Harnesses Are Awesome

As noted in other posts about trying to find booties for Denali, she was hurting her paws while mushing which I unfortunately was not immediately aware of how much it was really hurting her. I soon figured it out, but she had already made a negative association of mushing = pain, and harness = mushing, therefore the harness was to be avoided. Her paws have completely healed and she has taken a couple months off from mushing. I ran her a few days ago and ran beautifully and better than she has in a long time. She pulled hard and ran fast and didn't hurt her feet despite being barefoot. I'm still taking it easy and considering options for booties, but she is ready to mush again. However, she still cowers at the sight of the harness. Time to fix that so she can love mushing again! Instead of forcing her, I wanted to make the harness the best thing ever.

Her association is so strong that as soon as I pick up the harness she cowers. She lowers her head, backs away, and will not come when called. We started by rewarding her for looking at the harness, which was laying on the floor. She was also rewarded for stepping toward the harness. Then she was rewarded when I would touch the harness and pick it up for second, then for picking it up higher and for longer durations. I didn't record that bit, but did record the progress from that point on.

First up, she is rewarded for bumping the harness and after a couple easy trials of that she must walk under the harness for her treat. Notice at first how as she steps under the harness she is stretching and leaning forward but her weight is back, and you can often see "whale eye" meaning the whites of her eyes are showing. This is a classic sign that the dog is feeling nervous, unsure, or fearful. She displays several calming signals throughout each video, such as shaking her fur, lip licking (keep in mind she's taking treats so not every lip-lick is stress related), and looking away as she backs up.

We took a couple breaks during the first session to keep her stress level low, which is what the cut scenes are. We'd stop for 2-3 minutes to do some basic obedience, petting, play, etc.



 

We stopped for a while before the next session. In this session, the focus is on having the harness on her shoulders, having her stay instead of immediately backing up, and learning that the harness brings treats but as soon as the harness isn't touching her then the treats stop. How awesome it is to wear the harness when it brings the treats!



 

And again had a break before the final session of the day. We practice putting the harness on, clipping it, adjusting it, and pulling. We covered a lot this session but she has shown very little nervousness or hesitation when clipping and adjusting the harness therefore I could progress pretty quickly.



I'll backtrack a little and have a review of each major step for each following session. Bump, walk under, stay under, let it touch, stand still with it touching, clipping, adjusting, and pulling. She made a lot of progress in one day!