New Harness....Quick Fix!

When I first started thinking about taking Buster with me on my runs I knew I needed to start walking him first and building him up to running. But I needed a good harness because this dog pulls like crazy!

It’s our own fault for not taking him on walks from when he was a puppy but when we lived at our apartment we took him out nightly to the tennis courts and ran him there. No excuse for being a lazy bum since then but now I'm all over it!

I hit up our local Petco and got this harness, but after our second long walk I noticed it was rubbing a raw, sore sport under his arm. Cause they put the buckle on the harness in a really dump spot. I mean couldn’t them make it clasp underneath his chest or on top of his back, nope it goes right under his arm so it rubs the whole time.

I felt like such a horrible dog Mom that I went out the next day and bought some soft fabric and some velcro to create a “protective sleeve” to put over the buckle!

I ended up finding a piece of blue (for boy) softish fabric and picked up the iron on velcro to save some time. I figured if the iron on velcro didn’t work I’d go back and get the sew on kind.

First thing I did was cut a piece of fabric that ran a decent length on the harness. I ended up cutting two cause the first one wasn’t big enough to wrap around securely.

Then I attached the first part of the velcros. They are sticky so they go on but then you have to iron them on.

One thing I almost screwed up was not putting the opposite side of the velcro on the correct side of the fabric. It must go on the opposite side since it’s wrapping around the harness.

Since I was worried they might come loose from the fabric, I’m not sure why but I was, I did two passes on ironing it out. I wanted to make sure it would really stick since I knew I’d been taking it on and off a lot.

The first go around I only attached two pieces of velcro thinking that’d be enough. But when I wrapped it around the harness the middle part stuck up a bit and it felt like it was going to slide around.

So I attached a third piece of velcro to the middle.

Second attempt….

And it worked beautifully!! It was a lot more snug so I think that third piece was a must!

Then it was time to attach it to Buster. I had to put the harness on first and since he gets so excited for his walks I wasn’t sure how easy it’d be to wrap around the small piece of fabric. Surprisingly it was super easy! I like to think he understood that A. It would help prevent the pain or B. He knew we weren’t going anywhere until he sat like a good boy!!

See he even sat for a photo, which is extremely hard for him! All of our animals are camera shy and I usually take about 20 pictures before one turns out good!! Not this time, this little boy was ready for the photo shoot to be over and for us to get out the door!!

And that’s exactly what we did. I put on my headphones, turned on my audio book and we headed out into the sunny day!! We didn’t even try and get Buster to take a good picture, he was ready to go!!

We ended up doing 4.62 miles and I thought for sure the protective sleeve worked like a charm. And while I am sure it did (with lots of reassurance from Chuckles) protect him from making his sore worse it did irritate it. The sore he developed last week was still there and I think anything rubbing on it would irritate it so I’m giving Buster some time off this week and once it’s all healed we will give it another shot!!

Fingers crossed this works so that Buster Roo can continue to be my workout buddy and look like this at night :)

A Tired Dog is a Happy Dog!!!