What to Do When Your Chiweenie Hates Its Harness

For this West Los Angeles dog training session we worked with Suzy, going over how to help when an anxious 4 year-old Chiweenie hates its harness.

Suzy was pretty uncomfortable when I first arrived for the session; pacing around the room and barking at me. After several minutes I asked her guardian to put her on a leash so that I could take her out for a short walk.

This decompression walk helped quite a bit. Once we returned to her home she was very comfortable with me. Her guardian mentioned she does not socialize often and did not take Suzy to puppy socialization classes when she was younger.

Dogs who are not exposed to things in a positive way when they are younger often bark at them to make them go away. I have found one of the best ways to help these types of dogs is to help their humans achieve a shift in how they interact with their dog.

I went over a number of fundamentals to clean up a lot of miscommunications and frustrations between dogs and humans. Some people are confused why I cover these things as they don’t seem to directly impact their dog’s behavior problems. But if a dog does not feel secure and confident in their home, or is frustrated that the people they live with don’t understand them, it can lead to quite a few dog behavior problems as well as a lot of dog anxiety. In this case, it also likely contributed to why this Chiweenie hates its harness

I showed the guardian how she can use marker words to clearly communicate to Suzy what she wants. I also went over how the positive interruptor is a better way to disagree with dogs then telling them no.

When we were working with Suzy, I started to think that she didn’t actually have verbal cues in place. She seemed to get confused when her guardian asked her to sit unless she was motioning with her hand.

I showed the guardian how she can use a half moon / cresent motion, raising her hand with the treat from the dog’s nose to over its head to help motion Suzy into a sit. This was actually a little bit more difficult than I anticipated. She may need to do some basic obedience work with suzy, like teaching her how to sit, lay down, sit up and stand on a verbal command.

To help reinforce things, I had the guardian practicing my training for attention method. This involves walking around the house and asking dogs to do basic obedience cues only once. If Suzy did what her mom asked, she was marked and rewarded. If she did not, mom needs to walk a few steps away and then try again. So we dont pusnish non compliance, but we also only reward what we want. This is a great way to build motivation in dogs.

Suzy is definitely a determined dog. One of the tips I shared with her guardians to make sure that she always outlasts her. The easiest way to achieve this is to practice when you don’t need it.

Many people try to teach their dogs to do things when they are under a deadline or time constraint. This causes us to rush, try to force and sometimes give in. All of these things make the dog less likely to want to do the behavior again or learns that if they just put up a little bit of a fight, we will quit and they will get their way.

I also showed the guardian how dogs offer cut off signals when they don’t like things. Dogs are not very subtle, and sometimes humans confuse a dog not looking at them or turning away as being disobedient. In fact most of the time this is the dogs way of saying they disagree or don’t want to engage with us.

Learning how to read her dog’s body language will go a long ways towards helping Suzy feel more comfortable at home and other situations. Especially when a dog fears its harness or other items.

One of the things Suzy was most uncomfortable with was having the harness put on or having the leash attached. Since this is a daily activity, I knew we needed to work on why this dog fears its harness.

What To Do if Your Chiweenie Hates Its Harness

Many dogs have a fear of the harness or leash because it comes to represent something after the leash is put on. In the course of our discussion, I learned that Suzy’s guardian often took her to lunch in sidewalk cafés. In these busy environments, some dogs have difficulty staying relaxed.

It sounds like Suzy is in that camp. Not surprising as she is a bit anxious at times. She could handle hanging out for the most part but if another dog came around, especially if it was bigger, she would bark and snap at the other dog.

Based on Suzy’s confidence and lack of socialization experience, it’s likely that these environments are simply too much for her to deal with – even when another dog is not present.  And since her guardian puts the harness on her to go to these lunches, it’s quite possible that is why Suzy runs away when her guardian picks it up.

But the guardian needed to put the harness on so she continued with the priocess even while her sag was saying, “this Chiweenie hates its harness!”

How the dog feels about something is super important when doing hdog behvaior modification work. If you want to help when a Chiweenie hates its harness, the first step is to change how the dog feels about it. To do this I wanted to come up with an easy dog harness exercise for her human.

I like to use something called a Conditioned Emotional Response (CER) for things like when a dog fears its harness. This is a great way to help expose a dog to things that they don’t like in a way that can change how they feel.

If your Chiweenie hates its harness or having the collar put on, you may want to check out the free positive dog training video below to fix that.

Suzy must have a stronger aversion to the harness and collar than I anticipated. While we made good progress, it’s clear that this Chiweenie hates its harness with some intensity. That said, we made good progress in the session. Since Suzy’s guardian loves her so much and is dedicated, the work we did will help change the fact that this Chiweenie hates its harness.

I’d like to see the guardian practicing this easy dog harness exercise two or more times a day, but going at Suzy‘s pace. It’s very common for people to want to rush the process to get it over with. But slow, successful practice sessions that happen more frequently is the best way to go about it.

If the guardian practices frequently, it shouldn’t take long before the days where this Chiweenie hates her dog harness are just a memory.

I had some other thoughts about helping Suzy and to make sure that the guardian could remember everything, I pulled up my phone to summarize what we covered in this in-home LA dog training session.