I found the fray with my thumb. It was the last Saturday in August, Hank was dancing at the back of the Outback, and I was buckling his old harness on for a quick trip to the river when the strap under my fingers felt fuzzy and stiff instead of smooth. I turned it over. Where the strap runs through the plastic slider, the webbing had worn down to about half its width.
That harness is a basic back-clip one we bought in 2022, the year we moved to Cambridge. It stopped being his everyday harness in March, but it had a second career as the river harness, living in the car so the good one wouldn't get soaked in Rum River sand. Four summers of sand will do that to a strap.
It was a year for things wearing out. Three pieces of Hank's gear gave up in 2026, and one of the replacements turned out to be nothing at all.
The harness with frayed straps
Besides the strap at the slider, the stitching on one side of the chest piece had started to let go. A harness is a small thing until it isn't, and a 67-pound dog who still takes squirrels personally is the wrong dog to trust to half a strap near a road. It went in the garage trash that afternoon, cut in half first so nobody could fish it out and reuse it.
The replacement: nothing. While I stood in the garage wondering which harness to buy for river days, Caleb pointed at the life jacket hanging on its hook. It has a sturdy ring on the back for a leash, and Hank wears it at the river anyway. So now he walks from the car to the sandy bend in the life jacket with the leash clipped to the back, and the good harness stays dry. The Ruffwear Front Range is still his daily harness, and the 2 Hounds Design Freedom still comes out for longer walks. Three harnesses for one dog was always one too many.
The chewed leash
In January, during crate rest, Hank hooked his short potty leash through the wire of his pen and chewed the handle halfway off while I was in the shower. I wrote at the time that it would stay in service until it wasn't. It made it to April. On one of the longer spring walks I noticed the chewed edge unraveling into loose threads, and on a dog working his way back from knee surgery, a leash I didn't trust was the last thing I wanted in my hand.
The replacement was $16: a leash made of coated webbing, the smooth rubbery kind that doesn't soak up water. It wipes clean after the river, it doesn't smell like the river afterward, and it doesn't fray. The tradeoffs are that it's stiffer than nylon and a little slippery when it's wet. I've also heard it goes stiff in real cold, which I'll get to test in January.
The crate pad that went flat
The foam crate pad from Hank's recovery pen moved down to his basement den this spring, where the crate sits on the concrete floor. It was already thin. By July it was basically a placemat. On the Fourth of July, sitting on the bottom step while Hank rode out the fireworks in his den, I reached in to rest my hand on him and felt the cold floor right through the pad, under his hip.
That one went on the gear wish list in the pet tab, waited out our two-day rule for anything over $30 and got bought in early August at Fleet Farm: a two-inch crate pad with a waterproof liner and a zip-off cover, $44. When he goes down there for a storm now, he sinks in a little. That's what I wanted.
What's still going
- The two Kong Classics, which came with us from the duplex and look it, but still hold a frozen breakfast.
- His orthopedic bed from 2023, $119. The bolster has slumped a bit on one side, mostly from Mabel.
- The $45 life jacket from May 2025, faded, buckles still crisp.
- The cargo liner in the Outback, which has hauled more river sand than the river.
What I changed after the harness: on the first of every month, when the pet fund transfer goes through, I check every buckle, clip and strap we own. It takes ten minutes. Gear is cheaper to replace before it breaks than after, and after tends to happen at a bad moment. The first check turned up the ring on his ID tag, half open. Thirty seconds with pliers.
The two harness halves are still in the garage trash, waiting for pickup day. Hank sniffs them every time we walk past, like an old friend he isn't sure he should say hello to.
