I’m not one of those dog owners who has her dogs wrapped in cotton wool, constantly looking to protect them from any and all possible hazards. I walk my dogs off-leash in rattlesnake habitats. I sometimes feed them raw eggs. I allow them to swim without wearing life jackets, and so on.
Some of my willingness to expose them to potential health risks might be due to my generation. As the youngest of four kids raised in the 1960s, I grew up unseatbelted – in fact, most of the time I sat on the hump between the two front seats! My generation was subjected to many more potentially life-endng risks than are even legal today.
But there are a couple specific risks I absolutely will not take with my dogs, and they have to do with their collars.
STANDARD TANG BUCKLE
The first danger I won’t expose my dogs to is a collar with a regular metal buckle – you know! The kind that has a frame and a tang or prong that fits through a hole on the collar and is secured by the back of the buckle frame. Why have I taken a stand against such a ubiquitous piece of dog equipment?
The answer is: Because in a terrible emergency, when a dog’s collar is caught on something and he’s choking to death, the only way to unbuckle that buckle – to get that metal prong or tang out of its hole – is to pull it a little bit tighter. And you will have to believe me when I say I know, from personal experience, that when a dog starts choking to death, he won’t be holding cooperatively still in perfect understanding that you need to make his discomfort worse for a moment in order to save his life.
The dog who nearly choked to death in my hands was not my dog – he belonged to a neighbor. But I ran to help when I heard the sound of dogs and women screaming, and was confronted with a writhing tangle of gasping, screaming, urinating, panicking canines. Two dogs had been playing when one grabbed the other by his collar and then rolled over; the collar twisted, pressing his tongue into his own lower teeth – and tightening to the point of choking his playmate.
I and the dogs’ owners, both young women, tried frantically to figure out how to untwist the dogs, but they were big, strong dogs in a full panic, and we couldn’t do it. I dug my hands into the dogs’ fur, looking for buckles to unbuckle. One dog was wearing a quick-release collar – but it wasn’t the collar that was tight. I finally found the buckle for that collar, and it was partially in the mouth of the dog who was twisted, impossibly tight – too tight to be able to tighten it more in order to get the tang of the buckle undone.
As I was working to find the buckles, one of the other women ran into the house and got scissors. She managed to hack through the thick nylon collar, releasing the dogs just a moment after the choking one lost consciousness and released his bowels. About two seconds after the collar was cut, he took a gasping, ragged breath, and then another, and slowly came to as we sobbed and patted him and the other dog and hugged each other.
PLAY NAKED
There is a second lesson to be learned from my nightmare story: When dog friends are playing bitey-face games, they shouldn’t be wearing collars at all. Playful dogs who are left home alone together shouldn’t be wearing collars, either.
TAG, YOU’RE IT
Here’s the other thing I don’t like to see hanging from dogs’ necks: Metal or other rigid ID tags – because it’s easy for tags to get caught on things, pinning a dog in a scary position and causing her to panic.
The last time I used tags was on a foster dog I had crated in my kitchen. I heard a ruckus and found her thrashing; her tags had somehow slipped through the ventilating slits on the side of the crate (perhaps when she was turning around?) and got stuck.
More commonly, dogs get stuck when they lay on a floor near a floor-mounted vent, either warming or cooling themselves, as appropriate for the season. Their tags slip through the vent as they lay on the floor, and when they try to get up, the tags turn and get stuck. Hysteria generally ensues. Best case, someone is home and rescues them. Worst case? Don’t ask. Awful.
SOLUTIONS
Personally, I am comfortable having my dogs collar-free most of the time. If they escaped my home, say, in an earthquake or something, I know that they would readily go to my neighbors or even strangers for rescue. They are microchipped and the chips are registered to me with current contact information.
But if keeping ID on your dog is more critical to you, perhaps because your dog might be a major flight risk if she got loose, there are a few safer solutions.
As an alternative to using ID tags, I buy collars that have side-release plastic buckles (easy to unsnap in an emergency) and have my phone number stitched into the fabric. However, even these are taken off when I am not home or when I am fostering a dog who might play with my younger dog (my older dog doesn’t play).
Silicone tags, such as the ones from Silidog.com, are a safe alternative. They are strong but flexible; even a spindly, tiny dog would be able to pull free if his silicone tag got caught.
I am aware of one collar that closes with a patented break-away buckle, which can tear apart if a dog gets caught by the collar. It’s called the KeepSafe Break-Away Safety collar, and is available from breakawaycollar.com.
Please consider employing at least one of these alternatives if you currently use a standard buckle collar and/or metal tags on your dog.
Nancy Kerns is WDJ’s editor.
Sorry but I feel that the risk of a dog getting lost and never returning far exceeds that of getting a collar caught. My dog will never leave the house without a collar and my name and phone number. I do at times take it off in the house but you run the risk of the dog going out the door when someone opens it. Do not trust a microchip for anything but a last resort. Microchips can move in the body where they can not be read. Ask your Vet to scan for the chip at every visit. As others have said not all chips and scanners are compatible. If there is no collar with your ID and the chip can not be scanned your dog is never coming home.
Microchipping does not always work either. If the place that picks up your dog has a different reader (and yes there are different microchips and different readers), then they cannot read your microchip (so how would they find you). Plus I hear it all the time that owners do not keep info up to date with microchips. And lastly I have read more than one article and experienced it myself, tumors at the microchip site. Will not do that to any future dogs.
Our county dog tags are aluminum and must be on the collar. Our dogs do not wear their collars. They have been microchipped.
We lost a beautiful Weimeraner puppy to a choke chain collar. This was the 60s and there weren’t a lot of options available. She was a big puppy and that is what fit. My parents had always used them. But Penny loved to jump at the birds. There was a nail head sticking out of the roof of her dog house just a quarter of an inch. I don’t need to go into details. We’ve never put chain collars on our dogs since that time. When I got my own dogs I used the web safety break away collars with the plastic buckles.
It’s all well and good to say your dog doesn’t need a collar at home, but my parent’s dog, Candy, used to take herself off for an occasional walk in her senior years. She knew the route as she walked it every evening of her adult life. Just, sometimes, she felt like a walk in the middle of the day. Most in the neighborhood knew her but an out of town houseguest on a side street found her and called animal control. Cost my Mom a mint to get her out of doggie jail, plus she was vaccinated again because they didn’t check for her chip until after. She was about 10, already gray in the muzzle and had one eye, the other having been removed for a tumor. My Mom still has her mug shot on the refrigerator. It reminded me of the lost dog joke about the old dog, deaf, one eye, three legs, answers to the name of “Lucky.”
While I use the plastic break away buckles for the collars I do NOT use them for her car seat harness. Those are metal tabs that go through a metal piece with a slot. Very secure. I do not want plastic buckles breaking away in a car accident. The metal toggles are a pain but Diana pawPrints is 100 lbs and I want her secure so she doesn’t go flying in a sudden stop.
I’d like to relate why I NOW keep dangling tags on my dog. Previously I kept a flat collar tag on the dog while @home and substituted the dangling tags when we went camping or non-familar places. My last dog was taken on a walk by a stupid houseguest while I napped recovering from medical procedure (clearly stupid about dogs, did not ask if he could and went out into the woods behind our house without a leash). Dog had walked on our road and our well worn trails 100s of times, but had no idea where she was in random woods and didn’t come back to his calls (duh! why would she?) She was lost forever. 😢 Her collar had a flat tag with our information on it, but no one seeing her would have known that without being in touching range. From a distance she would have looked like a dog w/no id. My new dog wears dangly tags. Even @home yo don’t know when they are going to be out and in unfamaliar circumstances.
And if that flat tag (or dangly one for that matter) is attached to a breakaway collar and that collar gets caught on something and breaks away, then your dog has no ID at all except for that chip.
I highly recommend chipping dogs. At least then either a vet or the local shelter has a chance of reading it and contacting you.
I also have my dog’s photo and info on an app called Finding Rover. If she should get out and lose her collar, I would alert on the app in the hopes that someone would check it if they found her.
THANK you! I’m very paranoid about things like this. My dad was the most catastrophic thinker on earth and I learned it well. 🙄 So I usually think of everything but I missed this one. Off to Amazon for new collars!
My dogs were playing & the small chi started yelping but they seemed stuck together. I was close by and shocked to find the end of the s hook holding license of larger dog had somehow gotten caught in eyelid of chi!! A bizarre accident requiring emergency visit. Fortunately no serious damage. No tags now. Embroidered collars when we r home!! We never leave them together when no one home but we were right there, thank goodness.
I Agree:
-You should never crate a dog with a collar because of risk of getting caught and the possibility of the dog choking.
-silicone slider tags or collars that can be embroidered are better alternatives to hanging metal tags.
-quick release collars are better than buckle collars that need to be tightened to release.
I Disagree:
-with the idea of taking off collars as a general practice. Collar ID is important in getting a dog returned home quickly. Most dogs that get out do not walk to the neighbors and in a natural disaster dogs can do unexpected things that could lead them far from home. I believe dogs should always wear collars – the pros outweigh the cons IMHO.
**Many say “oh but my dog is microchipped”. That may be true but if a citizen picks up your dog it is much easier to get them home quickly and safely if they have a collar with ID, phone number and address. It’s a lot less likely someone will find your dog and then take the time to take them to be scanned for a microchip AND many times microchips do not scan. It happens all the time.
I totally get the concern about taking collars off. I would feel absolutely fine with leaving the collars on my two dogs, as they don’t play with each other. But when I have a guest or foster dog here, one who WILL play with my younger dog, then the collars MUST be off, as my younger dog loves to play bitey-face games and has been known to grab hold of any gear another dog might be wearing and try to drag them around. My concern is mostly for dogs who are known to engage in games like this when unsupervised.
Another ID alternative is available from an online company called Leash Boss. It is a metal plate with name & contact info, etc., but the plate is affixed onto the dog’s collar or harness. No dangly tags! Another plus is that it is quiet ( no jingly tags either). We’ve used this with our labradoodle for 2 1/2 years now, without loss or damage to the tag — and on the one occasion when she did get lost (a long story that ended well), it did its job.
I’ve seen those and other alternatives. Unfortunately our local humane society, which had taken over animal control, requires a QR code. It’s some service they contract with. So no number to engrave on a tag. It’s a proprietary QR code on the tag that is then registered to your dog. If it’s not in their system, you can’t use it. so I’m stuck with tags.
Thank you for the mention of those Leash Boss tags. They look great!
I hate those side release plastic buckles that modern dog collars and harnesses have. I have not found even one of them I can open easily whether I have time to open it or am in a hurry! I can open a buckle much faster, but, I too let my dogs be collarless when at home. Thanks for mentioning the PetSafe callors, I shall check them.
PetSafe is an invisible fence type containment collar
True. KeepSafe is the collar.