The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Sports & Leisure => Topic started by: side_show on November 25, 2010, 08:28:05 pm
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No, I'm serious. My dog needs some booties. He loves being outside, but being a corgi, his little feet and legs get too cold, and he starts limping pretty quickly in the Manitoba winters.
Anyone ever bought dog booties? Any suggestions?
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I work at a store that sells dog booties so I have fitted a lot of dogs for them and watched them react. Some dogs really will not tolerate having them on their feet. If there is any way you can find a place that will let you try them on, that is really the best way to go. Or if you have to order them online, make sure they are returnable.
Aside from actual boots we also sell these, which are just a layer of rubber kind of like a balloon:
http://pawzdogboots.com/about/
Some dogs tolerate these better because it's not, like, a large object on their foot. The downside is that they are harder to put on - they stay on because they are stretchy and skin tight, so you need to stretch them way out to put them on, kind of like putting on pantyhose. It takes two hands, so if you're going to have to hold the dog still to get him to cooperate, it's a two person job.
Unlike boots, the Pawz don't have insulation or anything, but since the feet don't get wet and don't get snow stuck in the toes and stuff, it's still better than bare feet.
The least intrusive alternative if the dog won't tolerate either is musher's wax, which will at least keep snow from sticking in the toes. So both that and the Pawz should solve the limping problem and really might be enough. I mean, they are animals, what do they wear to insulate their feet in the wild, you know?
My dogs don't personally wear any of these because they will not tolerate having their feet handled at all, and also, they don't believe in being outdoors if the weather is bad enough for a dog to need boots. But they do seem to work for some dogs.
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He will tolerate wearing them. Since he is a rescue dog, I am fairly certain that someone else must have put him in boots before because when I presented the ones I've previously had him try on to him, he sort of got ready, like in a position where he knew what was about to go on, and then patiently waited as I put them on him and re-adjusted them several times. Then he automatically walked around comfortably like they were nothing. The pair I bought were quite good (leather with rubber soles with good grip), only they were definitely a size or two too large and kept slipping off his feet. The store didn't have any other sizes - t was one of those discount places that has a lot of random items where you go back a week later and they don't have any of the same stuff. I horribly forgot to note the brand name when I returned them - I remember arrogantly thinking "I'll remember the name and order a size smaller on line" and now can't remember what the brand was, and I can't find them anywhere. All I can recall is what they looked like (two toned leather) and that they came in a purple box. I've googled repeatedly and can't find the same boots no matter how I search.
During my googling I did see the Pawz, and all I thought was "are those balloons? is someone charging an insulting price for dog foot balloons?" Considering the amount of ice, snow, sand and salt he's exposed to on each walk, I thought from the pictures that they look flimsy and possibly too slippery, but it's hard to tell without actually seeing them. Are they fairly tough in your perception Wombat?
As a side note, we do have the musher's wax, but that doesn't help at all for him when it comes to his feet getting too cold. It does help prevent cracking and splitting, which is good though.
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This might be an alternate solution. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjdQa-yc0QM)
Okay, probably not, but it is awesome because Corgis are awesome.
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If your dog needs a booty I think there are plastic surgeons that can help you out. IDK, i've never looked into it, but you can find anything on google these days.
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If your dog needs a booty I think there are plastic surgeons that can help you out. IDK, i've never looked into it, but you can find anything on google these days.
Hiram (http://achewood.com/index.php?date=05192003) might be able to help you with that.
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Hiram (http://achewood.com/index.php?date=05192003) might be able to help you with that.
Or Sir Mix-a-lot's Vet.
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The Pawz and tougher and less slippery than balloons and they are quite cheap compared to the boots we sell. They don't last forever but they aren't meant to be thrown away after one use either.
As for regular boots we don't sell one in a purple box so I can' t help you there. I can look at what we have tomorrow - I don't have the brand names in my head, thankfully, god knows I am already using too much of my limited brain capacity for this sort of information. But in general, don't buy the cheapest kind because they tend to slip off even if they are the right size. Some kinds have only one velcro strap holding them on and some have two - look for the kind with two. That's for the kind that are completely soft and flexible There is also the kind that is more like a real shoe with a molded rubber sole. Those are so crazy expensive that I feel uncomfortable even suggesting them to people.
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That's the thing - the ones I bought were the molded rubber sole kind. I had seen them at a pet store last year for $60, but the same ones I bought at the discount store were $17. I'm going to have to go back to that damn pet store to figure out the brand, and possibly just give up the ghost and buy them for way too much money. I'm thinking that's what I'm going to have to do.
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(http://thispiggy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/kittenmittons.gif)
link if that don't load (http://thispiggy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/kittenmittons.gif)
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That's the funniest thing I've seen all week.
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That's exactly what some of the dogs at the store do when they try on the boots, minus the falling off the table part.
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If I tried those on my cat he'd slit my throat in my sleep.
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If I tried those on my cat he'd slit my throat in my sleep.
Yeah, but he couldn't get ahold of the knife with those things on.
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He would cut those things to ribbons with his claws.
Actually, you're probably right. He'd probably just smother me with them.
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This is the 60 dollar boot we sell, with the molded sole:
http://www.ruffwear.com/Barkn-Boots-Grip-Trex
But these actually look too breathable to be warm. In fact, they sell socks for them.
The other one that we just got in is a little cheaper, like 40 dollars, and looks pretty good actually:
http://www.ultrapaws.com/Ultra-Paws-Rugged-Dog-Boots/productinfo/303R/
That company has cheaper and more expensive models - that one is kind of in the middle and it seems like enough to me. But I don't know, you do seem to live in a tough neighborhood, maybe you need the Xtreme model with Kevlar in them?
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My friend wears suits with kevlar fiber because the way he goes about making money tends to piss people off. There are sections of his wardrobe designated "ak-47" and "knife" depending on what the threat level is for him that day. The day your dog needs to take this into consideration is a day he should avoid altogether.
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Thanks Wombat, I appreciate the input so much. The Ultra Paws look really good. There are a few designer pet shops and one huge pet super store that's really far away from our house, and I'll find out if they carry these, and hopefully be able to have our dog try them on. I'll let you know if I have any success!
The day your dog needs to take this into consideration is a day he should avoid altogether.
If it weren't sad it would be funny, but things I have had to avoid my dog stepping on while walking include used needles. My husband has a fear of used needles, where as I don't because I know how to properly dispose of them. There was a period during the summer where we encountered the same needle over and over on the evening walks with the dog, and my husband was too terrified to let me pick it up and deal with it, so we were always avoiding letting the dog walk near there to avoid an unintentional needle stick. I started feeling that this was pretty silly and on a walk I bent over to pick it up when he was distracted by the dog, but saw me bending and he wouldn't let me deal with it. At night, he was talking in his sleep and clearly having a nightmare involving me and needles. When I was out of town, someone dropped two or three used needles on our front boulevard, and my husband was so upset he called poison control. They told him to used a paper cup to scoop them up. He said he used two cups cone to scoop, the other to nudge them in to avoid any contact. He was really upset about this, but he took care of it.
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When we still owned our truck, I went out one morning to run some kind of errand and found a Burger King bag in the bed just chock full of needles. I wasn't terrified about it, but it did kind of piss me off that I had to deal with it. I don't have one of those biohazard containers laying around.
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I guess its a perq of my job that I do have such containers then? It came in handy when I found a rusty razor blade on the sidewalk once. If I had a drug habit my workplace would be Nirvana. All the sterile needles and syringes a junkie could hope for. No testing either.
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Maybe you could get one?
The last company I worked for sent me an email telling me I had to go in for a test sometime within the next 45 days. I didn't want to fly to Anchorage early for the test, so I decide to wait until I was back at work. I was about ten days away from the due date when I got another email informing me that if I wan't going to be able to get in, I could have an additional 15 days.