Why We Love the Help-em-up Harness
Tika’s owners can manually assist her using this harness when she’s not in her cart.
Just about any dog who might need a wheelchair also needs help moving around the house, getting in and out a car, navigating stairs – and for these short trips, a manual assist is necessary. It’s not unusual for us to see dogs here being carried in with a towel wrapped around their bellies with the owner struggling to keep up a dog hell-bent on sniffing every spot on the lawn before choosing just the right spot to add his own scent. Twenty-one years ago, when our first dog Buddha, an 80 lb. Doberman became paralyzed, I carried her back end around with the help of an LL Bean firewood carrier. An inexpensive variation of this concept would be to cut open the sides of a cloth shopping bag, and sling the dog’s mid-section – a homemade sling that works just fine as long as your dog is female.
Males, will of course, urinate on a sling that covers the belly. Manual assists that make an accommodation for males by slinging each leg separately have the drawback of chafing in the delicate tissue of the groin.
The Help-em-up Harness solves this problem by supporting the dog on a pelvic pad, with accommodation for male dogs. It also puts a handle over the shoulders and another over the rump, allowing the owner to evenly lift the entire dog, if necessary, in a balanced position. The harness is easy to use and logical. There is lots of adjustability, allowing the owner to make it so that the handles do not interfere with the cart.
What’s great about this harness is that it can stay on your dog all day long, eliminating looking for that sling you were using before your dog decided to drag itself to another room in the house. The harness makes it a snap to lift the dog’s rear legs into our cart.
Like Eddie’s Wheels, the Help-em-up Harness was the brainchild of a professional designer who made something for himself and his own dog, and then decided that other people would benefit from his invention. Like Eddie Grinnell, Carey Zimmerman constantly strives to improve his product and provides excellent customer service. That’s why the Help-em-up Harness is the only manual assist we actually sell – and sell them we do -to most of our clients who have medium to giant size dogs who need a little help from their best friends – YOU!
Posted: to Eddie's News on Tue, Feb 14, 2012
Updated: Tue, Feb 14, 2012
