I'm eleven months old. According to Linda, that explains almost everything about me, and on the leash topic, she was completely right.
Every morning it was the same. We'd go out the door, the sun still low, the air full of new smells the night had left everywhere — a cat that passed by, a bag of bread on a porch, something I can't identify but need to smell right now — and I'd pull. I didn't think about it, didn't decide it, my whole body just launched toward the smell before the rest of me caught up. My human trailed behind, half dragged along, arm stretched out as if I were pulling him and not the other way around — which was, in fact, exactly what was happening.
There was one morning he nearly went flying for real. A bird swooped low, I lunged forward with everything I had, and my human took two steps in the air before touching ground again. He stood there for a second, looking at me, with a face that wasn't angry so much as 'this can't go on.'
Two knocks at the door. Nobody else knocks like that. Mike, with a box under his arm, chatting for a bit like always while I got my usual dose of petting. When he left, my human opened the box right there on the porch.
Inside were two padded harnesses: a light blue one, for me, and a pink one, for Linda — because of course she got the pink one, everything looks good on her. I sniffed it suspiciously, like I do with anything new. But the moment they put it on me for the afternoon walk, something changed.
I still pulled, I'm not going to lie — I'm still me, and some smells can't wait. But the pull didn't feel the same anymore. There was something in the back straps that absorbed the jolt, like the harness was saying 'fine, pull, but without hurting anyone.' My human stopped being dragged. I stopped feeling like I was choking mid-sprint. And Linda, wearing hers in her exact size, walked with the same elegance as always, like she'd had that pink harness since birth.
I'm still learning walk manners. No harness fixes that, according to Linda — only time does. But since the FreeWalk arrived, the three of us make it home in one piece — my human without a sore arm, and me without that choking feeling every time something catches my attention, which is still pretty much everything.
— Max 🐾