Horses are big, strong animals and they provide a great illustration of the importance of using the right equipment for the right job.

When we want them to have maximum strength to pull something heavy, we use a harness, to put the resistance across the strongest part of the animal - their chest.

When we want to have maximum control and lead them, we use a halter, because the the head is the easiest part to move, and where the head goes, the body follows.

It's exactly the same with our dogs! There seems to be a bit of a trend towards using harnesses on dogs - almost all of our clients had one. Apparently the reason for their promotion is to reduce the risk of discomfort or injury from the dog pulling on their collar for the whole walk. The other solution to that issue (and the one we advocate for) is to train the dog not to pull on the lead, so that they aren’t putting strain on any part of their body. Harnesses that go across the dog’s shoulders in particular can cause damage through interfering with the natural gait while the dog’s pulling, so are not really an answer to the injury problem either!

Halters are awesome for dogs big and small, as they make it much easier to get their attention when they're distracted, and enable us to teach them how to walk nicely on a loose lead. This is why we provide halters as part of all of our dog training programmes, whether we're training Chihuahuas or Rottweilers (sadly it's a bit too tricky to use them on bulldogs, so we have to still use collars on the flat nosed breeds! We still train them to walk nicely on a loose lead though, so it still fixes the overall issue.)