It definitely did take her some time to get used to them.
At the beginning, she was being a princess, and she'd walk on the tip-toes, rather than pushing her weight down and standing with her feet flat – the soles are thicker, thus, not as flexible as other “shoes”.
Honestly, even though she walked funny at first, when we got moving, it didn’t seem to affect her gait at all. I also really enjoyed not having to trace back to find lost shoes; although, they do make her sound like a horse on the pavement. People definitely look around when they hear us coming… Sigh… Oh well.
She’s been wearing boots since she was about 4 or 5 months, so she’s pretty good with them. The only things I can think of that you may want to consider in helping Izzy overcome the barrier of awkward-rubber-thingies-strapped-to-her-feet are:
- only bring them out to have fun, and always keep it positive with lots of high-value reinforcement
- teach her to put her own feet in them, rather than you shoving her feet in (THIS WAS REALLY HELPFUL!)**
- When they are on for the first couple tries, keep her moving, and keep it a decent pace – the slower the walk, the more awkward and unnatural the gait
- After you’ve done a couple quick test runs, keep them on for a good duration of the evening, and feed Izzy her dinner throughout her shoe-wearing endeavor inside the house
It really wasn’t that bad though.
*Teaching a dog to put its paws into a pair of shoes is no different than teaching it to “shake a paw”. You can do it several ways, but choose whatever method you are most comfortable with. We chose to shape the behaviour, but if Izzy knows “paw”, try it with the shoe in your hand, then slowly progress to holding the shoe open so her paw lands almost in it, then progress to her putting more pressure with her paws, etc.