Best foot treatment?

[david]

Sounds like she is the type to hate the tape as well. One of my favorite memories includes a dog like that. She licked at the tape, looked at me like "c'mon this is ridiculous", then went in and showed the other dogs how to catch a bobcat.

If you try tape, go to a pharmacy or athletic sports store and get the kind that looks like brown krinkled cloth. It stretches and gives, and would provide some friction. Duct tape would be too slippery in steep country unless you could figure out how to roll the tape sticky side down for the last layer.

I used to have my knees taped before every game, and I hated it, and it slowed me down, made me less flexible. But it was either that or blow out my already compromised knees, and sit out the rest of the season. If you give your dog the option of hunting protected, or not hunting; she will choose the hunting.

If we studied this thing as well as the coaches and trainers had studied taping methods for athletes, we would figure out how to leave the toenails protruding.

My dogs never had toenails protruding, and honestly, that duct tape would not have worked in steep rocky country. It is too slippery. We were in the flat frozen far north. But I have seen conditions where no dog made of flesh and blood could have hunted without injury to feet and ankles unless protected. It was "tape or go home or not tape, not go home, and this is the last hunt until the dogs heal up."

[david]

Ps. I researched every dog booty known to man and tried every one that looked promising, including those used on the Iditarod. Nothing worked well for a variety of reasons.

[ozhound]

We tried the fancy ones with the vibram soles on them years ago hunting some rough country that had recently been burnt by fires and they looked great when we let the dogs go, didn't hold tight enough and they twisted upside down on the foot while the dogs were hunting and the top ended up underneath the foot and was destroyed.. Made for an expensive day and ended up using duct tape from then on