I could not live with the idea of putting a collar around my dog and choking it's neck every single time we have to deter him from urinating on the neighbor's mailbox. The harness distributes the force over more area, and thus, is a safer option to make sure you don't harm your dog while taking him or her for a walk.

Harnesses sound safer to me, but then again I'm traumatized by a kid almost dragging my puppy on a damn leash. (One of the reasons why I don't like toddlers) I was young too, so I didn't see it coming. I would only have a collar on his neck for ID/Contact purposes.

I've never had a problem with just a collar, but that could depend on the dog as well. I can see needing a harness if you seem to always have to pull on the leash. I wouldn't want just a collar for that. For example my brothers dos needs a harness, he's all over the place and they need to pull constantly. But my dog is great with just the collar, I don't need to pull at all and of course the collar has her tags and information on it as well.

I use both. I bought a collar for my dog as, at least to me, it shows ownership. It tells others that this dog belongs to someone. I use the harness if I take him for a walk or if we are going into a pet friendly store. It allows me to direct the dog easier in a public place and I don't have to be concerned with accidentally choking him.

I used to use a harness on my biggest dog, because he destroyed a regular collar in order to his strength, and that just worked really good for me, and he seems to be more confortable with his harness.
But when it comes to my little dog, collars are a great option for him, I am really careful to not pulling him hard of it because he's so small, and that could really hurt him. But I've never had problems with that.
So... I think it depends on the size of your dog and the dog in general, not every dog feels comfortable with the same things, I guess.

I prefer the harness. If I had a collar around my neck, I'd be rather uncomfortable, and I'd much rather have a harness or something. I also think that harness give you more control over a dog when you walk them, which would be very helpful for walking big, untrained dogs. Like a previous poster mentioned, for dogs with weak necks it's a must have.

I guess it depends on the breed of the dog and its behavior. I had a pretty big and strong dog with quite a temper. So, we always used a collar on him. He has never really experienced any chocking problems even though his push was pretty strong sometimes. But the collar is the thing that helps as he realizes that he needs to stop now.

I have both, collar and harness! We use the collar on a daily basis and harness for when we walk him in public. It seems he pulls less when the harness is on than with the collar.

I have heard and watched Cesar Millan that if you keep the leash hook to the collar on the top of the dog neck, not underneath, the dog behaves better.

We use the collar most of the time for the convenience. But when we are going to the park or to the mall, we use the harness because we can pull it without harm to our dogs. In fact, when going up or down the stairs, we can just pull the harness to assist the dog if it's having a hard time on the stairs. With the collar, they might choke.

However, the harness is not easy to put on. It takes time and sometimes our housemaid would attach it in the wrong way. But definitely it is the harness when we go on social activities.

Collars are probably among the first things dog owners buy, but I've heard there are risks associated to them (for instance, pulling your dog too hard could hurt and even suffocate them), so I've considered some alternatives, like harnesses. Are they actually safer, or is it just a myth? What are the reasons why you should choose one over the other?

We have always used just a collar for our dog and had no injury problems or anything.

When you want to pull your dog to one direction if its a trained dog, you just need to give it some pressure in the right direction and the dog would move by itself, its not like you have to pull the collar with all your might as that would surely hurt the dog.

We choose the collar to keep the dog free as well, as we do not like putting it in a harness.

My shiba inu has incredibly thick fur which can make it difficult to tell how tight the collar is on her. I prefer to use harnesses when taking her for a walk, because then I can rest easy knowing that she won't be able to slip away. It's especially important because her recall is not that great (Shibas are stubborn!), and I have nightmares about her getting off the leash!

When she's just in the backyard, she wears a rolled leather collar. Rolled leather collars are great for long-haired breeds.

I prefer to use harness because I think the colar will hurt my dog's neck. I am afraid because I've seen dogs whose neck has been wounded because of the tightness of their colars. I think harness is safer because it is intucked with the body.

As an owner of two small dogs, we have always used harnesses when going out to be on the safer side. We haven't had any problems using them. I guess you should try to use them both and check your dog's reaction in terms of comfort and their behavior in pulling the leash.

Harness is more safe than collar. Collar put pressure in your dog`s neck that makes him/her suffocated. If you use harness especially if your dog was small or big, it is more convenient than collar because it prevents your dog to be pulled our jump over a people. In addition, they are not like collars that make your dog suffocated.

I used both collars and harness differently. I put collar to my dog for the purpose of identification if my dog accidentally escape my house. I put harness to m dog only when I go out for a walk or jogging with my dog.
But once in a while I take off my dogs collar everytime when I am with them at my house.