Harness Desensitization with a Harness Sensitive Dog (Patreon)

Here's the video of Whip's first harness session. I'm going to post another video next week of a second session but with a harness with a wider head-hole so you can see how different harnesses make a difference for your dog. Whip is likely harness sensitive because she had some jaw issues at one point in her life which made her weary of things around her face. But, it's not uncommon for herding dogs to be sensitive to both things on their body, and things coming at them. They were literally bred to be sensitive to space and pressure when working livestock. (read all the way through to the note at the end if you're struggling with putting harnesses on)

Here's just a few notes I took in my head (and for you!) on my own training. 

1:17 missed an opportunity to click

6:35 I state that I would end the session here in real life if I wasn’t taping, and you’ll see soon why I should have :)

7:50ish: Whip doesn’t like me pulling the harness back over her head. Typically at home I’m standing behind her unclipping it. She retreats for a moment, but isn’t traumatized. She gives me eye contact and when she did that I probably should have tossed food so she didn’t settle in to lay down. You’ll notice as soon as I toss food at 8:48 she re-engages in the game. Wait for next weeks video to see me work on pulling the harness off her head. 

9:15 - I see a lot of working dogs that don’t love physically putting the harness on, but do love the work. You can use this game to help with that and also look at what the harness feels like to the dog. Some people throw a bunch of stuff on their working harness and it can make the harness awkward, unbalanced, or difficult to carry. I recommend never attaching extra things to your dog’s working harness, and instead carrying a small backpack or fannypack yourself.

This training session was all about shaping. In next week's session you'll see me use shaping at the beginning, combine that with a nose target, and then also use some luring to work on the "taking it off" sensitivity. By the end she's nearly self-loading on her own with two short training sessions. That's the power of positive reinforcement training. Stay tuned! 

Note: When you are working on harness sensitivity issues, do not chase your dog around with a harness. If you HAVE to put that particular harness on, leash your dog to the collar, feed through the harness and slip it over their head. In the shaping sessions like you see above, you never force your dog to get into harness. It's important that when there's an option, you give the dog an option. When there isn't an option (ie. I need to put this on to go for a walk) you  make it as quick and easy as possible, but you do not say "do you want to get in your harness?" by holding it up, and then when they say "no I'd rather not" by walking away, you then force them to do it anyways. That's where matter of factly clipping the leash on and putting the harness comes in while you train for a dog that willingly harnesses up. See you next week! 

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