Why do dog trainers not like harnesses?
Hattie Moen
2025-06-26 22:30:16
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A Back-Clip Harness Could Encourage Pulling Behavior. Dog harnesses, especially ones that clip on the back, are not the best choice for dogs that pull or for teaching leash manners to your young dog. Your dog could easily pull you when it is wearing a back-clip harness and that can become a bad habit. Dogs are curious creatures and they want to sniff everything and greet everyone. With a harness, they can easily pull you on their walks. This habit can become hard to break. Harnesses Could Delay Communication With a collar, you can simply flick your wrist to communicate with your dog. They Could Result In Unclear Communication, a harness sends the signal to the dog’s shoulders so it gets confused as to what is expected of it. They May Indirectly Encourage Distractions, dogs on a harness are not controlled at the head, they get controlled only at their shoulder level, they get a lot more free time to move from one distraction to the next. They Offer Little Control Over Your Dog, a collar lets you control your dog easily and greatly minimizes dangers like darting into traffic or jumping on other dogs.
Eva Cormier
2025-06-16 22:38:19
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There’s a persistent 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. Sled dogs pull on their harnesses because they’re taught to do so, not because the harness naturally encourages that behavior. In reality, 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. A leash is not a steering mechanism. Yanking and leash-snapping only result in more yanking and leash-snapping. Yanking and leash snapping is just cruel. But while some might think that harnesses encourage pulling, the real issue is that 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.
Hope Balistreri
2025-06-14 10:44:21
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Harnesses are fantastic for many reasons, but when it comes to training, they can sometimes lead to more pulling and less control, making it harder to teach good leash manners. Reduced Control: Harnesses can give dogs a greater range of motion compared to collars, making it potentially more challenging for the owner or trainer to control the dog, especially if the dog is large or particularly reactive. Encouragement of Pulling: Some types of harnesses can actually encourage dogs to pull. This is because harnesses distribute pressure more evenly around the dog’s body, which can reduce discomfort when pulling and thus reinforce the pulling behavior. Training Challenges: For training purposes, some trainers prefer the feedback and control provided by a traditional collar, especially when teaching a dog to walk nicely on a leash or to heel. Most dog trainers cringe at poorly fitted harnesses because they can enable dogs to pull with their whole body weight. It’s not that we have anything against harnesses per se, it’s more about finding the right tool for the job. Control is the name of the game in dog training, and let’s be honest, a harness can sometimes feel like playing a game with a joystick that’s not quite responsive.
Caleigh Lakin
2025-06-02 00:10:08
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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.
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.
On a harness we are restraining.
With the use of a proper training collar and application of constructive training techniques we are training.
Harnesses have been great for the dog training business but terrible for fostering well-behaved dogs.
My days are filled with young adults to middle-aged dogs who pull and react on their harnesses.
Their owners finally seek help when the reactivity has become untenable or embarrassing.
Owners who choose a collar for their dog rarely wait past a year of age to address the issue of poor leash manners.