Front-Pull Harness vs Gentle Leader

Front-pull harness with Gentle Leader.

About 80% of all dogs I have trained or boarded have leash pulling issues. There are reasons for this and the problem can be corrected with some discipline, but most people are not going to discipline their dog. Meaning forcing the dog to walk behind you. So I find that the front pull harness is the best solution other than strict discipline.  There is a way to get similar results with standard leash but for now we will focus on the front pull harness and why it is better than a gentle leader.

First before we get into no-pull tools, it is usually necessary to give the dog a block of pulling. Even with the no-pull tool. Some dogs get so excited to be outside that they just want to run and a slow human behind them would be their complaint… I find that if I set a distance, in my case its about two blocks, which marks the end of the street, it helps a great deal. Sometimes I will run the two blocks with the dog. At that point the dog walks behind for the remainder of the walk. So first 2m is theirs and the rest is mine.

Sad face of a dog with Gentle Leader on her snout.

My first use of a tool to get a dog to stop pulling on the leash was a Gentle Leader. It often gets mistaken for a muzzle (see photo). I used it on Dragon, a Cane Corso. While the Gentle Leader is highly effective at getting a 130 pnd mastiff from pulling me down the street, Dragon absolutely hated the way it felt on her snout. She’d rub her snout up on every single person she got near as we walk through the city. At first I thought she was being affectionate. She did it to everyone. She would even get on the ground and run her snout in 5 foot circles. She looked like a seal. After a while I realized that she wasn’t being cute, but that the gentle leader was starting to make her snout sore. A shame because it really was the only thing, I thought, to make it even possible to walk her —her owners have been using it since she was a little pup so they rely on it…

I then discovered the front pull harness. It is an even more humane way of dealing with the issue of pulling than the Gentle Leader. The front pull harness works by throwing the dog off balance every time they try to pull. It just makes them circle to the side. The dog learns very quickly that they are causing themselves to go off balance and that there is absolutely nothing they can do about it. Its an awkward motion that they would just rather not have. With the gentle-leader, Dragon learned that she can just keep pulling if she wants. There is a threshold there, but it is at a point where she felt pain, hence the insane snout behavior she started performing to crowds of people at the cafe. What Dragon needed was a front pull harness. She would only be able to stand so much of being slightly thrown off balance by the front-pull harness. There is no pain there other than that she would be forced in to walking human pace. Which is another, subtle, form of torture but you can’t have it all, can you.

There are many front pull harnesses out there. One of the most popular is the Easy Walk. The Easy Walk is very easy to get on and off the dog, but I found that it did not stay in place and it would move around on the dog, making it lose its effectiveness. There are many copies of this design, and they all do work, however the best front pull harness I have ever used is the Mighty Paw multi-purpose harness. It is marketed as a car harness, though it also has front and rear pull options, along with a handle on the back that can come in handy, especially if you find your guy in a fight with another dog.

Mighty-paw harness with handle to control the canine.

The Mighty-paw harness can be purchased for less than $25 directly from their site( when on sale) or on Amazon. I highly recommend it as a solution to leash pulling, a way to control your dog, and as an easy way to attach a seat belt to your dog (if you buy the extra attachment!).

If you are looking for another option or if you find the Mighty-paw does not work for you, there is also the Freedom harness. It has a newer design that seems may add extra functionality for serious leash pullers –as it has two leashes attached to it. If you have any experience with this design, please let us know how it went in comments below.