hi guys

new user here really need some help/advice/recommendations from experience husky owners

so i just got home from work for my boyfriend to tell me penny slipped her harness :(apparently she laid on the ground popped her shoulders in and just wiggled out of it.she refused to come back, refused to sit or obey any of the commands we have taught her, just got a wild look in her eye and ran off into a housing estate .oh and btw she was running in the road!! chasing cars which was terrifying for my bf. luckily he managed to catch her before anything bad happened but i worry next time we wont be so lucky.

at the moment she wears an ezy dog quick fit harness she did escape from it once before when she was little but i think that's because it was to loose. collars are pretty useless she just pulls them off

she is a husky x shepherd 3 years old

any recommendations or advice is greatly appreciated

(sorry if this is long winded/ doesn't make sense/ posted in the wrong section)

In general a harness with some type of belly strap will prevent most escape attempts.

Are you making sure it is tight enough?

When you say she pulls collars off, how is this possible if they are properly fit? A properly fit collar can not come off over the head.

yeah its tight enough

i have been looking into ones with belly straps and they look like the solution to our problem

looking at the image of your dog no im probably not fitting collars tight enough but due to her high prey drive i am worried she would choke herself/damage her throat pulling at squirrels ect, so a collar probably isnt the best option.

Belly straps seem to work fine enough. The idea is to keep the strap snug enough so that the dog can't back out of the harness. You could also easily sew one onto your current harness.

Have you considered teaching here how to walk properly on a leash? Do you enjoy having her pulling you around and acting on her impulses whenever she wants?

she does walk properly on the lead....

she has a high prey drive meaning when a small animal darts past us (squirrel,bird,bunny) she lunges and wants to chase it. shes good with small dogs and my pets and it is something are working on.
im not dragged around by her at all shes generally very good.

I see.

Well hopefully the belly band helps.

pennywolf92 wrote:

she does walk properly on the lead....

she has a high prey drive meaning when a small animal darts past us (squirrel,bird,bunny) she lunges and wants to chase it. shes good with small dogs and my pets and it is something are working on.
im not dragged around by her at all shes generally very good.

Ami used to do this incessantly - with me usually face down in a ditch somewhere. A prong collar coupled with a rok bungee leash pretty much solved the problem without damaging him (or me!)

i have seen the bungee leads and was thinking about giving them a try. its something i have found really hard to train out of her to be honest, squirrels are the main offenders especially when they run right out in front of us.

you would think she would get over it with us walking in the ye old english countryside everyday but apparently not...

Penny, perhaps some hard core training would help. With Miya, if we are walking and she sees a little critter, I put her in a sit and stay and 100% focus on me. If I see the offending critter before she does I grab her attention and focus, as a redirection towards me. If she see's if first, I immediately place her in a sit and stay. My husband took her out one morning for potty and she indeed took off after a squirrel, he brought her back, but it was difficult and she did head towards a highway. He was in fear she would be hit, well duh. I told him, if this happens again to do the attention grabber "Miya" followed by "stay", sure enough the next morning same scenario, and he did the Miya stay, and she sat down and had focus on him. It takes time, you need to be persistent, consistent and have a firm tone of voice. You have to be proactive on walks, scoping out things around you. This is my way of dealing with critters, maybe it can help you. Good luck, I do understand the power of the little critter and the huge prey drive of a husky.

i think we need to do more work on "leave it" and "sit/stay" commands when out on walks generally i have just been correcting her (telling her no and a little tug on the lead) when we see small animals. she's normally very good at commands but it gets more difficult when there are furry distractions.
thanks for the advice and being so understanding

I have a Weiss walkie leash that is a tension leash. The harder she pulls the tighter it synches down around their chest. It doesn't matter what size the dog it will always fit. It clips to their normal collar, wraps behind their front legs, and slips through a loop between their shoulders. This may be more like what you are seeking as far as a harness, and once you get her training solid you can just stop looping it and it can be just a normal leash.

TwisterII wrote:

I have a Weiss walkie leash that is a tension leash. The harder she pulls the tighter it synches down around their chest. It doesn't matter what size the dog it will always fit. It clips to their normal collar, wraps behind their front legs, and slips through a loop between their shoulders. This may be more like what you are seeking as far as a harness, and once you get her training solid you can just stop looping it and it can be just a normal leash.

I've improvised something very similar for when I wanted to groom Ami and he was a brat about it - the tightening around the chest really stopped him from "squirreling".

One thing that I thought of was using a neck line to connect the harness to a collar but only have the harness connected to the leash then if she tries to slip out the collar slows her down since it is also attached (I have used this for mushing as I am afraid of slipping out of an x back when it is loose. OR get a double leash or police lead that has two clip ends and connect to a walking belt in the middle one end to the collar and one end to the harness. I have also used this set up on a whim hiking usually this set up has a dog on each end of the police lead but it works with doubling the leash to one dog.

More command work sounds right too.

amymeme wrote:

Ami used to do this incessantly - with me usually face down in a ditch somewhere.

I laughed harder than I should have at this...

We bought the Ruffwear Web Master Dog Harness from REI and it has been a fantastic harness for us!