Our 6 month old Labrador is showing signs of being fearful of her harness, even though she enjoys her walks out and about it is becoming harder to get her to be willing to put it on, any ideas would be helpful as we don't want to frighten her
You need to condition your puppy to love her harness. The easiest way to do this is by association it with brilliant things. Start off by training her to put her head through it, rather than you forcing it on her. Dogs respond very well to having choice. Here's a video where I show the initial stages of doing this with my puppy: https://thislittledoggy.com/2017/01/08/desensitisation-to-the-harness/ Once you have done this, have short and regular training sessions with it, where you build up the duration it's done up and ensure that only brilliant things happen when it's on - so, put it on for her to have dinner then take it off immediately afterwards; if she's toy motivated, put it on and have a 60-second game of tug, then take it off. So you're making more and more positive associations with it.
Guide Dogs, as you can imagine, are very careful in introducing the harness. They start by putting food on the harness for the dog to find. This happens for a few days, then they reward the dog for touching the harness with their nose. After that putting their head through for food. Then the feed the dog their meals in the harness for a week. Only then do they use it out and about. We have the same with the puppy jacket - meals in the jacket for a week and then first walks (for the first week) in the jacket must be easy, well known and event-free, otherwise - if something happens - the pup can ‘blame’ the harness/jacket. .
I train much the same approach as Guide Dogs but start rewarding for just a glance towards the harness which I've put on the floor, then reward for approaching then for a nose touch, then for putting head through and so on. I don't set a specific timescale for each stage as each dog is an individual and progress will depend upon the individual.
Yes. We were doing this at puppy class this week, of course ours are bred for boldness and every pup, twelve of them, went straight for the harness and investigated, pushing them round looking for more food lol I forget that many dogs are much more sensitive than this .
When she was a very young puppy we had a light-weight harness that I put on her first thing in the morning and it didn’t come off until bedtime. She just got used to wearing it. Now we have a Julius K9 that only goes on for walks, but she Very accustomed to wearing something.
Me, too. I unconsciously trained (it was never planned) a “step” into your harness with my boy. I place the harness on the floor and say “step”, and he lifts one foot at a time into the harness. I have to guide the foot into the right gap, and he holds his foot up till I get it in place. Sometimes he steps by himself into the right arm holes. Makes putting on the harness so much easier. He gets great “wow’s!” from my husband and me because we do genuinely think he’s brilliant at stepping into his harness! And he gets a kiss after it’s all clipped in. (He probably would prefer a food treat!)
Any tips on how to get harness on Luna , as when I pick up her harness to try and put it on her, she bites at my hands and bites at no clothes, I have been leaving it on floor for her to get used to it and she seems OK until I pick it up, its getting worse so that I can't take her for any leash training
Hi @base28, when I bought my harness for Cassie of the trainer who ran the force free dog training classes I went to she advised me to put some peanut butter on the fridge door for Cass lick off, and put the harness on as she was doing that. It did work well, but I quickly progressed to slipping it over her head with just a little bit of kibble or similar. She's never really liked the harness, but once it was on she was ok. Hope this helps.
Watch the video I posted above - I'm not trying to put the harness on Luna, I'm training her to put her head through it. Giving her the choice is very powerful indeed and will make her more likely to accept it. Trying to force it on her will make her more likely to resent it.
Are you using a specific training session or just leaving it on the floor? Are you marking and rewarding every glance, look and movement towards the harness? Mark the end of the training as you would normally and toss a treat to the side for Luna to go and get while you pick up the harness. Desensitising a dog to something they dislike is a slow process and I would not necessarily expect to see much progress after only a couple of days - a few weeks perhaps.
Luna's harness at the moment is one that she has to step into but at the weekend she is being fitted with a perfect fit one, so we are hoping that might help. We reward for every touch and glance but when she starts to chew it I carefully remove it for a while, if we dfo manage to get it on her with not so much of a problem then after it comes off she then starts to nip and bite and then it starts too hurt, we try to stay positive but it is hard at times
