So! The way you can help is by posting photos of your dog in his/her harness (not the anti-pulling/easy walk kind, please!) Weim or not. Preferably from the side, and maybe the front, too, if you have it. If you don't have those angles, any will do as long as I can clearly see how the harness sits on your dog. Also tell me what you do with your dog that you use the harness for. These will also, besides helping me to be able to help other folks with harness fit, hopefully, help me to design a harness that will fit Hunter as correctly as a harness possibly can, making it more comfortable for him to track and progress with his Search and Rescue training.
Starting this off, Hunter and Dynasty, wearing the same harness, with the same settings. Notice the difference in the way the harness fits? On Hunter these settings have the chest strap rubbing up behind the elbow, and would do so worse when the line is attached to the ring and any backward pressure is applied. It also crowds the shoulder (not as bad as it used to - I lengthened the top strap). Walking/working, this would impede the movement in the shoulder and elbow, causing the dog to have to fight his harness to do his work. After a while the dog will stop being willing to do the work, or may try to but be too uncomfortable (which is precisely what happened to us last week. We put a different harness on him on Sunday, with a different fit, and it was like working a completely different dog.)
On Dynasty, this same harness with the same settings give her a ton of room for her shoulders to move comfortably (no, I did not beat her with a whip to get her to stand there - that's just... Dynasty)
Same harness again, with the strap that runs from the bottom of the Y in the front to the chest strap lengthened. Better, but still not quite what I need for him. Also, on him, with both of the settings (top pic and this next one) putting his head down to track, and pulling into the Y has the potential to cause the ring in the front to dig into his sternum and upper front ribs. This harness used to have a breastplate that would stop that, but that went too high up on his chest, preventing him from comfortably being able to put his head down to track.
So... please post your pics? You don't have to provide commentary like I did - I was just pointing the things out that I'm learning about this. If you want me to tell you how you might be able to adjust your harness for a more comfortable fit, say so in your post. Otherwise I'm just going to make observations in my notebook.
Thanks for your help!!
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