I wanted to share my experience with a new harness I tried for Bonnie today. We have not had much success yet in training her to loose leash walk outdoors. She is such a hard puller and very excitable. Once, when I was taking her out for a squirt, she pulled so hard on her buckle collar (not a choke) that she fainted on the grass. I was so scared! We gave up taking her for walks when she became a larger puppy because of the pulling. So sad.
We bought and tried the Gentle Leader halter and I CAN control her with it for heeling, but she hates it. Whenever I try to give her some freedom to the end of the leash, she throws herself down on the ground, and has a fit trying to get it off her nose. Also since the GL has a tab that hangs down, Bon was always getting her feet tangled up in the leash if she had any slack at all.
Anyway, I found the Sporn at Petsmart and decided to give it a try. It is not a nose halter, but a body one. It has small straps that fit under her front legs and a buckle collar around her neck. She is about 45 lbs. so I got the large size. The leg straps tighten if she tries to pull, so she can't exert much pressure, but it doesn't hurt or choke her. She likes it much better and goes on sniffing and enjoying her walk. When it does tighten, she just stops and looks back at me and waits. Also since the leash connects on top of her back, she isn't always tripping over it.
Maybe I'm not teaching her anything, just controlling her, but that's fine for now. We have many other things we're working on and it's great to just be able to have fun walking together again like when she was a little pup. We are happy, happy, happy!
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