Breakaway collars?? Which one?

[Mooch]

Hiya all

after reading some of the threads on here i'm considering buying a couple of breakaway collars.
How many of you actually use them?

I have never had a problem with "normal" collars but my current 2 dogs do like to wrestle and play a lot.
At the moment they both wear buckle on biothane collars because they go swimming almost every day. I do also keep the collars on all the time, they hold all their ID tags etc incase they manage to get out of the yard somehow.
Both of them are long coats so the collar gets covered by their fur which makes it tricky to grab them by it at the best of times.

My main concern with the break away collars is that they will loose it if they do get out and then don't have any visible ID on them
and that the collar will give way if I need to "grab" them for whatever reason and can't find the breakaway buckle to hold onto.

I'm really confused, of course I want them to be safe but until recently i'd never even heard of breakaway collars for dogs

Any info or advise would be really appreciated

[hunterisgreat]

We don't wear collars. Ear tattoos & chipped. Then again, they'd crap their pants if I made it two rooms away, much less out of earshot

A breakaway collars seems self defeating

[Mooch]

Yeah mine are both chipped but they are home alone when Im at work.

A breakaway collars seems self defeating

yeah that's sort of what I thought - likely they won't be wearing it anymore if they need it.

[Mooch]

WOW ok looks like breakaway collars are not popular
106 views on the thread and only one response!

[jocoyn]

I had a breakaway collar a few years ago and it kept falling off in normal use so I figured it was worthless as an ID collar. I do use center ring hunting collars fit loosely with one tag. The center ring gives a little more flex so the collar is designed to come off if the dog gets hung up. I use the coated nylon ones but her is example.

http://www.gundogsupply.com/collar-style-comp.html

[Sunflowers]

Originally Posted by Mooch

WOW ok looks like breakaway collars are not popular
106 views on the thread and only one response!

We had one, too, and it was a pain to use. We, too, had an incident when it just came apart when it wasn't supposed to.

Plus, I think only one company makes them and they are too narrow.

I read one thread where a poster had a dog suffocate and she couldn't do a thing. Two dogs had gotten tangled and the buckle collar could not be removed. That is why I always have the quick release buckles, and at night he doesn't wear one.

[Liesje]

Originally Posted by jocoyn

I had a breakaway collar a few years ago and it kept falling off in normal use so I figured it was worthless as an ID collar. I do use center ring hunting collars fit loosely with one tag. The center ring gives a little more flex so the collar is designed to come off if the dog gets hung up. I use the coated nylon ones but her is example.

Collar Style Comparison.

I use the center ring collar too, for my dog that always wears a collar. My GSDs are "naked" but my escape artist mutt always wears a biothane collar with the center ring and two brass ID plates riveted on (no tags). I've only ever used breakaway collars for cats.

[Mooch]

Thank you ladies

I'll be ordering some centre ring collars, they seem like a good compromise.
Hmm I wonder if a centre ring with a quick release buckle would work - I may have to experiment with making a couple if they are not available.

[jocoyn]

They usually come with very easy to use buckles......with the swimming I would go for the coated nylon! If the dogs were playing unsupervised I would remove the collar even with the center ring because it could still cause a "freakout" if one got caught in the other's collar.

[Chicagocanine]

When I had a foster who was crated during the day I used a Premier breakaway collar on him, they are made so you can attach a leash, when you do they won't break away. So when he was supervised somewhere that I wanted to be able to catch hold of him, I would attach a training tab to the collar, so that I could then grab it without it breaking away, and removed it whn in the crate or when they were playing. If his collar had gotten caught somewhere while the training tab was on it would be easy to unhook the tab so that the collar would become breakaway again.
I have also used Ruffwear's older style of Knot-a-collars which are not breakaway but will loosen if they get caught on something, but the ones they currently sell I am not sure if they have the same feature, although you can sometimes find the older style cheap on clearance websites.
I also kinda like Tazlab's safety collar but I haven't actually used it myself.

I have two of these tag collars for my cats, they are actually made for dogs, however they cannot really be used to grab the collar, only for holding tags:
LongDog Leather Works - Martingale Dog Collars

Also want to add I use a Tagbag(from same site as the tag collars) to hold my dog's tags flush on the collar, or else a Boomerang tags collartag, so that there is nothing hanging down from their collars. This makes it less likely that the collar will catch on anything. I also use a heavy leather collar, so there is really no way for another dog to easily get caught on it or to grab and twist it.