Important note: Extend or reduce ribbing at the start based on your dog’s snout length. I have been finding that my dog’s longer snout should have a longer amount of ribbing. The St st should cover the dog’s eyes, and throughout the walk, the mask creeps up over her head.

Training update: After exclusively walking April for a month with the “head sock” (as we’ve now started calling it), she showed progress with her anxiety. We then switched to having it on hand when we were on walks, just in case she started getting worked up. We find that she does better if we can do “watch mes,” and the mask makes it difficult to teach her to focus on us. It was a great tool to jolt her into trusting us, and we’re happy that we don’t have to use it on walks now. I’m glad I have it, though, if she hits a rough a patch. It’s a great tool!

My husband and I have been training a rescue dog for about six months. Our trainer recommended blindfolding her on walks to help her learn to trust us and to keep her from getting too worked up by stuff that she thought she saw while walking. Scarves and bandannas were too easy to scrape off her face, so I decided to make a knitted head sock to block out her sight without making her too uncomfortable. Weʼre hoping that within a month her anxiety will decrease, but in the meantime, itʼs worth a shot, right?