DOG BOOTIES
Below are a few style of dog booties that don’t fall off easily like many of the commercial dog booties out there. They are comfortable on the dog because they are soft and mold to the dogs’ paw shapes, allowing the dogs to feel the ground under their paws.
We’d greatly appreciate donated booties for our dog teams, but we also wanted to created this page as a resource for all working dogs and pet dogs. Some of the booties are made to protect dogs’ paws from rough terrain and others are meant to protect from hot and cold surfaces. Some will work for all purposes.
The Dog Mocs below are made entirely of high quality deerskin leather, including the laces. They are very soft and comfortable on the dogs’ paws, and they won’t chafe the dew claws because there are slits on the side. The slit could potentially take in debris in certain environments, but you can wrap cloth tape or self-adhesive bandage around the ankles to cover the slits.
The Rocky Mountain booties below are also made of leather, but they use neoprene bands instead of ties to stay on the ankles. The leather is not as durable as the Dog Mocs, but they will work if the terrain is not super rough/harsh. All orders come with shoe horns which allow you to slip the booties onto your dog’s paws easily.
The booties from Non-Stop Dogwear come in short and tall models, and are meant to protect dogs’ paws from gravel, sharp rocks, warm pavement, snow, salt and ice. Like the other booties we’ve listed here, they offer good protection without the bulky soles of many commercial dog booties.
The custom booties below are made of motorcycle tire inner tubes. This material is bulletproof and has protected our dogs’ paws from very sharp lava. The bottom end of the bootie, near the paw nails, remains open, so any debris that falls into the booties will fall out of that opening.
Below are links to the materials you’ll need to create and use your own booties.
- Inner tube – For large breeds such as Labs and Malinois, 3.0-3.25 width works well for the larger front paws, and 2.75-3.0 width works for the narrower back paws. The rim size doesn’t matter since you’ll cut the tube into smaller pieces anyway.
- Gaffers tape and/or cloth medical tape (may be torn into narrower strips) – Although the video recommends duct tape for the outer layers, we found that it is too sticky and is hard to remove after use. Waterproof tape is not required either. We prefer to use gaffers tape and cloth tape.
- Scissors and Hole Puncher
The boots below are used by sled dogs and are very easy to put on and take off. This isn’t suitable for sharp rough terrain, but it will protect your dogs’ paws from snow and hot surfaces.
