Neighborhood Cats..

[Angelnstuff]

Ive been trying to work with Tanner on the leash a bit more since the weather has been so nice. I really wanna get to taking him for walks everyday, for his benefit and mine. He walks pretty well.. Until he smells a cat that is Then he'll start to pull a bit, but nothing too bad.. and hes getting better, Ive noticed he does even better when hes getting tired so Ive been trying to wear him out a bit in the backyard playing fetch or something before going out front on the leash. But yesterday, David left the garage door open and he got out of the house.. of course there was a cat out front which he chased up a tree, and totally ignored me calling him

What do i do about this? I know we need to work on him coming when called a bit more.. but what do we do about the cats? Theres alot around here so avoiding them isnt an option.. Any suggestions?

[Angelnstuff]

(I was gonna make another thread but this is kinda related so i figured I'd put it here too)

Does anyone have any experience with harnesses?

I'd like to get Tanner some sort of harness, mostly just for walks.. But i haven't seen much of a selection around here. Atwood's has some basic ones.. Walls had gotten in a bunch of pet stuff and we found a Premier Gentle Leader Easy Walk harness, But the first one we got him, an Xlarge, was way too big, So we got a large.. and it seemed to fit him well.. but i put him outside to potty with it on before i was gonna take him for a walk, and came in for a few mins, only to go back out and he had somehow chewed the strap that goes across his chest.. My fault entirely, i shouldn't have left it on him when i wasn't out there.. Back to the store we go.. the only size they had left was a medium.. which we were hoping maybe would fit him on the larger setting so we could at least try walking him with it.. but of course it doesn't fit him at all. So the next time we goto the city we will be looking for harness. Any suggestions?
Ive read alot of sites that recommend the Halti head harness.. but i don't like that it looks a bit like a muzzle.. since tanner is a rather large dog, i don't want people to get the wrong idea and think he needs a muzzle.

[HappyDancer]

we use basic harness when we take them to the mountains...but around the neighborhood we have 2 different types, we have an anti jump harness that is truely great if your dog likes to jump on people and kiss them (my dogs tend to scare the mess outta people like that lol) and we have the gentle leader we use for training (they really don't like it to much).


something we are working with as well is the doggie back pack. We were told that we should train them with the packs to give them a job to focus on and man does it work. We use it alot in the mountains and on longer walks. They carry their own watter, food, toys and extra things for weight, and they have gotten so good at it, it also helps with making htem tired alittle quicker lol.

With cats we have done so good, the dogs used to chase them all, now its just one that eggs them on. We carried around water bottles, cans with pennies in it and their toys...we used them all to keep their attention off the cats on walks and now they ignore them (except for the meanie kitty lol). Good luck on finding good harnesses, I order all of mine off the web because I can seldom find the ones I want anywhere near here lol.