We now have our dog's harness in place, but we still need to put on the cinches. Just like saddling a horse, we always attach the front cinch first and then the back cinch. To do this, we always begin by giving our dog the "stand-stay" command. If your dog does not know this already he needs to learn it. The command simply means "stay" but not while sitting or laying down (which is what they may be accustom to), rather, we want them to stay while they are standing. This is important as we need to reach beneath the dog to make our attachments.

So simply encourage your dog to stand and stay. I actually use the words "stand....stay" and give the stay hand signal as well.

With your dog standing nicely, place yourself directly behind your dog. Locate the D-rings where the traces attach (hint: they should be alongside your dogs ribs right now). Place a finger through each D-ring and then re-affirm the "stay" command. Just a moment after this, tug backward on the D-ring with even pressure.

The point of this is to seat the harness in place and to make sure the harness is evenly distributed on both sides of your dog. If not, you will need to make one side shorter, or the other side longer. But which one?

A correctly fit harness will have the traces D-rings located directly over the furthest point of the rib cage. That is, not over the soft loin or the middle of the rib cage. Here of course, I am only addressing horizontal positioning and we cannot finalize this fit without paying attention to vertical positioning as well.

A correctly fit harness will place the traces D-rings --vertically-- at the same height as the point of the buttocks, but this is not as critical as the horizontal positioning described above. We will revisit vertical positioning of the traces D-rings when we talk about the single tree and cart.

Now that we have positioning figured out, let's continue with harnessing. With your dog standing, move to the left side of your dog and thread the front cinch under the harness and through the front cinch strap which should be located above your dog's withers. The snaps for the cinch should be hanging beneath your dog.

Grasp one in each hand and snap them together. Now assess tightness. Can you get two fingers between the front cinch and your dogs ribs? How about three fingers? How about your entire fist? I like the cinch to be 2-3 fingers tight (or loose, it matters if you are a glass half empty or full person right?) and this is because when your dog is actually freight carting he needs to take deeper breaths and to do that, the ribs need to expand. The purpose of the front cinch is to allow a place for the shaft poles to attach and to provide some additional weight balance/distribution of the harness on the dog. So keep that in mind as you adjust this fit.

Now attach the rear cinch in much the same way using the slots provided in the harness. This cinch can be just a bit looser as its main function is to help avoid rolling of the harness.