Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Monster Gets New Clothes

So... I swear I meant to start up with the daily posts last time I wrote. But obviously that didn't happen...

Heh, you people are really gullible!


Aaaaaanyway.... Today we've been off to see Teach again. We were working against the world's tiniest Poodle! The cutest little fluff of black lint, at first neither Monster nor I realized there was a dog there - but she had a pretty big voice, and made sure she got noticed! She also seemed to share Monster's fascination with sticks, some of them bigger than she was. (Monster likes big sticks too, but when he goes after the ones bigger than him - which does happen - we're usually talking about still rooted trees...)

We could play together! I've got a great stick collection. I promise I'd be careful...


Unfortunately today didn't go very well. We've been having quite a few setbacks lately, and this continued to show in the training session. While Monster seemed OK from time to time, he also lost the plot completely several times. He was reared up on his hind legs (making him taller than me), snarling and lunging, air snapping, slamming into both me and Teach - you know, generally making a nuisance of himself... This is depressing, especially in light of the progress I've been seeing (imagining?) lately. Setbacks like this make me question if we're really getting anywhere at all, and while I know that's an overreaction born from disappointment it doesn't change how it feels. I know it's a very temporary slump, but right now I'm a bit disheartened.

Sorry, Mom...


But as Teach pointed out: Monster's behaviour - at his very worst in his current state - is no worse than you see a dozen small to miniature dogs behave whenever you go out on a walk. Monster's size (and, let's be honest, his looks) makes his behaviour a problem that must be dealt with, while owners of smaller dogs can - and do - ignore it and live with it. I'm not making excuses here, I am working on Monster's issues and I want to make him more pleasant for everyone to be around, but it helps put some perspective on my feelings of failure. At least I'm working on it, you know...?

I beg your pardon? You're working on it?


Anyway, Monster having a bad day in training gave me an excellent opportunity to test some stuff out! (Silver lining and all that, come on let's all be optimists!) I've been getting more and more desperate to find gear that fits Monster well, not to mention that feels safe. Being easy to use - and comfortable - is certainly no small thing either. But I haven't managed to find anything, no harnesses and not even simple collars are good enough. They chafe, don't fit right (understandable considering how many different body shapes dogs come in, "size" is never going to be enough of a descriptor), and most importantly: they break. That's not OK, and definitely not OK with Monster's issues... So I've given up, I can't find anything that works - most gear for large dogs just makes the item bigger, but uses the same strength/size of buckles, straps, etc, meaning they snap or break at some very bad times for us - and have decided to try making something myself!

Hah, you crack me up! You come up with the darndest ideas!


Now, what you need to know about me is that I have some serious spatial reasoning issues - we're talking genuine disability here - and I'm a complete fumble-fingers in all things crafty. So this is not a decision I've come to lightly... But what am I supposed to do!? There is seriously nothing out there that fits Monster and is safe - let's not even go near "easy to use". So, I've been mucking about a bit, and today I realized if I was going to try using gear of my own design it would be the perfect opportunity to do it in a training session! A chance for a solid test run in difficult situations, while there also being some extra security in it being (somewhat) predictable plus Teach was around to help if I'd need to grab Monster and needed someone to get some backup equipment... So, I spent all day at the sewing machine (well, a lot of time was also spent swearing over a seam ripper), and just made it in time! Take a look:

Hah, I've stolen the roll of nylon webbing, now you can't make a harness! Hey, waaaait a minute...


This is made of nylon webbing with some sort of soft plasticy/ruberry thingy underneath (it used to be a yoga mat, if that tells you anything). The straps are adjustable and connected along his back and under his chest, making it impossible to back out of.

OK, how do I get out of this thing!?


I'm not too sure about the "comfortable" criteria, Monster didn't exactly seem to love it - but he certainly didn't hate it any more than anything else he's ever worn...

You want me to model a collar too!? Right, I've had enough!


I made a collar as well, or rather I made that first since it's a great deal easier to figure out than a harness. I've reused metal parts from old, broken gear - unfortunately I only had one D-ring large enough to fit the width of the webbing so for the collar I reused a similar thing from a Rogz collar. Unfortunately that detail is the one thing I really hate on the Rogz collars, since the design creates a lever effect when the dog pulls, causing the fastening to dig into his spine... I need to find more D-rings, but that seems to be difficult if you want some larger sizes?

Haha, I'm free!






Anyway, the harness passed the test unscathed! It held Monster securely, there didn't seem to be any danger of anything giving out and all seams appear intact... How about that!? And if I do say so myself, it doesn't look too bad either! (As long as you don't look too closely...) I'm also very happy with it turning out so soft! There's one metal ring on Monster's chest (to allow the two shoulder straps and the chest strap to meet freely), and a metal D-ring between his shoulder blades to clip the leash onto. On the collar there's just a clippy-onto-thingy. That's it. The rest is fabric (and, you know, that plasticy rubbery thing - but that's really soft). Instead of buckles I've used velcro, and I'm very happy with that choice. I've made the velcro part quite long, and made sure it follows a curve. That way any force will move along the velcro rather than pulling at it, making it quite secure. This harness is just a prototype of course, I can see a lot of things which need to be fixed! But it is actually good enough to be usable right away, and I never would have thought I'd be able to make a usable harness if I had a hundred tries. Not ever.

But please don't tell my sister I broke her sewing machine, OK? Maybe I can fix it...

I knew it.





5 comments:

  1. Hey, if you want to check out my blogg..doggsiman.blogspot.se
    btw we have the same teach :)..if you feel like it feel free to mail me..maybe we can have a little dogchat :). Anyway hope everthing turn out well with Monster and that he gets well soon. Its terrible when your animal gets sick. All the best to you, dont give up!:)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, cool! Teach ftw! ;)

    Thanks for your support, fortunately it turns out Monster's going to be OK but you're right it feels really awful when they're sick! I'll definitely check out your blog, and we can have a dog chat. :)

    ReplyDelete

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