Milo Gets New Shoes
27 Feb 2005
A couple weeks ago we were walking around Andersonville and went into Famous Fido’s dog cookie store to look around. Nancy saw they had a new type of dog “shoes”. We’ve used Muttluks and their imitators with varying degrees of success in the past. The main problem with Milo is that he runs right out of them. To combat that Nancy had found some another brand once that had two sets of Velcro straps and went higher up on the dog’s leg and those seemed to stay on pretty well. The second problem is that the leather/vinyl soles are so thin on most shoes that they wear out if the dog runs in them on any kind of rough surface. Since we live in Chicago that means asphalt and concrete.
What makes these new shoes different is that they are shoe shaped. That is, they have a rubber sole and canvas uppers that follow the shape of the dog’s feet. The rubber sole also wraps up the back of the dog’s foot. They have a soft neoprene tongue, a zipper that closes them up the front, and have one Velcro strap well up the dog’s leg that secures them. They have the name “Gooby’s” molded into the sole. Today Nancy found this link to an online vendor.
Nancy thought we should try them on Milo so he can run around on rough surfaces without trashing his pads (and then walking on road salt in the winter). Well being the end of the season these new shoes were on sale for $10 off ($39)… Nancy is not one to turn down a sale, so we drove home and got Milo and brought him back to try them on. If you’ve ever seen a dog first start walking after you put Vet-Wrap or shoes on their feet it is pretty comical. Milo is used to us taping his rear feet for Flyball so he doesn’t put up a fuss. But he still did the high-stepping walk with his new shoes. I marched him around outside to make sure we had the right size - much to the entertainment of everyone in the store and passers-by on the street. The rubber soles make a good hollow tap-tap-tap sound on the concrete too. He adapted to them and doesn’t seem to mind them anymore than his old shoes.
On the left below Milo is modelling his Muttluks (this great photo is Copyright Sheri Berliner at Petraits). On the right he is wearing his new classic black Chuck Taylors.
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