More About Dog Booties

Dog booties are used in order to protect dogs’ paws. They are precautionary. Humans wear hiking boots to hike just like sleds dogs wear booties to run. But dogs don’t wear booties all the time just like human don’t wear hiking boots to walk around the shopping mall. Dogs wear booties when trail conditions warrant their use. They will almost always wear booties on a race because there is less ‘down time’ to stop and check paws (racing is Go Go Go!)

We put booties on dogs for a variety of reasons during training: the cold temperatures, icy trail, moist snow that will ball up in their paws or simply if the training run is long. On short training runs or warm, smooth snow conditions the dogs might not need booties.

Karolyn and Aliy headed out on a long training run last week, so both teams needed boots. In this video, they are nearly completed the bootying process. You’ll notice that not every dog is a cooperative team member. Some of the dogs like to take booties off as quickly as a musher can put them on.

Dog Booties are a necessary evil. Perhaps not … evil, but surely a pain in the tush! They cost a lot, they take ‘cold finger effort’ to put on correctly, when they aren’t put on correctly they fall off ASAP (there goes $$$$ scattered down the trail) and they need to be constantly sorted and packed.

We have had a few Booty Elves over the years come to SP Kennel. These good hearted elves show up with booties in tow and they actually sort and pack them. Sometimes the really, really sweet elves go thru the enormous piles of used booties that are drying by the heater in the garage (love that smell!) and re sort them into sets of 4 for future use.

This is the most fun we have ever had when Booty elves came to visit several years ago: