I recently purchased a car safety harness for Cali. Basically the seat belt goes under the harness straps on her back and attaches on the other side. It seems much better than the tether we currently attach her to. She is now nearly 4 years old and since 8 weeks of age, basically stands parallel to the back seat while we attach her to the tether. Now, I need to teach her to be in a down position facing forward in order to attach the seat belt. It is not clear how I go about teaching her to be in a completely different position than before? Have you had to re-train your dog for something like this? How did you go about it? Many thanks.
We use the Sleepypod harness, which sounds the same: https://sleepypod.com/sport Although the instructions say the dog can sit or lie down, at 82 lbs, Johnny lies down across the back seat. He goes in the back seat and we use the down cue so he's facing me across the seat. I found that I need to have him positioned where the middle seatbelt attachment is at his shoulder; then I use the middle shoulder belt to loop under both harness straps and into the seatbelt attachment. Does this make sense? Our smaller dog can sit up and look forward *but* she's able to slowly pull on the seatbelt and fetch up in the footwell so we purchased a locking clip (see website) that prevents the seatbelt from reeling out. I like the harness very much but it was awkward to use at first.
Thanks, Athena. Your response is very helpful. Yes, I have the Sleepypod safety harness I gave this a try yesterday and seemed to work but I took Cali for a very short ride I the car to get her used to it. Keeping fingers crossed.
