Better walking.

I love my dog.

I love to walk her. I love running with her. She's a great dog. But she has had this little problem. She gets super excited on walks and runs. Especially when she sees, say, a cat. Or, even better, a squirrel. This puts her into even more excitement and she will think that she needs to either chase the villain away (how dare he eat nuts in that grass!) or maybe just go say hello and try to make a new friend (her "friends" might just scratch her nose trying to get away). She does this in spite of the arm which is attached to the leash, trying to hold her back. That arm does not like being jerked around. When we'd try to hold her back, she'd choke and gag because apparently she loved squirrels more than oxygen.

We recently found a great solution to this problem:

Looks simple, right? It almost looks too simple to work. Jeff didn't even believe it could work and so we tried on the kind that goes around the nose and pulls the nose down. It took her about 3 minutes to paw that thing off her face. She didn't pull with it, mostly because she was so distressed by it being on her face she wasn't walking, just frantically trying to get it off.

But the easy walk harness she doesn't even notice; she just walks very nicely (true to its name), without pulling. The first time we used it, we had a little pulling episode, and the vectors involved (ah, physics) somehow just flipped her over on her side. I'm not even sure how that happened, but all I know is that she has quickly learned that she cannot go chasing every bunny, squirrel, cat, or other dog she sees.

And that works for me (and my arm).