Cold/Wet Training Gloves
18 Jan 2013
I really want to continue training Flyer throughout the Winter. Here in Chicago it can get pretty cold and wet in the winter and my hands are the first to get cold. To top it off Flyer is pretty “juicy”, if you give him a treat he’ll leave you with a hand full of spit. Not at good thing on a bare hand when it is near or below freezing!
I like to mix up training with both treats and toys. I’d tried various regular winter gloves and they work pretty well for handling toys. Though wet toys can be slippery with most winter gloves. But for training Flyer’s A Frame I was getting the best results using a clicker and treats. I just couldn’t use gloves to handle the small treats and even a fancy clicker wasn’t that easy to use with gloves.
Then I saw a comment on Facebook from Flyer’s “Mom” Gail Storm about using lined neoprene gloves to keep hands warm and dry when playing with dogs and wet toys - fishermen use them. That was a great idea!
So I went to the local home improvement store (Menards) and they had a whole selection of rubber coated gloves of various types and thicknesses. I was wearing a coat with a pocket full of treats (imagine that…) and was able to pick out a couple pairs that let me feel the individual treats:
Thick Rubber Coated Thicker Gloves
Thin Coated Thin Gloves
I think I spent five to ten dollars per pair. I’ve been using them for a while and have a few comments that might help you choose your own cold/wet weather training gloves.
To get a good feel/touch through the gloves I got a smaller size so there wouldn’t be any gap between my finger tips and the end of the glove’s fingers.
Reach into your pocket when you test them out - I found the rubber on the back of the thicker pair would grab onto my coat material and make it hard to get my glove in/out. But the rubber’s coverage helps keep the wind from penetrating and the thicker cloth makes them warm enough but not as warm as a real winter glove. They are good for 15-20 minutes for me when playing with toys - but not really useful with treats in my pocket.
The thinner rubber on the thinner gloves doesn’t wrap around the back of the gloves so they move in and out of pockets easily. They also make it easy to handle treats and the clicker. The only down side is the thinner cloth doesn’t provide as much warmth and you can feel the cold breeze through the thin weave. So I’m thinking of getting some thicker knit gloves without finger tips to wear over these thin gloves. That should give me warm, dry hands with fingers that have all the “touch” I need to keep training outside.
The things I do…
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