Why the towel under your old boy gets soaked every time he squats
If your male dog's back legs give out halfway through a squat, you already hold him up. The trouble is what you hold him up with, and where it sits when he pees.
It starts the same way for most of us. His back legs shake, then quit in the middle of a poop. So you grab whatever is close: a bath towel, a scarf, a sling with a strap across his belly, even a grocery bag cut open down the side.
Then he pees. A male dog pees forward, under his own belly, right where the towel or the strap sits. One owner said the support harness he bought "blocked his penis." The pee soaks the gear, runs down his legs, and the potty trip ends in the tub.
If that is your morning, your evening and the trip in the middle of the night, keep reading.
1. It's not your fault. The help lifts from his belly.
Most owners who rinse their dog after every potty trip think they are doing it wrong. They are not. A towel, a scarf, a belly sling and many support harnesses all lift from under the belly, because that is the easy place to grab. On a male dog, that puts fabric right where he pees. One owner tried a towel and found it "interferes with his penis." Another made a sling from a grocery bag, then worried he would pee on it "out of nowhere." Another felt that every site he checked assumed all dogs are female. Your hands did their job. The mess comes from where the gear sits, not from you.
2. Weak back legs change how a boy pees
A strong male dog lifts a leg and aims away from himself. When his back end gets weak, many males stop lifting a leg and squat instead. "Ours also stopped lifting his leg to pee," one owner wrote. Now the pee goes forward and down, under his belly, at the very moment his legs are most likely to fold. He needs help most when anything under his middle is in the way. So the help has to hold his back end by the hips and back legs. A rear harness does that with one panel, two leg openings and lift straps up to a grip, with no separate strap across his belly.
3. Myth: a rear harness falls off or isn't enough
You may have heard that rear harnesses slide off, or that only a full-body harness really works. Part of that is true. One owner wrote that hers "kept falling off," and another that it "slips off and gets in the way of potty breaks." Here is the rest of the truth. In older dogs, muscle loss tends to leave the front half fuller while the hind end wastes away. If his front legs still carry him, he does not need straps around his chest to lift the half that works. He needs the half that quits held up.
4. Your back pays for every potty trip
Holding a heavy dog up with a towel means bending over him, several times a day, often alone. Owners feel it. One said the towel "can certainly be felt in my lower back." Another said even the leader's harness "kills your back." Research on lifting people, not dogs, found that lifting a heavy body by hand overloads the lower back, that one person alone is the riskiest way to do it, and that handles cut the load. This harness has lift straps that run from the panel up to one grip, and their length adjusts with a slide buckle: 30 to 60 cm (11.8 to 23.6 in) on sizes S to L.
5. Pick his size by his weight, no tape needed
Size is where many owners get burned, and owners of big dogs say so. This harness is sized by his weight, and for almost every dog that is all you need. There are five sizes, S to 2XL, and the 2XL covers dogs of 56 to 100 lbs. If the size you pick is wrong, you get one free exchange for another size, and we ship the new one at our cost. The panel closes with hook-and-loop strips and one side-release buckle, and it is machine washable, which matters when potty trips are the reason you bought it.
One harness, his size, and a free swap
Comes with a free size exchange and a PDF fitting guide: how to put it on and set the straps to your height.
Wrong size? Swap it once for free, new size shipped at our cost. Returns within 60 days, see our refund policy.