City Dog: How to Dress Your Dog for Parades

Watching the Oscars, I've always been amazed how the actresses seamlessly mange to get their dresses to stay in place. And when they do the big backstage reveal, we realize there was actually a lot of rehearsal and double-sided tape involved. So much like people have questioned how our pooches' costumes managed to stay in place, we're going to share the secrets of how the pooches pull off wearing costumes.

 I never thought I would dress up my 70 lb pitbulls, but somehow knowing that people are more likely to approach our dogs in costume, and have the opportunity to see the true nature of pit bulls, we have jumped on this bandwagon. Though we did have to work up to the costume part as parades can already be scary places with strange noises, crowds, and random drunk people, as we detailed in the post: How to Prepare Your Dog to Attend a Parade.

Preparing Your Dog to Wear a Costume:
Since we've had our pooches awhile, we had forgotten the steps we had taken to originally get our pooches to accept costumes. And we actually just had a great off-line conversation with a reader who just took her adorable pitbull, Michael, in costume to their local Pride Parade.

 She was very mindful of the perspective from this article in the New Yorker as she took the steps to make Michael comfortable in his costume.
 I was careful to introduce it over the course of the day. I put the bandana on first, which excited him because he knew we were going outside, then we left our apartment and went to a friend's place, where he got to socialize with his "friends" and people he already knew. After an hour or so, I let him sniff the dress (he immediately tried to mouth the fur trim), but I will not deny that he put up a bit of a struggle as I zipped the dress up. So, I rewarded him for tolerating me and letting me put the dress on him. Then we were off to face the crowds!
We also introduce the pooches to the costumes and have a mini-dress rehearsal at home to make sure they will be comfortable in their costumes before we head out.

Getting Your Costume to Stay in Place:
This is where the tricky part comes in. To make sure the pooches' hats and headbands stay in place, we sew an elastic strap that goes behind their ears and under their chins. We make sure that the elastic won't be too tight, and it keeps everything in place when we walk. Here is Miss M checking out the 'costume station' and deciding what she wants to wear:

We actually get Miss M's headbands and costumes in the little girl's department at Target. She has no problem wearing tutus, grass skirts, and angel wings. I think given all the positive reinforcement she receives through the extra attention, she actually forgets she is in costume:

Mr. B's head is big enough to wear real people's hats, and he borrows bow-ties from E. His turtle costume was from Target's Halloween dog section and it was designed to fit just like a dog coat and hat.
There is a lot that goes into wearing the costumes because we do want to make sure our pooches are comfortable and happy. What other experiences have people had with dogs and costumes?