Loobani Dog Sling: An Honest Review for Large Breeds

The part nobody mentions about a rear support sling is that it spares your dog's dignity more than it spares your back. I had been lifting Duchess into the truck and up the porch steps for the better part of a year, and somewhere in there she started bracing against me and turning her head away while I did it. The first morning I put the LOOBANI sling under her hindquarters and let her climb the three porch steps under her own power, she went up without the brace. She was still slow. She was still doing the work with her own back legs. That was the whole point, and it is why the thing still hangs on a hook by my back door ten months later.

I should say up front what I am and what I am not. I am 61 years old, I run a 20 acre hobby farm outside Kalamazoo, Michigan, and I fix small tractors and implements for neighbors out of my pole barn. I am not a vet and I do not play one on the internet. Duchess is a 9 year old female yellow Labrador, right around 64 pounds, and our vet diagnosed hip dysplasia and early arthritis in both hips when she was 7. She has been on Cosequin Maximum Strength since that diagnosis and salmon oil for about a year. That is the medical side of the house. The sling is not medical. It is a way to take some of the load off a dog that can still walk but cannot always get her weight where it needs to go.

What follows is the version I would give a neighbor in the barn aisle. It includes the one number on the listing that I think is genuinely misleading, the jobs where a sling is the wrong tool, and the dogs that should not be wearing one at all. If you came here for a page that says it fixed a dysplastic hip, this is not that page, and I would not trust the page that is.

How I Ended Up Buying One

Last January we had a stretch of mornings where the porch steps froze over and stayed that way. Duchess came out of the kitchen, hit the top step, and her back end went out from under her. She sat down hard and looked at me like I had built the stairs wrong. I got her up and back inside, and then I did what I had been avoiding, which was to admit that a 64 pound dog on ice is more than I want to carry down three steps at 6 in the morning with a coffee in the other hand.

Before the sling I had tried a beach towel folded under her belly. That works, and I still keep one in the truck, but it cuts into your hands after a hundred yards, it slips out of position every few steps, and a towel does not stay where you put it when the dog decides to sit down. I had also tried simply carrying her, which is fine for the truck and terrible for my lower back. Our vet's advice through all of it was the same line he gives everybody: catch it early, keep her moving, and take some of the load off so she does not have to muscle through it. The sling is the load part.

I ordered the Large. It came folded in a small bag with a drawstring, which is a strange thing to be impressed by, but it matters when you want to keep the thing in the truck without it picking up hay. The first use was clumsy, because I had it too far forward and she sat down on purpose to let me know. Second morning I set it under the hindquarters the way the listing photos show and she walked up the steps with me holding maybe a third of her weight. By the end of that week she was stepping into position on her own when I held it out. That is about as high a compliment as a Labrador gives a piece of equipment.

How I Actually Use It

It hangs on a hook by the back door next to the leash. That is the entire storage system, and the fact that it lives there tells you how often it gets used. Not every day. On a good week, three or four mornings, mostly the three porch steps and the path out to the barn.

The pattern is consistent. Cold mornings are worse than warm ones. Mornings after a long day of following me around the pole barn are worse than mornings after a quiet night on the living room bed. If there is ice, the sling comes off the hook before she does. If she has been lying on the concrete for two hours while I rebuild a carburetor, she gets it for the walk back to the house. That is the whole use case. Short stretches, bad moments, and the difference between her going out and her deciding it is not worth the trouble.

Care is simple, which I appreciate in anything that lives near a barn. The outer is nylon and the lining is the soft sheepskin-like material, and both go in the machine. I rinse it in the utility sink first if it has picked up mud, then wash it with the shop rags. It has come through one full winter and a muddy spring without a seam letting go. It folds back into the bag when it goes in the truck, which is where it lives on vet days so that Duchess does not have to hop out of the back seat and land flat on a parking lot.

The Weight Range Is The Part To Read Twice

Here is the thing I wish someone had put in front of me before I ordered, and it is the reason this review is not five stars. The listing gives a weight range of 15 to 30 kilograms. That is roughly 33 to 66 pounds. Duchess is 64 pounds, so she sits at the very top of the stated range, close enough that I noticed. The same listing recommends the sling for large breeds and extra large breeds, and those two statements do not sit comfortably together. A 90 pound dog is a large breed in anybody's book, and I would not expect this particular LOOBANI sling to be the right answer for one.

I am not saying the product is bad. I am saying the copy oversells the size. At 64 pounds it works, the load spreads out, and nothing has torn or stretched. If your dog is heavier than that, look at a sling rated for the weight instead of assuming the title covers you, and if you are anywhere close to the line, put the dog on a scale before you order instead of guessing. Ten seconds on a bathroom scale would have saved me a week of wondering.

What It Does Well

The design is simple, and it is the right kind of simple. The material is thickened, with the soft lining on the dog side, so the load spreads across the hindquarters instead of cutting in behind the back legs the way a bare strap does. The nylon outer gives it enough structure that it does not roll up into a rope when you take weight. On a dog with sore hips, where the wrong pressure in the wrong spot gets an immediate complaint, that matters more than any line on a feature list.

Duchess tolerates it, which is the strongest thing I can say about any equipment on a dog that does not care to be handled around the back end. She does not drop her hindquarters when I reach for it and she does not walk sideways to get away from it. Ten months in, she steps into it. I have had harnesses she fought for a month.

At 64 pounds she sits at the very top of the stated weight range. The title says large breeds. Those two facts do not agree, and you should know that before you order.

Where It Struggles

The biggest misunderstanding I see in the reviews, and the one I had myself, is that a sling lifts the dog. It does not. It gives you something to hold and a soft wide surface under the hindquarters, and it lets you take part of the load while the dog keeps her feet under her. If your dog cannot bear weight on a hind leg at all, this is not the tool, and you should be talking to your vet about a full body mobility harness rather than a support under the hips.

It also takes two hands and a few seconds to place correctly, which is fine on a porch and awkward on a frozen driveway when the dog is already sliding. In practice I set it before we get to the door, not at the top of the stairs. And it is a short distance tool. I have used it for the path out to the barn, maybe 40 yards, and my hands were done by the end. For a long walk it is the wrong equipment.

Wet weather means washing. It is machine washable and it has survived it, but a nylon support that goes under a dog in mud season is going to need the utility sink more often than you expect. I wash it about every other week in spring. That is not a defect, it is just the reality of a farm in April.

For what it is worth, the whole thing weighs about seven ounces. That is nothing in a truck that already carries a ramp, a tow strap, and a set of jumper cables, so if you are on the fence about keeping it in the vehicle, keep it in the vehicle.

What It Is Not

It is not a substitute for the ramp. The ramp handles the truck and the sling handles the steps, and I bought them two months apart for two different problems. People ask which one to buy first, and the honest answer is whichever problem is in front of you. For Duchess the steps came first, so the sling came first.

It is also not a treatment and it is not a fix. Her hips are still dysplastic. She still gets up slow off the barn floor. She is still on Cosequin and salmon oil and still sees our vet twice a year. What the sling bought us was not improvement, it was a way to keep her moving on the days when moving was hard, which is the thing our vet keeps saying matters most for a dog with arthritis.

Who This Is For

This is for the owner of a dog in the 30 to 65 pound range that can still walk but has started to hesitate on steps, ice, slick floors, or the tailgate. It is for the person who is currently doing the lifting and starting to feel it in their own back. It is for the dog that will tolerate a support under the hindquarters, which most will after a few days of treats and patience. If that is your situation, the LOOBANI sling does the job, it is well made, and it is the one I would buy again at this size.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if your dog is over about 66 pounds, because the stated range tops out there and I would not push it past that. Skip it if your dog cannot bear weight on a hind leg, because a support sling is not a lift and you need a full body harness plus a vet's input on which one. Skip it if you want something that carries the dog rather than assists her. And skip it if you are not willing to spend a week teaching the dog to accept it, because a dog that fights the sling is a dog that fights the stairs, and you have gained a wrestling match on ice and nothing else.

The Questions I Should Have Asked First

Three questions, in order. What does my dog actually weigh today, not at the last vet visit. Can she bear weight on both hind legs, because if she cannot, this is the wrong category of equipment entirely. And is the problem the steps, or is it the truck, because those are two different purchases and I made them two months apart. If I had answered those three before January I would have bought the same sling and skipped a week of guessing.

One more thing and then I will get out of your way. Get the diagnosis first. I do not care what anyone on a product page tells you, a sling is not going to tell you whether your dog has arthritis or a torn ligament, and those two things get handled differently. Our vet found Duchess's hips on an x-ray, put her on a plan, and the sling is one small piece of that plan. That is the order things should happen in, and no piece of nylon changes it.