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Why do dog trainers not use harnesses?
Nathaniel O'Kon
2025-06-16 12:09:02
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We hate harnesses because harnesses make it comfortable for a dog to pull. Since a harness makes it comfortable to pull, a dog continues to pull. When using a harness, an owner is no longer emotionally or physically distressed during walks. As such, the owner does not attempt to gain control of their dog’s actions or behavior on a walk. Dog trainers and therapists know that a person (or dog) will continue to participate in a behavior until it is no longer rewarding. The owner chooses a harness instead of choosing to train their dog. The problem, and it is a big one, is that the dog is still pulling and, more importantly, the owner has even less control over the dog. With the use of a proper training collar and application of constructive training techniques we are training. Proper training results in a choice. Harnesses have been great for the dog training business but terrible for fostering well-behaved dogs.
Howell Herzog
2025-06-09 15:55:20
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But do you know what isn’t subjective? Your dog’s health. Collars can cause injuries. When a leash pulls back on a collar, there are blood vessels being constricted, pressure on the thyroid gland, potential deforming of the base of the tongue, and possibly even nerve damage. A leash is not a steering mechanism. Yanking and leash-snapping only result in more yanking and leash-snapping.
The problem is that, all too often, a leash function as a steering mechanism, whether it’s the dog attempting to steer the human by pulling, or the human attempting to pull the dog along or back. In an ideal world, that pulling action wouldn’t happen. But since it does happen, it’s better than the force is spread over the dog’s body through a harness rather than concentrated entirely on the neck with a collar.
But don’t harnesses encourage pulling? There’s a persistent (but inaccurate) belief that, because of their inherent opposition reflex, harnesses encourage dogs to pull against the leash as they lean into the harness, kind of like sled dogs do. That’s always been a mistake of confusing correlation with causation. A dog who wants to pull is going to do so whether they’re wearing a collar or a harness. The difference is that harnesses don’t have a high risk of causing injury during pulling.
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Monserrate Kiehn
2025-06-01 21:22:02
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I like harnesses because they prevent damage from being done to the dog's throat. Many experts now are saying to avoid attaching the leash to equipment around dog's throats because they can damage the thyroid, esophagus, and trachea, and throw the dog's physical alignment off. Even if your dog walks politely on leash if they are startled they may pull forward, and it's natural human reaction to pull when we ourselves are startled, so it saves the dog from an accidental collar correction due to handler error.
Note: There are some dogs out there who are so sensitive to wearing equipment that they will shut down completely when you put a harness on them; this can sometimes be modified with proper conditioning to the equipment, but if it cannot then this is one instance where I feel using a flat collar is appropriate.