08/14/2026
When I started walking Marley, he'd walk away from his harness. His family said they would have to "chase" him to get it on.
Many people don't know that you have to introduce the harness to dogs and not just slap it on them. It often becomes something a dog is forced to wear. So I had the family ditch the harness, walk him using a collar that he already wears, while I worked on getting him comfortable wearing the harness. Normally I wouldn't recommend using a collar, but Marley walks really well on leash, and continuing to force him to wear the harness wouldn't make him more comfortable with it.
It took a few steps:
1- getting him comfortable just seeing the harness. He'd walk away as soon as you'd grab it, so he needed to be OK with it in my hand first.
2- he became OK with me holding the harness, but not OK if I moved it or if it touched him. So I simply moved my hand up and down while holding it.
3- I started just placing the harness on him or touching him with it. He's still not 100% comfortable with this, but I think it may require a new harness as it may be due to his "history" with this one.
4- having him pass his head through.
This took about 3 weeks, just doing it 2 minutes a day. It could have been done faster if the family practiced the desensitization exercises as well, but they have a toddler and new born baby while working at a restaurant in a popular tourist area during tourist season. 😅
I practiced for about 2 minutes, 3x a week for 3 weeks. That's a total of 18 minutes.
