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Front Clip / Easy-walk Harnesses


The Ruffwear front-range that I bought
I had been contemplating getting a good harness to take Pierre on longer hikes, which I want to do more of. I don't know why but I just felt like it was a thing you get for hikes. I bought one that I had been looking at for a while. One that has two clip options, including the front clip to "prevent pulling".  There were a ton of great reviews. People who "tried everything to stop pulling and this one was magical". Great marketing. I'm all in.

I picked it up yesterday and put it on for our afternoon walk to the nearby school field, to test it out, even though my plan was to only use it on hikes. My partner, Tim, who is in a constant state of eye-rolling in regards to my dog musings, poked fun at me for buying a harness that was so similar to the ones I frequently complain about. [As we know, Pierre's last adopters tried using an easy-walk harness on him and his reactivity was a nightmare.]

 Tim asked why I bought this thing.
Easy-walk harness

To which I replied something like,

 'For hikes, I don't know, I just thought it would be nicer to have something that prevents him from pulling too much when things are exciting that isn't his prong collar"

I also had never tried it before okay, like, maybe I was wrong. I also just want to appease all the dweebs that tell me this is the best option because hello, I'm a chronic people pleaser, it's fine. We had the leash clipped to the front and Pierre was happily walking with a loose leash for the beginning of his walk. I looked at Tim and said,

 "SEE. THIS IS SO NICE".

[Tim pointed out that he's always pretty good on the leash these days though and I chose to ignore this]

Shortly after, Pierre smells something that got him worked up and he lurched forwards and pulled like hell and the harness did nothing except slightly move to one side. It also doesn't have any handles so when we were at the field we just had to hope this wouldn't be the day that he decides to be a shit head. He was fine, but it does look really funny on him since his body is so long. Tim likened it to a tiny child's sweater on a giant man.

I was googling some more this morning, as I do, and thought about how a lot of the positive reviews for this harness involved something about how it doesn't chafe the skin around dog arm pits. This made me think a bit more about harnesses, do they all chafe and create wounds?

So, a simple google search:














So here's some proof for you (and me) that these harnesses truly aren't magic or even marginally helpful for a lot of dogs. Now I have an expensive harness that may or may not be a piece of garbage. I am stubborn and foolish and will try it again for a hike this weekend and hope that I can somehow return it next week if it still sucks.

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