Attaching a Front Harness to a Rear Dog Wheelchair
It’s very simple to attach your dog’s front harness to their rear Walkin’ Wheels dog wheelchair. Each Walkin’ Wheels comes with a standard Front Harness. When you receive your wheelchair, you’ll see a harness with three different colored straps: red, blue, and black. The three webbing colors can be used as a guide to ensure you’re putting the harness on correctly every time.
Blue – the blue strap should be on the top of your dog’s back and run over your pet’s shoulders.
Black – this strap should sit across your dog’s chest on the front.
Red – the red strap goes underneath your dog, right behind the front legs.
Two D-ring clips will be on either side of your dog’s front harness. When adjusted correctly, the prongs of the clips should point toward your pet’s hind end.
How to put on your dog’s wheelchair harness:
- Remove the neoprene comfort sleeves that wrap around the red, blue, and black straps. Doing this will make it much easier to adjust the harness’s fit.
- Unclip the red webbing.
- With the blue webbing on top, place the harness over your dog’s head. The blue webbing should be across your pet’s back, with the black harness sitting across its chest.
- Run the red webbing under your dog, right behind their front legs, and clip the strap into place.
- Adjust each of the straps for a nice, snug fit. Be careful not to make it too tight. When properly fitted, you should be able to get two fingers under each part of the harness.
- Reattach the black, neoprene comfort sleeves around each of the three straps. Make sure to tuck excess webbing under the neoprene sleeves. If the comfort sleeves are too long, you can trim them.
How to attach the front harness to your dog’s cart
- Wheel your pet’s wheelchair behind them. Attach the leg rings to the wheelchair frame and place each hind leg through the “C’s” of the leg ring.
- Gently lift the side extender bars off the ground until they are perpendicular to the floor.
- It’s time to attach the front harness to the wheelchair. There is an opening shaped like a ‘D’ on the plastic harness clips. The side extender will slide through this opening and buckle into the female clip on the side extender.
- Repeat on the other side.
Frequently asked questions about the wheelchair front harness:
How can I tell what size front harness my pet has?
Your harness size will vary depending on the size wheelchair frame your dog has. The color of the webbing, style of clip, the width of the webbing, and the overall size will be different for each frame size to best suit your pet’s size, weight, and girth.
Mini Wheelchair Harness
The front harness for the Mini Walkin’ Wheels wheelchair has visible differences from the other sizes. Not only is it much smaller, but the way it attaches is very different. There are no D-Rings clips on the mini front harness, it attaches to the mini wheelchair frame using the two adjustment knobs.
There are two different-sized harnesses for the Mini Wheelchair, a smaller harness for pets whose Mini wheelchair has 2-inch wheels and a slightly larger harness for those with 4-inch wheels. The smaller Mini harness features .44″ webbing and the slightly larger style uses 0.75″ webbing.
Small Wheelchair Harness
The front harness for the small wheelchair uses 1″ wide webbing. Since all components of the Small Walkin’ Wheels are smaller, this harness also features a smaller D-Ring clip than the larger wheelchair sizes. The diameter of the “D” and size of the prongs are scaled to perfectly fit the side bar extender on the small cart.
The small front harness does not have a blue strap. For this size harness, you will have one red strap and two black straps.
Corgi Wheelchair Harness
The front harness for the corgi wheelchair is a larger version of our small front harness. Although, both the small harness and corgi harness use the same clips, the webbing is much longer. The extra harness webbing allows the harness to adjust to fit the girth of most corgis.
Medium Wheelchair Harness
The medium wheelchair harness is our “standard” harness. All dogs in the Medium wheelchair and most dogs in the Large wheelchair will need a medium front harness.
Large Wheelchair Harness
The large front harness is very big. This harness only fits pets that weigh over 150 lbs. If you have a large dog under this weight, you will receive a standard medium harness with your Large Walkin’ Wheels. This harness fits giant dogs with a girth up to 73″.
Can the D-Ring Clips be replaced?
You can replace the D-Ring Clips at any time. Simply remove the silver screws to slide your D-Ring out of the clip and replace it with a new harness clip. Replacement D-Rings are available on the Walkin’ Pets website.
There are two different sizes of D-Rings available. A Small D-ring will fit the Small and Corgi Walkin’ Wheels wheelchair, and the Medium D-Ring that fits a Medium & Large Walkin’ Wheels wheelchair.
How big will my pet’s front harness get?
You may be surprised at how big your dog’s wheelchair harness can get. Adjustability is important to us and we have made sure to make your pet’s front harness to be as adjustable as possible. Here’s how big each harness can get:
| Girth of Chest | Wheelchair Size | Harness Size |
| up to 18″ | Mini Walkin’ Wheels w/ 2″ wheels | Mini w/ 2″ Wheels |
| up to 18″ | Mini Walkin’ Wheels w/ 4″ wheels | Mini w/ 4″ Wheels |
| up to 29″ | Small Walkin’ Wheels | Small |
| 30 – 48″ | Corgi Walkin’ Wheels | Corgi |
| 30 – 48″ | Medium & Large Walkin’ Wheels | Medium |
| 49 – 73″ | 150 lbs. and up | Large |
The Large Front Harness is only for dogs 150 lbs. and up, most dogs that use the Large Walkin’ Wheels wheelchair only need a Medium Front Harness.
Still not sure what size harness your pet needs? Give us a call at 888-253-0777, our Wheelchair Experts are happy to help!
After I adjust the harness to fit my dog, the comfort sleeves are too big. What do I do?
The comfort sleeves can be cut in half to fit your dog’s harness. Open the comfort sleeve all the way, on the inside you will see there are two separate sections of touch faster.
Place your scissors between the two touch fastener panels and cut in half. Now the comfort sleeve should be the right size to wrap around your dog’s harness webbing.
I’ve added front wheels to my dog’s cart, will the front harness attach to a quad wheelchair?
When you convert your rear Walkin’ Wheels wheelchair into a full support wheelchair you get new side extenders specially built for a quad cart. The side extenders will come with four thumbscrews, two on each side. You use these four screws to attach your pet’s front leg rings, since most dogs place the majority of their weight on their front paws, the leg rings offer more support directly under the chest. You will no longer need your standard front harness. The front harness is used for the rear wheelchair only.
