Guest post!

Walking your dog is one of the most blissful experiences for a dog owner. It gives you the perfect chance to bond with your best friend. Walking is also a really good exercise that your dog needs.

Now, when we are walking our dog with a leash, we often worry about the discomfort of our beloved pet. The Easy Walk Harness from Pet Safe is a perfect option for you.

However, the Easy Walk Harness might look like a confusing contraption for most beginners. Well, here in this article, we would give you a step-by-step process that would help you to fit the Easy Walk Harness on your Dog.

The things you would need

· The Easy Walk Harness

It is recommended that you go for the original Easy Walk Harness by PetSafe. There might be similar products in the market, but there might be some vital differences in the design that would cause stress to your dog after prolonged use. The Easy Walk Harness is made of Nylon and it would have the ‘Easy Walk’ tag woven into the shoulder strap.

· A Strong Leash

The leash doesn’t usually come with the standard Easy Walk Harness. So, you should get a strong leash, either of nylon or metal. The leash should not be more than 6ft in length. The ideal length of the leash should be between 4ft to 6ft. The leash could come with a strong but light clasp, as a heavy clasp would cause the harness to sag.

Steps to put the harness

So, let’s take a look at the process of setting up the harness. The entire process can be divided into a few stages.

Stage 1 – Knowing your Easy Walk Harness

What the Easy Walk Harness is made for?

Let get this straight – the Easy Walk Harness is used to make it easy for the dog to walk on a leash. It prevents your dog from pulling the leash while walking. As you might know, such ‘pulling’ often resulted in rashes on the neck of the dog, and in the long run, it might cause some serious injuries as well.

Easy Walk helps to prevent all that. Easy Walk Harness is strictly made for walking your dog. It is not useful if you want to take your dog hiking or for running.

Before you put on the harness on your dog, you should first know about the different parts of the harness. The Easy Walk Harness has multiple straps and it might be pretty complicated for the beginner to figure out how the thing should go with your dog. So, it’s really important that you know about the structure of your harness.

If you haven’t bought the harness yet and you want to get an idea about how it looks, then you can check out the link here – https://www.petsafe.net/media/manuals/ewh-easy-walk-harness-manual.pdf

A standard Easy Walk Harness comes with the following parts:

• The Chest Piece – It is the nylon strap that runs horizontally. The chest strap comes with a couple of mechanisms for length adjustments. It also comes with a D-ring, which is used to attach the leash to the harness.
• The Shoulder Piece – The Shoulder Piece is of the same color as the chest piece. It is perpendicular to the chest piece. It has a quick snap buckle and a mechanism for adjusting the length just like the Chest Piece. As said before, the Shoulder Piece would have the ‘Easy Walk’ tag sewn into it. The shoulder piece should be on the top.
• The Belly Strap – The Belly Strap is of a different and complementary color of the shoulder piece and the neckpiece. The Belly Strap has a quick snap buckle and a mechanism for adjusting the length.
• Connector Rings – The connector rings join different straps of the harness together.

Stage 2 – Preparing Your Dog

Well, there is not much needed when comes to ‘preparing’ your dog. However, you do need to make sure of a few things. For example, you need to make sure that your dog doesn’t get irritated with nylon.

If your dog gets rashes easily from nylon, then it is a better idea to get protective padding around his/her neck, before you put the Easy Walk Harness on your dog.

Stage 3 – Fitting the Shoulder Strap

The first thing that you would need to do is fit the shoulder strap on your dog. The following steps describe how to fit the shoulder strap properly on your dog

Step 1 – Open the Quick Snap Buckle on the shoulder strap. Place the shoulder strap over the dog’s head. The chest strap should rest on the chest of your dog.

Step 2 – You need to adjust the shoulder strap so that the connector ring sits above and behind the dog’s shoulder.

Stage 4- Fitting the Belly Strap

After you have fitted the shoulder strap, you need to fit the belly strap. You would need to follow the following steps:

Step 1 – You should tighten the shoulder strap for a snug fit. You should keep a finger’s width underneath the strap for small dogs. For larger dogs, the space should be about two fingers. Once you have ensured that, you would need to fit the belly strap.

Step 2 – Once the shoulder strap and the belly strap are both combined, they would form a girth. The girth should form a straight line and should not cross the sensitive armpit region. You should make necessary adjustments to the strap to ensure the ideal fit.

Stage 5 – Fitting the Chest Piece

The last stage of the process is fitting the chest piece. You need to follow the following steps

Step 1  – You should gently press on the chest of your dog to locate the breastbone. You must make sure that the chest piece is on top of the breast bone for adequate support.

Step 2 – You should adjust each portion of the chest piece so that the D-ring is right at the center of the chest.

Step 3 – The chest piece should fit perfectly. It should not be sagging, ‘hang down’ or riding up. You can try to adjust the length. If that doesn’t go right, you would need a different size

Things to keep in mind

You must always ensure that the chest piece, the belly strap, and the shoulder strap should form a ‘T’ and not ‘Y’. If it forms a ‘Y’ shape then that would mean that there is tension. It would make your dog uncomfortable.

You should make all adjustments after removing the harness from the dog. Dogs tend to get ‘tensed up’ when the adjustments are made on the harness while it’s still on them.

 Check this video to understand the process in a better way.

Hope this post has answered your doubts on ‘how to put on Easy Walk Harness’?

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