and put in a stent and mitigate a little bit of the air pressure loss. But you know, basically, try not to use a collar on your dog. And yeah, the worst, the worst. And I've used them back before I knew anything, are choke collars, I used to use a choke collar. And I actually was so naive that I kind of thought of as like a choker necklace, like, I never really sat down and put two and two together like this is designed to choke My dog
Libby 10:39
is right there in the name,
Emily 10:40
it's right there in the name.
Libby 10:42
So I think the point we really want to make is that there are gentle are tools that you can use to help you and your dog have nice, enjoyable walks, that are, you know, they're going to help you teach your dog to walk with a loose leash, and they're going to be safer for your dog while they're learning. And if they do happen to lunge or pull. Can we talk about the Can we talk about the balance harness a little bit, I just love that harness.
Emily 11:12
Sure
Libby 11:13
I bought this harness,
Emily 11:14
I'm like, Okay, well, you're not sponsored by balance harness,
Libby 11:17
for a long time, we used the freedom harness almost exclusively. But in the past year or so we've also been using the balance harnessed from Blue nine. And what I love about that is that my first dog had a shoulder injury. And so we couldn't do anything that impeded shoulder movement. And those freedom harnesses do, that's one of the, you know, downsides. Yeah, it's one of the downsides, thank you. But the blue nine is like a y, if you can imagine a y across their chest, and so their shoulders have the full free range of motion. And that's the same with the roof wire front, front range. So we recommend those two harnesses for dogs who are super active, if you're going to take your dog hiking of Titan, those are really good harnesses for that.
Emily 12:09
Sorry about the dog barking in the background. That is my 90 pound Pyrenees featured in our micro episode on barking, we're gonna get into the nitty gritty of like how dogs learn. But when dogs are having an experience, they're making either a positive or a negative association, just like we are, you know, so they're learning this is safe or unsafe. So if you're out in the world, and your dog sees a garbage truck, and they feel intense pain on their neck, they can make a negative association and become fearful or aggressive towards garbage trucks or children, or bicyclists or other dogs. And it seems to me from reading over 8000 Dog applications this decade. People don't want aggressive dogs. So the major fallout from using punishment is aggression and fear.
Libby 13:07
There is a better way there are better tools, gentler tools that you can use.
Emily 13:11
We have this fox now that comes around every night about this time. Yeah, he comes out over and he's actually smelling my car, which isn't great. treats in my car. I was out the other night and he was watching me and I was like, Can I click or train the fox? I was joking to somebody that I could probably do a better job clicker train was boxing clicker training by tyrannize.
Libby 13:44
Thanks for tuning in. If you liked this episode, don't forget to rate and review. It helps other folks like you find the show. To find out more about our programming and adoptable rescue dogs. You can visit summit dog rescue.org thanks to Mike pesci for the original music and to Alex Lee Ammons and for the love media for graphics production and editing. See you soon on pod to the rescue.
Emily 14:09
Oh notes. Rarely do you hear that.
Libby 14:15
This is a podcast about dogs there's going to be a dog barking everywhere. Every once in a while in the background.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Welcome to pod to the rescue.
Libby 0:11
Rescuing the dog is just the first step. We're here to help with everything that comes next.
Hello, and welcome to pod to the rescue. I'm Libby.
Emily 0:21
And I'm Emily.
Libby 0:22
And this is a mini episode about harnesses. So at Summit dog rescue, we adopt all of our dogs with a harness, they all come with harness to their forever homes. Emily, why is that?
Emily 0:35
Well, we've been doing this for over a decade. And back in the day, we just used a collar. And I remember someone saying, try a harness, try a harness, and I bought a couple of inferior harnesses, and they slipped all over and the dog pulled and I thought this, this is really not great, it's not worth it. Over the years, we tried a couple of really excellent harnesses out and they make a huge difference in your ability to walk the dog. We can get into all the details, but there's safety reasons and health reasons, really huge health concerns with walking your dog on a collar. leash, walking in general is probably one of the most difficult skills a dog needs to learn. In our human world. Like I always tell people, if you go out to the country, or dogs or just you know, running around or you go to Mexico and you see the little street dogs, they don't walk in a straight line at a certain pace, you know, not at all, not at all. And then we bring them home and we're like, okay, you know, scruffy, you are going to be tied to me on a six foot leash and you're gonna walk down the street and you're not going to pull and you're not going to stop to sniff you're just going to walk there next to me, like a little soldier. And it's difficult, it's like really difficult. And so a front clip harness is what we prefer that what happens with the front clip harness is when the dog starts to pull, the front clip starts to pull the dog towards you, when the clip is on the back, which a lot of people are like, Oh, I'll try a harness and they use a bat clip. That is that engages oppositional reflex it's actually like sled dog action. So
Libby 2:22
okay, what is it? What is oppositional reflex mean?
Emily 2:25
Okay, okay. So it's just a natural occurrence. Like if I push you, you're naturally your instinct is going to be to push back. So if you know, if the dog feels the leash pulling on their back, that reflex will kick in and they will go harder. So I think that's one reason harnesses get a little bit of a bad rap.
Libby 2:46
Yeah, I think with the front clip, it just, it helps them understand a little bit better where their body is in space, at least that's kind of what I feel when I'm walking Daisy.
Emily 2:58
And well, all of my dogs because all of all of the Fosters I've met over the years have been wearing for unclip harnesses. It's kind of hard to visualize, but if you imagine a dog pulling, pulling, pulling, but there's something attached to their chest, it's turning them Yeah, it's kind of turning them back. And I think that gets to the concept of why dogs, Paul, one of them, one of the reasons we discussed is they don't usually walk in straight lines at a set pace. Secondly, pulling is actually what we call reinforcing. But the you know, layman's term would be rewarding. So we walk pretty slow. And so they pull and they get, you know, to where they want to go faster. So they get to that, they get to work faster, they get to smell something, they get to go meet somebody. So so we are training them to pull if we let them pull us,
Libby 3:52
you know, and I feel sometimes that we get rescue dogs who have some of our dogs have maybe never been on a neighborhood walk in their whole entire life, you know, they've been chained up in a yard or they've been living in a kennel for two months at a shelter and they're just so excited to smell all of the things and this can last a really long time. So it's super helpful to have a tool in your toolbox you can use along with training to teach them to walk politely and Alicia
Emily 4:28
Exactly. Gigi calls it power steering. Which I think is really great. front clip harness is power steering. That being said, not all front clip harnesses do the job. So we have three that we think are the best. We like the freedom harness. It's made in North Carolina, which is you know, Made in America. Gotta love it. We love the balance harness,
Libby 4:54
my personal favorite.
Emily 4:55
Yep by blue canine and then we like the rough wire harness the front range, I think is the best, that one doesn't have a great front clip. So I don't recommend the front range if you have a massive polar. And with all of these, we're going to have another micro episode on also how to get your dog to, you know, check back in with you and be rewarded for not pulling
Libby 5:19
totally, because like I said, it's just one part of the puzzle. You know, it's not like you can't slap a harness on your dog, and suddenly they don't pull, it's just one way to help them learn. And I you know, I always say that it has to be used in conjunction with some training.
Emily 5:45
So one other reason that we really promote harnesses is there's just a lot of health concerns with walking your dog on a collar on a flat collar or a choke collar is even worse. You know, the the neck is extremely delicate, there's your trachea in there. And then you've got your spinal cord, there's been so many studies on the severe risk of injury to your dog.
Libby 6:18
So a study led by a canine scientist at Nottingham Trent University looked at the potential impact of pulling on the lead and the related pressure on the neck, using a variety of color types and styles. The study found that with all of the color types and styles tested, even those that were padded, or they had their are white, they were wide, the pressure exerted on the neck would be sufficient to risk injury to the doc, no single color tested provided a pressure considered low enough to reduce the risk of injury when pulling on the lead. They found. Yeah,
Emily 6:53
significant, significant, even the best type of collar is putting too much pressure on the dog's neck if they pull on the lead. And this is risking injury was one of the conclusions. And they suggested that collars should be used for ID tags. But that dog should be walked on a harness or loose leads that avoids any pressure on the neck.
Libby 7:13
Yeah, and so it just kind of combat comes back to that if you if you're using just a collar or a chain collar, and you know, you might have a super well behaved dog, but all dogs at some point are gonna lunge after a squirrel or something like that. And, you know, it's just it's why risk it. I know my first dog before I wised up and started using a harness with him, he would slip his collar going after squirrels all the time. And it was like so dangerous for him to run out into traffic. You know, it's just so much more secure to have a properly fitted harness.
Emily 7:54
There's also that study out of the University of Wisconsin about, you know, any pressure on the neck can increase intra ocular pressure, which can lead to can lead to glaucoma, or weak or thin corneas. And they recommended that no dog should be walked in a collar and walked on harness. Yeah, it's so interesting, because like, remember the grain free publicity about that which, you know, the jury's still out, but that got so much press because there was a big industry behind that information. So, unfortunately, the harness industry isn't, you know, a big enough industry to get the attention, the mainstream media. And so this is kind of information that dog owners just don't know, it's not out there. I didn't know it 10 years ago, and maybe even, you know, seven years ago, I was probably still walking my dog in a collar. Now, I just I never I don't leave the house without a harness on my dog.
Libby 8:57
Yep. I mean, either never. Okay, so what else can happen? What are the other health risks Tracheal collapse, we we've seen that in a few dogs who have come in to the rescue, right? We're in the past, they've been just walked on a collar exclusively. And,
Emily 9:11
yeah, we've gotten a lot of dogs with Tracheal collapse, turns out that the trachea is just cartilage. And it's the windpipe and you know, your air goes in and out. And apparently there's some weird technical thing about when the air is being released, then there's low pressure. And so if you jerk your dog at the same time that they're breathing out, you're really increasing the chances. trachea just, you know, crashing it's like cardboard, you know, it's like it's like stepping on a cardboard. Yeah, we've gotten dogs in it's more common in small dogs, but also aging dogs. So we've gotten dogs in and it's a telltale sign is a persistent cough that doesn't go away, especially when there's any pressure on the trachea. So then when we've had those dogs that cough a lot and they're like, you know, raspy because, you know, Oh, yeah.
Libby 10:01
So is there any kind of treatment,
Emily 10:03
you know, there's some sort of like stent that they can do, they can do a surgery and put in a stent and mitigate a little bit of the air pressure loss. But you know, basically, try not to use a collar on your dog. And yeah, the worst, the worst. And I've used them back before I knew anything, are choke collars, I used to use a choke collar. And I actually was so naive that I kind of thought of as like a choker necklace, like, I never really sat down and put two and two together like this is designed to choke My dog
Libby 10:39
is right there in the name,
Emily 10:40
it's right there in the name.
Libby 10:42
So I think the point we really want to make is that there are gentle are tools that you can use to help you and your dog have nice, enjoyable walks, that are, you know, they're going to help you teach your dog to walk with a loose leash, and they're going to be safer for your dog while they're learning. And if they do happen to lunge or pull. Can we talk about the Can we talk about the balance harness a little bit, I just love that harness.
Emily 11:12
Sure
Libby 11:13
I bought this harness,
Emily 11:14
I'm like, Okay, well, you're not sponsored by balance harness,
Libby 11:17
for a long time, we used the freedom harness almost exclusively. But in the past year or so we've also been using the balance harnessed from Blue nine. And what I love about that is that my first dog had a shoulder injury. And so we couldn't do anything that impeded shoulder movement. And those freedom harnesses do, that's one of the, you know, downsides. Yeah, it's one of the downsides, thank you. But the blue nine is like a y, if you can imagine a y across their chest, and so their shoulders have the full free range of motion. And that's the same with the roof wire front, front range. So we recommend those two harnesses for dogs who are super active, if you're going to take your dog hiking of Titan, those are really good harnesses for that.
Emily 12:09
Sorry about the dog barking in the background. That is my 90 pound Pyrenees featured in our micro episode on barking, we're gonna get into the nitty gritty of like how dogs learn. But when dogs are having an experience, they're making either a positive or a negative association, just like we are, you know, so they're learning this is safe or unsafe. So if you're out in the world, and your dog sees a garbage truck, and they feel intense pain on their neck, they can make a negative association and become fearful or aggressive towards garbage trucks or children, or bicyclists or other dogs. And it seems to me from reading over 8000 Dog applications this decade. People don't want aggressive dogs. So the major fallout from using punishment is aggression and fear.
Libby 13:07
There is a better way there are better tools, gentler tools that you can use.
Emily 13:11
We have this fox now that comes around every night about this time. Yeah, he comes out over and he's actually smelling my car, which isn't great. treats in my car. I was out the other night and he was watching me and I was like, Can I click or train the fox? I was joking to somebody that I could probably do a better job clicker train was boxing clicker training by tyrannize.
Libby 13:44
Thanks for tuning in. If you liked this episode, don't forget to rate and review. It helps other folks like you find the show. To find out more about our programming and adoptable rescue dogs. You can visit summit dog rescue.org thanks to Mike pesci for the original music and to Alex Lee Ammons and for the love media for graphics production and editing. See you soon on pod to the rescue.
Emily 14:09
Oh notes. Rarely do you hear that.
Libby 14:15
This is a podcast about dogs there's going to be a dog barking everywhere. Every once in a while in the background.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai