This article is all about dog booties for your Doberman. Including sizing, fitting and getting your Doberman comfortable wearing them.
What Are Dog Booties?
Simply put, dog booties are boots or shoes designed specifically for dogs. Dogs wear them to protect their paws from serious injuries in harsh environments, such as snow or scorching asphalt. They also to keep their paws dry during a walk in the rain.
Sizing Booties
Manufacturers usually sell dog booties in a pair. Sizing dog booties is important for a proper, comfortable fit. Fortunately, it is straight forward. Because the width of a dog’s front and rear paws may vary, you’ll need to take a measurement of both.
Take a ruler, tape measure or measuring tape and measure your dog’s front and rear paws at their widest points. The width will be the bootie size to buy. We bought size 3″ Outback Booties by Hurtta America for Atlas, both front and rear paws.
Training Your Doberman to Comfortably Wear Booties
Now that you acquired properly sized dog booties for your Doberman, it is time to get it comfortable walking in them. Anything that encloses their paws will freak them out and on most occasion, this will result in comical dancing, hopping, clumsy walk or an outright panic attack. Your Doberman might even try to pull the booties out with its jaws and chew on them. For this reason, I do not recommend leaving your Doberman unattended with booties on during the training phase.
You’ll witness one or more of the aforementioned events when you have your dog wear booties for the first time. Because of this expected discomfort, you should have your Doberman practice wearing booties at least two weeks before you really need them – say you have an upcoming trip to a ski resort or a trekking trip to Joshua Tree. Nothing worse than an uncooperative Doberman during a planned vacation.
Properly Fitting the Booties
Before your Doberman can practice wearing booties, make sure they fit properly. Trim your Doberman’s nails if they are too long as it can impede on proper fitting. Undo the strap(s) of the bootie and open them up.
Place your Doberman’s paw all the way into the bootie until it fills up the front of the bootie (I started with the front left). Close the bootie, then wrap the strap(s) around for a snug and conforming fit.
If the bootie has two straps, wrap the lower strap first. Tuck away any dangling straps.
Most likely, your Doberman will engage in awkward hops and/or clumsy walks. Let your Doberman wear the bootie for 5 minutes at a time, and give it a treat afterwards. Continue with the 5 minute bootie training session several times throughout the day and follow it up with an activity your Doberman enjoys doing, such as playing fetch. Your Doberman will forget about the bootie. Again, at the end of the 5 minute sessions, give your Doberman a treat.
Practice Makes Perfect
From my experience, Atlas became comfortable with booties after five 5-minute sessions per paw. Once your Doberman is comfortable with having a bootie over one paw, advance to the next. Our practice with Atlas went like this:
- front left paw,
- front left paw + front right paw,
- front left paw + front right paw, rear left paw and finally,
- front left paw + front right paw, rear left paw + rear right paw.
As you advance to the next paw, do not isolate a bootie for just that paw. Instead, make it cumulative. That is, once your Doberman is ready to advance to the second front paw, have it wear booties on both front paws. And once it is ready to advance to the 3rd paw, have it wear three booties, and so on. Above all is, make it fun for your Doberman! Nothing like training an enthusiastic and motivated Doberman.
As soon as your Doberman is comfortable wearing booties on all four paws, take it out for a short walk around the block. This is like training your Doberman to walk on leash for the first time again. This will help your Doberman acclimate to booties and also break into them. When your Doberman breaks into the booties, they will feel comfortable and natural to your Doberman.
Now that you know all about dog booties for your Doberman, outdoor adventures and travels open up to a whole new level!