My New Muzzle has Arrived! Is it Supposed to Fit Like That?
It can be tricky to determine if your muzzle is the right fit and correctly adjusted, especially if you’re new to muzzles. While we are always here to assist you and give our professional opinion on the fit of your muzzle, we’ve found that there are several aspects to a correctly fit muzzle that are generally universal across all face shapes and types, so we’ve gathered them here for you to help you ensure you’re on the right track!
Here is a quick reference graphic of how an ideal muzzle should fit, as pictured on our Head Snoof, Daisy.
As you can see, there should be about .25” (or 1/2 cm) between the tip of the nose and the front inside of the muzzle, and the same amount of space between the start of the muzzle’s nose length and the base of your dog’s eyes, as the muzzle rests naturally. However, keep in mind that it's completely normal for it to move around and touch your dog’s nose/lips as they move, and to occasionally slide a bit down the bridge of their nose. To prevent it from tightly pushing up against the snout or loosely sliding too far down the nose, you can adjust the neck strap, behind the head.
You should be able to fit a couple fingers under the neck strap comfortably, as you would a collar. It should not be so tight that the strap digs into your dog’s neck/ears, and the tip of the nose should not be firmly pressed into the front inside of the muzzle basket.
Beneath your dog’s mouth, there should be plenty of space for them to comfortably fully pant. However, this does mean that when your dog rests their head, the top of the muzzle will lift up above their snout and in front of their face, making them look quite silly!
Pictured here is one of our Snoofs, Norah, and you can see that she has plenty of space for her full pant, the muzzle’s noseband sits nicely flat on the bridge of her nose, she can easily take treats, and when she rests her chin on her mom’s knee, the muzzle rises up above her head, but it doesn’t cause her any distress. *Note that the lighter colored muzzle is the same exact muzzle as the darker colored one, we just redid the powder coating, swapped for a wider noseband, and added a muzzle message due to personal preference.
It is normal for the muzzle to touch the tip of your dog’s nose when they sniff the ground or look upwards, but it should not push over the eyes, and there shouldn’t be more than about a half inch between the tip of the nose and the front inside of the muzzle.
Our nosebands are easily adjusted in a variety of ways. Here are some examples of custom muzzles with adjusted nosebands. While we are generally quite good at building custom muzzles with the perfect nose length, they do occasionally need adjustment. Feel free to Contact Us if you have a custom muzzle and think it needs adjustment.
Standard Muzzles are made with one type of noseband, which is designed to be super adjustable in length. Here is a chart showing the ways our Standard Muzzle nosebands can be adjusted in order to best fit your pup’s nose length.
We send Standards with noseband version “A” as the default, since it is generally better for the noseband to be a little too short on a dog than too long, pushing into their eyes. The idea is that the basket should push into their nose/lips before pushing into their eyes. You can easily use a flathead screwdriver to remove, adjust, and reattach the noseband to get the best fit. Keep in mind that you may need to adjust the neck strap as well, and please refer to our Returns and Exchanges Policy if you think you have the wrong size.
It is normal for wire muzzles to be a bit wide in the snout, but comfortably hugging the cheeks.
If your dog’s cheeks are squished tightly between the cheek bars, you may need to widen them. We recommend using a table vice to widen your muzzle, since it enables you to make precise adjustments, and it works very well even if you’re not very strong. You can reference our video on how we do this here. However, we realize many people don’t have a vice handy, in which case it is trickier to widen a muzzle.