Loose Collar

Please be sure you keep the collar around you dogs neck snug enough so that you can slip 2 fingers in between the collar and the neck. We had a freak accident last summer with our two Labs when the collar around the neck of my 6 month old pup became loose and during rough housing with the older lab one of them flipped and the collar became a tourniquet around his neck. Luckily, my husband and I were home but it took awhile to get the collar off of him because it was imbedded in his neck. We were losing him and his eyes were rolling back. My other Labs jaw had become entangled in the collar and we had, what could have been a disaster on our hands. Both dogs had panicked but we were able to get the situation under control. I reacted great during the time, but broke into tears and started to shake when it was over. I take their collars off every night before I crate them and check them each morning before I put them back on.
Hope this helps someone,
Labmomma X 2

Dogs who are playing together should not wear collars, especially if no one is watching them.

Having a snug collar won't help if one dog gets his lower jaw stuck under the collar of the other, something that does happen and can end very badly.

I had almost the same frightening experience as you with two of my previous dogs. The only time my dogs wear a collar now is when they are going for a walk. They never ever have them on when they are outside playing.

I keep a well fitted collar on my dogs 24/7, always have and always will, a loose fitting collar will increase the chance of a dog getting snagged dramatically and not just by another dog some have got caught up on cabinet handles, plantstands etc and then panicked

After first hearing about a dog strangulation during play, one fact was never brought u in the article was whether the collar was fitted properly, I know a lot of people stopped using collars due to that news story article it circulated the internet like wildfire and I think many dog owners recieved emails regarding
I grew up in a family that bred dogs for hunting and and had several dogs of my own, a lot of people I knew also had dogs but this had been the first time I had heard of something like this happening.

I decided to continue using collars by weighing the risks instead, I know from personal experience the odds are far, far greater that your dog will get loose or escape from you than get strangled by its collar, it could be a gate to the yard is accidently left open or a windstorm damages it, you may have a creative escape artist who thinks the grass on the side of the fence is greener, as you are bringing in groceries or while company or service people are entering or leaving your dog could slip out, or the dog sees critter outside the window and leaps throu the screen to get at it, your taking the dog for a walk and the leash slips from your hand , your at the dog park and someone lets your dog through the gates, you burn your toast and the smoke detector goes off, you open the screen door a bit not realizing you have a terrified dog behind you who bolts thru the door opening escaping in fear of the evil smoke detector, your dog bolts out of the vehicle before you have a chance to grab the leash. These are all incidences that have happened firsthand to me all were recovered safely by me thank goodness, most were within minutes, some I had to going searching for and took quite a while, though one capture had to be done on a busy roadway with some very mighty close calls.

If your dog gets excited, scared or decides to play games with you once loose, you are going to have a hard time retrieving it, amazing so if they get scared, matters become worse it you have no collar to grab the dog by, the collar often may contain several tags, which means several sources to easily get in touch with if someone else finds the dog to track you down, which means in my case provides 2 other sources that my dog can go to or pick up my dogs if I can't be reached, microchipping is good but sometimes they fail or work their out of the skin or travel to other parts of the body, not every pound /shelter vet has a scanner or can only read one type, which can mean no way to identify the dog. 2 of my dogs also have identifying tattoes but they only helpful if the finder knows where and how to look up the owner.

My dog has a rolled leather collar. I think it probably one of the best kinds since it is smooth with no edges to catch (excepting the buckle perhaps) and it will not fray and snag. And it will not stretch to let a jaw or whatnot under it.

My folks (farm)dog once disapeared for 3 days. She reapeared without her collar. Whatever happed to her, it's a good thing she managed to wriggle free of her collar. They did not buy a new one.

If my dog did not have his leather collar and was ever allowed to roam out of my sight, I would get a breakaway type. Much safer than a regular nylon buckle collar.

I have Invisible Fence as a containment system and they must wear their collars as much as possible. The collars come off at night when I crate them but I can't take them off as a regular basis. My neighborhood is loaded with dogs and some of them are what I consider dangerous so I want my dogs on my 10 acres. I check their collars every day to make sure they are snug and don't know any other way to handle the situation.

Well, now I understand why your dogs have to wear their collars outside.

But do you not have to worry about the dangerous dogs coming on to your property?

Sam no longer wears his collar unless we go outside. The only thing that worries me, is if he escapes out the front door without his collar on (he's a runner). He has a microchip, but is that enough? A collarless dog running around outside IMO is a homeless, unwanted dog and next to impossible to catch.

And on the flip side of loose collars are the idiots who forget the puppy will GROW!! I have had to loosen 2 collars of friends dogs..one because the dog quit eating...duh, and the other was just too tight!! The vet told me of a HORROR story on a dog and his second owner. The dog had pain in the neck throat area...2nd owners collar was ok...first owner never removed puppy choke chain and the skin grew around it long before 2nd owner! Surgery to remove choke chain!!.....:mad:

My two dogs both wear collars all the time. The older one actually gets distressed when I take her collar off to wash it. She won't settle down and relax until it's back on. Go figure. The younger one actually has a fairly loose collar, and maybe now is a good time to look for a different one for her now after reading this. But she will still wear a collar. The only time I've had my dogs collar twist was when I was holding it once and she twisted and pinched my fingers in it. It was darn hard to flip her back and release my hand:eek:

On a similar line though, many years back I had two cats and at one point I had the old plastic flea collars on them. One of the cats managed to pull that up into his mouth and get his teeth punctured through the flea collar and stuck in it. He was running around with it in his mouth like a horse bit and was very unhappy about it. Fortunately we were home and got it off him and that was the end of flea collars for them. They were indoor cats and had their tattoos so I never put any other collars on them.

I am very pro collar that is loose and not too tight. The stats do show your cat or dog or any pet is more likely to be lost than injured by a prob with a collar. YY once - curious soul that she is - leaped up unto the top of a carport and promptly fell (so much for surefooted cats but she was a kitten at the time) but fortunately, her collar snagged on the tree and I was right behind her and thx to her collar, it was much less of bad situation than it might have been. (She might have falled much further!)

I think the ID on the collar outweighs the potential problems especially since most pets are supervised anyway.

I had an incident not too long ago when I bought the cats a new collar from the grocery store. Twister was used to it, Thunder liked to scratch it alot. Then the next day I noticed Thunder shaking off her hind legs alot, so I was checking her, and the collar was a little fuzzy but still loose. The day after that as I was having breakfast, Thunder just jumped on my lap and collapsed. I looked immediately at her collar and noticed that as she scratched it she was pulling the threads of the collar, causing the collar to SHRINK. I had to clip the collar off because I couldn't get my fingers into it and around it (we're talking over the course of 1.5 days). The collar had shrunk, while on her neck, to half it's size. She shook of her neck and her legs as soon as she had it off and was fine since, only I noticed that she had scabs around her neck where the collar was and she had lost alot of her hair in that area. She's fluffy so she looked weird because she look "assembled" - like her head was recently attached to her body and it's not all one piece. It's starting to grow back now. Man we learned our lesson in a SCARE.

I got them both off those collars (I can't even remember the brand) and they now have these "Safety 1st" collars that snap off and that they can't really get their nails into. Thunder has taken it off occasionally, my husband prefers to find the collar on the floor and place it back on her than to find her strangled. She doesn't mess with it now, and we like to hear them jingle around the house (bring a christmassy type feeling all year round!).

All this to say, beware not only of how the collar fits but of what material it is!