Harness Woes

In my list of dog priorities, keeping Silas’s skin attached to his body is at a firm position #2, second only to keeping his food in his stomach instead of vomited back onto my patio.

To this end, we have owned a lot of harnesses.

Here are my problems:
1) Silas is a funny-shaped dog. He has a very large chest circumference for his size, but it’s in a very oval tall/narrow configuration. We have been stymied by several otherwise nice harnesses that just don’t come in a size to fit him. Even his current harness, which comes in rare and wonderful “between” sizes, is not a perfect fit–the chest band is let almost entirely out, while the shoulder straps are too loose in the tightest setting.

2) Silas has wacky metal sensitivities. I can’t figure out what it is exactly that bothers him, because dog-gear companies aren’t lining up to tell you what metal they use in their buckles and clasps. His city dog tags left him with an oozing sore on his chest, so I have to keep all of his ID tags in a Quiet Spot neoprene sleeve.

3) Silas has extremely little hair, especially on his belly, chest, and behind his front legs.

4) Silas cannot be walked on a collar, because he is crazy reacts unpredictably to the world.

I thought I had solved all of these problems with his Lupine Roman Harness. That’s his red one that has been in all the recent photos. I love this harness. My one issue was that some of the seams are quite rough on the inside, but I added some stick on moleskin padding.

Now I’m noticing, though, that his chest is perpetually scabby.

None of the potential problem seams are in the chest area. This leaves me with three theories:
1) The nylon webbing, which is quite soft for nylon webbing, is too abrasive for him.
2) He’s starting to react to the metal chest ring for some reason.
Or 3) Now that most of the paint is worn of his dog tag clip, he’s reacting to it.

I’m really hoping it’s #3, which is a quick enough fix with a new tag clip. (I can’t really move them. The metal d-rings on collars also sometimes bother him, so his current collar doesn’t have one.) Finding the Lupine harness took months and basically exhausted my local resources. I may be reduced to either finding him a shirt to wear under his harness or sewing (hahahahaha) some kind of fleece cover for it.

Do any of you know a fleece-lined harness that doesn’t sit right behind the dog’s front legs?