Thanks all. I do think walking on a long line is dangerous without a harness. And I would much rather not have to use the long line in our training, but given her tendency for running off and self-rewarding, it seemed like the only solution. I am sure some dogs don't ever need to use a long line, but since Indie got a sniff of something a month ago and ran across a road and two fields to get to it, I am pretty convinced she needs one for the time being. It would be different if we had any secure area to exercise her, but we don't. I would rather her worried for 5 minutes twice a day about the harness than either injured from a flat collar, or run over from not being trained on a long line. But obviously I don't enjoy her being upset like this about the harness. It is interesting about how guide dogs do it - I wonder whether if I started putting it on her for her meals it might help? We have started using her meals to get over her phobia of the car too - she is terrified of jumping in the boot, but if her dinner is in there she hops straight in with no problem. She even jumped in a second time to lick her bowl! I have only fed her in there a few times so far but there is already a big difference. Her dinner is VERY important to her so perhaps the value of that might help desensitise her. Worth a shot! And I will also start putting it on her when we are already out before a good game of chase or some chicken-throwing I will report back...
@JulieT I need written evidence Come on, you are a great one for evidence. Having been a vet nurse for many years, I never came across such an injury, but that doesn't mean there aren't any.
Here you go: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PR-ADV-B-00039-00001/1 Or perhaps you should go ahead and try the rope and the scooter experiment. Let us know how you get on.
This is not quite the same thing as bolting from your handler while on a long line, but my sister knows someone who kept their dog on a long line at home because he'd escape their garden. One day they came home and found him hanging by his neck on the other side of the gate. He was dead. He'd jumped over the gate but the line didn't quite reach the ground on the other side. I don't know if he suffocated or broke his neck. Terribly sad story.
Fascinating but a bit above my head. Newton's Law of Motion and squaring the curves However, if a human is holding the end of a long line, with dog on the other end, the force of the motion of the dog, will cause the human to not withstand the force and drop the line Thus dog will not break neck. However, if long line tied to a post, it may well. I happened to be out this afternoon with an ex police dog handler (who does not believe in choke chains and believes in giving dogs confidence), said that in all the 20 years of being in the police force, he has never known this to happen. However, I do not like the idea of a dog being on the end of a long line with collar or indeed a harness and coming to an abrupt stop, even if he is trailing human on the other end!
Casper has 4 harnesses. We have found that he doesn't like the ones with thick webbing anymore...the perfect fit has the 40 mm wider webbing. We haven't tried his k9 for a while. He seems to accept the happy at heel harness, much better. This one is quite a loose fit, with much thinner webbing. I do wonder if he dislikes the compression he gets with the snug perfect fit. I am about to order the Haqihana harness as that also has the the thinner but high quality webbing, and seems a better design, with a back attachment for a lead/long line. It will be interesting to see how he takes to it.
Would you seriously try it on one of your dogs, absolutely confident that it wouldn't injure them? Really? Go on then, we'll wait for the video. And very happy for you to put some bungee cord on the rope on the lamppost to account for the rope moving a bit under someone's shoe. Let us know whether that stops it hurting or you still die.
Of course I wouldn't! My whole point of this is that we are supposed to train our dogs 'positively' and so many dogs appear to fear harnesses and yet people still make the dog accept them. To me that isn't positive training
So, what would you do then that's a more positive version of training? What are you going to do with a dog that was out to self reward, or these dogs that we hear about every day that are choking themselves on collars so desperate to get to the environment they will withstand a great deal of pain - what are you going to do?
Difficult! I have had dogs who have pulled on the lead, but perhaps not so much self reward, BUT that was before I knew about positive training. Not letting a dog pull is the easiest to address, train the pup OFF lead and then it will seamlessy walk on. Train when the pup wants to be with you, train with titbits, it then becomes a habit. If a dog is desperated to get to an enviroment and pulling on the lead, don't move, it doesn't take a dog long to learn that if it wants something it has to stay with you. Self rewarding is a matter of training, the reward the dog wants should be with you, not away from you. So again as a pup, you reward the pup with a ball, or a game. I suppose that has been easier for me as I walk where there are not many dogs. My young dog (golly he is nearly five now in January) will see another dog in the distance (or a pheasant, or crow, or horse, or person, or squirrel) and immediately runs back to me for the ball. I do find this a bit of a pain as he bounces around me wanting the ball!
You only have to look through the forum to know - without any doubt - that most people are not in this happy place where a few lessons off lead heel and the dog doesn't pull on lead, or they can just toss a tennis ball and the dog runs back from distractions. Charlie would have choked himself on a flat collar when younger. He would have done serious damage to himself. He also needed to be on a line (he still does in some places). So if you dog pulls badly or needs to be on a line, and you want to avoid punishment as a training tool, you have to use a harness. When you weigh up the risk of physical damage, and know that if you are going to avoid punishment it will be quite a while before a dog doesn't pull on a lead or runs to a distraction, the harness is a necessary part of positive training - and much better than allowing a dog to hurt itself or resorting to punishment used as a training tool. I do think that those of us with dogs that dislike harnesses have to do everything we can to get them to tolerate them better, although I can't say that I think it's possible to get all dogs to love them, I don't think I will ever get Charlie to love his harness. A dummy launcher can make him forget about it very, very quickly though.
Some people also haven't had their dog from a puppy, so all the training from day one has not happened. For the first 9 months of her life my dog was allowed to run wild where she pleased, and her previous owner had to run around chasing after her until she allowed herself to be caught and taken home. Outdoors she is not interested in a ball, and only interested in food about 25% of the time. I am sure that with very careful training from puppyhood and being lucky enough to have access to safe areas and controllable distractions to train, one might be able to avoid having to have this harness+training line palaver. But unfortunately I am not that person! But in other news, I put Indie's harness on before her dinner last night and again before her breakfast this morning - and she was not bothered about it one bit! I popped it over her head, she didn't shy away, no freezing, happily ate her dinner and then stood for me to take it off. I am hopeful about this - I might start popping it on for a super good treat instead of dinner sometimes to mix it up a bit.
I think the risk is very much reduced - the wider, and more padded, the straps the better - I prefer wide, padded, Y shaped harnesses. When I look at the action of Charlie's harness, the stress is very evenly distributed over his chest and shoulders, where he has a great deal of solid muscle. This has got to be better than having that stress on his neck. On his neck! With all the complex, intricate and delicate structures of vertebrae, spinal cord, trachea.... I think it is true though that stopping a dog running full pelt on a harness is very likely to be an aversive, even if it doesn't do any damage. I once stopped Charlie by stepping on his line and he wasn't even very far away from me or going very fast, but it clearly discouraged him from doing it again - so it must have been a punishment. I tried never to do it again, obviously although did once when he was running to a football on the other side of a road. He wasn't hurt, but was very much taken aback. Better that than the road though. Yay! Good news!
This is the point and I agree totally with Lara. Not everyone gets their little fluffly puppy at 8 weeks and has a blank canvas to train, some of us rescue dogs that have had little or no training so we have to do what is necessary, positively and as humanly as possible and we work very hard to achieve that. Charlie came to us at 9 months but at his foster home he had free access to a 12 acre wooded estate We have to same issues as Lara, Charlie is not interested in a ball, dummy or anything else and again a large percentage of the time even food. We had absolutely no other choice but to keep him on a long training line with a harness for 3 long years until he learned a recall which he did and to keep him SAFE I would never, ever have even considered using a training line attached to a flat collar because he would have undoubtedly broken his neck. In the early days with Charlie, in sheer desperation I contacted a German Pointer Rescue Centre to see if they had any advice to help with Charlie's recall, the lady told me and this is the honest truth, to buy a long length of washing line, tie it round MY waist attach it to Charlie's flat collar, let him get a sniff of something exciting and when he reached the end at full pelt and hurt himself he would never run off again To say I was upset and flabergasted is an understatement, I hung up and cried Needless to say I DID NOT try this and carried on training. Charlie did reach the end of the line a few times not at full pelt but not many times at all during those 3 years. But I would rather he did that than ran out in the road on a scent and caused an accident or was killed Great news about the harness Lara
