Neoprene Vest and Camera Harness

I've been trying to come up with a good way to mount my GoPro onto my dogs for ages. I've found an okay way to attach the GoPro to Koira's collar so it dangles under her neck, simply by using a hair tie to attach it. It dangles too low for Pallo to be comfortable wearing it like that. Not ideal, but it works well enough for Koira to take still photos. What it doesn't work for is video. The dangling-from-a-hair-tie method is way too unstable to make anything close to a watchable video.

Just looking cute

I recently decided to make Koira a neoprene vest. She gets chilled when swimming, even on hot days, simply because she refuses to come out of the water. Eventually, she gets so cold that her entire body is violently shaking. I figured a doggie wet suit would be just the thing.

Then I thought, hey, a neoprene vest would make a pretty stable mount for the GoPro too...

Nice, snug fitting vest that doesn't hinder movement but provides stabilization to the camera

There isn't a way to attach the GoPro to the front of this vest, but it works great when mounted on the back. I think it is about as stable as a dog mounted camera can be, really. The vest fits very snugly, without hindering movement. Since the vest is so snug, the GoPro has very little camera shake. Most of the shake comes directly from the dog's movement.

Koira is happy to sit, swim, or do pretty much anything while wearing it

I think I need to reinforce the current velcro closures with some small snaps, since the velcro can come loose if Koira moves suddenly, like jumping off the dock into the water. Overall, it worked really well on our trip to the river, though. The velcro even held well enough as long as I made sure to really rub it together well, and Koira never actually lost the vest even when some of the velcro came loose.

The front velcro closure. I think I will add a snap to it.

So, what do you think? Does your dog need their own wet suit? Or how about just the awesome camera holding ability of it? This first vest taught me a lot about how best to make these, but even so, I am totally thrilled with how this first one turned out. The only down side so far is that it is, of course, too hot for Koira to wear this during the summer other than when playing in the water. So I'll have to wait on getting some first hand flyball footage until the weather cools down.

In the mean time, how about a dog's-eye-view of some dock diving at the river?