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GoPro Fetch Reviewed By Frankie The Dachshund

I’m a 4 year old Dachshund living/working in Toronto Canada. I sometimes work as a camera operator for the human man’s video production company. I wanted to take a minute to review a piece of equipment I recently  used. Since I’m a dog and can’t type, I’ve enlisted the human man to prepare this review on my behalf.
The piece of equipment I want to highlite in this review is the GoPro Fetch Dog Harness, which is pretty self explanatory. One important note: The harness is rated for dogs 15-75 lbs. I’m only 14 lbs but the harness still fit fairly securely. The straps hung a little long but my owner just tucked them into the harness. If your any smaller than me, I would not recommend this product. Definitely better suited to larger canines.

First Impressions

To be completely honest, I hated it. I don’t like when they make me wear a sweater, so why would they think this would be any more enjoyable? When they strapped it to me I was pretty much frozen in fear for a good 10 minutes, but my owners re-assured my that it was going to be okay. This was confirmed shortly thereafter when my first steps were rewarded with a treat…I’m talking carnivore crunch here…with real duck…the good stuff. Once I settled down, the harness wasn’t so bad. It didn’t really restrict my movement and the padded straps were pretty comfortable. The harness has both a chest plate and a back plate, so you can capture a few different perspectives. The whole thing ties down pretty securely with some elastic velcro straps.

Trial Run

We took it out for a test spin in the neighbourhood. Because my torso is so long and narrow (and because I tend to twist when I walk) the camera on the back mount swayed from side to side pretty heavily. You will see what I mean in the video below. However when I was sitting still, I managed to get some pretty great shots. I do think the footage would be less shaky if the harness was on a larger dog, but that’s just my guess.

So Many New Friends

One of the things I noticed is that I got a lot of attention, both from other dogs and people. Everyone was curious to check out the wiener dog with a camera on his back and that gave me the opportunity to capture some great moments. My leg’s are pretty short so the chest mount didn’t really work, but because the GoPro shoots such a wide angle, the back mount worked perfectly. I should mention that this was shot on the GoPro Hero 3+, but the harness will support any GoPro camera.

The Video

Rather than bark on and on about the footage, I’ve embedded the completed video (the one I helped work on). I’ll also be uploading some of the raw footage to the Signature Video Group Facebook page so you can get a better sense of how the Fetch mount performs in action. All in all it’s a fun little piece of equipment and you can definitely get some cool shots using it, but it really does shake too much to use it for more than a short cutaways. The harness is waterproof so I can’t wait to try it out at the cottage next summer. I’ve got a pretty serious doggy paddle. I rate this product 3.5 Paws out of 5.
Chris Stasiuk

Author Chris Stasiuk

Chris is commercial director and founder of SVG, a Toronto based video content agency.

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