Anyone ever do Canicross or skijoring?

[sumstorm]

I am thinking of picking up a harness for my shepherd for trail running. She is great at road runs...but the trails around here are too narrow to run side by side. Looking for a distraction from the waiting game!

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[ImaJerseyGirl]

I've seen it done with horses! Its so cool! They can go so fast!
My friends husband wants me to pull him with my horse... considering she's scared of kids of sleds, I don't think thats happening lol

Ok back to homework...

 

[aspiringDVM]

I went on an Outward Bound dogsledding trip when I was fourteen, and one of the dogs was trained for skijoring. Since I was the only one who had ever heard of skijoring (thank you, animal planet ) I basically had her all to myself and it was SO MUCH FUN!!!!! So while I've never trained a dog to do it, I will say that it is amazing (However, I highly recommend teaching some derivative of stop/ whoa, especially if you intend to be traveling over frozen lakes during the spring thaw and the ice is actively thinning ).

 

[CatVet2Be]

I saw a few people doing that when I went to Alaska and it looked like so much fun! I vowed that if we ever move to a place with snow I'd get my dog a harness and booties so we could do it too.

 

[sumstorm]

I went on an Outward Bound dogsledding trip when I was fourteen, and one of the dogs was trained for skijoring. Since I was the only one who had ever heard of skijoring (thank you, animal planet ) I basically had her all to myself and it was SO MUCH FUN!!!!! So while I've never trained a dog to do it, I will say that it is amazing (However, I highly recommend teaching some derivative of stop/ whoa, especially if you intend to be travelling over frozen lakes during the spring thaw and the ice is actively thinning ).

Thanks for the advice! She is my search and rescue dog, so pretty well trained in general. I have a stop cue and left/right cues in place, plus a speed up cue. I also took the time to train her to stop if I took a tumble for our normal runs. I think I might want to put a slow down cue in as well, though.

Were you using the X cross harness? The one that looks like an X on the back? did it seem like it put pressure in the wrong places due to the angle of connection? The line connects for sleds are lower with far less angle than the ones for waist belts?