We took Toeffe for a walk today. When I was a kid, we'd take the cats out in a harness occasionally, and let them walk around the driveway and backyard. (We had a busy street out front -- it was nowhere to be letting cats wander.) In the quiet neighborhood where we live now, we actually take Toeffe out on the sidewalk. We live on a tiny dead-end street in a townhouse complex with only one connection to the outside world, so there aren't many cars around.
He's remarkably good about walking in the harness. He likes to stop and smell everything, of course, and he frequently wants to walk up to other people's patios, but mostly he sticks to the sidewalk and keeps moving forward.
The harness has little pawprints on it. We had the option of plain black, but I thought this was funny. It's not a standard H-line harness, which is easy to back out of; there's a connecting band on the underside between the collar and the strap behind his forelegs. Toeffe really hates to have things put around his neck, and this design moves any pressure away from his throat. It's rather difficult to get the harness on him anyway, since it does need to go over his head. He has yet to connect it with going outdoors, or I'm sure he'd cooperate.
Sometimes we make it all the way around the block. A couple of weeks ago, we were out and he was walking along nicely, and some people were talking across the street. Toeffe's usually spooked by strangers, but they were far enough away that he wasn't bothered. They did a double-take when they realized he wasn't a small dog!
