Nursing Tip: Wearing the Walkabout

On June 13th, I talked about the "walkabout harnesses" that we had gotten for Goya.

Today I want to tell about a trick we learned for using them.

We have both a front and back harness, which have handles on them to give us something to hold on to when he needs extra help walking. He has now gotten so good at walking that he only needs help to get up into a standing position or to up and down slippery stairs.

The problem:
The harnesses (which my daughter calls "handle pants" and "handle vest") are not the easiest things to get on and off, so we want to leave them on while he walks around the yard by himself. We had a lot of trouble with him keeping the pants on. He would just walk out of them as he sniffed around. Then we'd have to struggle to put them back on him.

The solution we found:

We often said "Goya needs suspenders" when he would walk out of the pants. It only took us a month to figure out that the walkabouts had the equipment to be their own suspenders. The neoprene pants and jacket have long strips of velcro to keep them in place and, in addition, two buckles each with adjustable straps to strap around the dog. We finally figured out that if we took the lower strap on the vest and the upper strap on the pants and made them the longest they could be, we could attach the vest strap to the pants buckle and the pants strap to the vest buckle, making "suspenders" that keep the pants on as Goya walks.