How to Mount a GoPro on a Dog the Best Way

This week we invested in a new piece of kit… a GoPro action camera. The idea is to use it to really enhance our growing YouTube channel and let us take some amazing point of view footage from our French Bulldog’s perspective.

In this guide and video, I am going to show you what we very quickly learned and exactly how to attach a GoPro to a dog. In the video you can also see some sample footage of our first test.

How to mount a GoPro to your dog

I checked out a few videos online to see how other people were doing it and found one constant theme – dog owners using the GoPro Chesty. We decided to try that first but to be honest, the results weren’t all that good.

The GoPro Chesty is designed for humans to use, and that presents a problem. Firstly, it’s not that great for smaller dogs, and secondly the mount plate is very flat.

That meant that when we attached the GoPro to our dog using the human chest harness it would not sit flush onto our Frenchie’s back. It looked really uncomfortable for him and didn’t stay on very well – it was sliding all over the place and gave us some terrible footage.

What instead I did was buy the proper GoPro Dog Harness kit (view on Amazon). It’s ergonomically designed to fit on a dog’s back and is designed just like a standard dog harness. It stays on well too.

Check out the video to see what I mean.

Mounting instructions

If you can’t watch the video on how to mount a GoPro to your dog, then here are some very simple instructions with a few photos to show you what I mean.

1. Pull the harness over your dog’s head: Just like a dog harness you can hook it over his head so that the chest plate is set under his neck.
2. Pull the two straps up either side behind the legs: the two straps will then go under his body and behind his front lets.
3. Hook the front legs straps in: the two front leg straps then connect to the top mount on hooking mechanisms.
4. Pull the long strap under the belly: pull the longer strap under the dog and connect this into a larger plastic hook.
5. Tighten the straps: now tighten the straps up, but not too tight. Make sure you can slide your finger easily under each strap.
6. Tidy the excess strapping up: any excess strap you can then fold them into the fabric loops on the straps.
7. Secure the GoPro: thread the cord through the small hook at the back and connect it to your GoPro camera before clipping it into place.

It’s early days so far, and we’ve got much better results by mounting the GoPro to our dog’s back. It is also possible to mount the GoPro to your dog’s chest plate, but we got terrible footage that way – mainly just shots of the ground!

What we will be doing next

In the coming weeks my son and I are going to be learning how best to use the GoPro with our dog, and publishing some point of view footage to our YouTube channel. You can subscribe today to see how we get on – and hopefully learn as we learn more about this ourselves too!