How Safety or Breakaway Collars Could Save Your Pet’s Life

Pets can be in danger of injury while wearing conventional collars

Most pet owners are completely unaware of the risks and possibility of collar strangulation accidents until it is too late.  Safety, or breakaway collars are designed to prevent pets from getting entangled by their collars.  Safety collars can be purchased in most pet supply stores or online at Amazon or Chewy.com

Dogs

Keep Safe Breakaway Collar for Dogs

For dog owners, off-leash play can be dangerous to your pet if the collar gets stuck on something and chokes the dog.  A safety, or breakaway, collar has a special buckle that releases and the collar falls off if gets caught on a fence, deck, crate, kennel, bush or tree.  At the dog park or at doggie daycare, this could easily happen.  Dog often play with their mouths, and when wrestling they sometimes grab the neck area of their playmate.  If teeth get stuck in the collar or the collar gets stuck under the jaw, the dog wearing the collar may panic and cause the collar to tighten and choke. If you cannot let your dog “play naked” without her collar or harness and need to have ID tags for legal or safety reasons, please consider a safety collar.  This will provide a safe off-leash environment that minimizes the risk of injury, or worse, due to a collar mishap.  Some breakaway collars for dogs have a feature that has two D rings that are used when walking the dog with a lead, but has the breakaway clasp for off-leash play.  This is the Keep Safe Collar, and it can be purchased online at Petsmart.com, Chewy.com, and Amazon.com. Also check your nearby pet supply stores for different brands of safety collars and look at the designs to choose the right collar for your dog’s safety.

Cats

It is recommended that you keep a collar and ID tag on your cat at all times.  Even if your cat lives entirely indoors, you can’t guarantee that there will never be an escape. Because cats are so active and climb trees, scale fences, climb on furniture, and crawl into small, tight places, a breakaway or safety collar will release your cat if he gets caught on an object.   The weight of his body releases the catch and lets him escape.  A regular collar in these situations could strangle your cat.  Other types of safety collars for cats feature a short length of elastic fabric woven into the collar that expands when you tug it.  The pressure applied to the collar by tugging creates a space where the cat can slip out of the collar.  Both of these types of collars allow your cat to slip free if the collar gets snagged on window blinds, furniture or fencing.

Cat wearing breakaway collar

Why not just leave the collar off?   The dangers of a cat escaping and not being returned to their owner are much greater than the risk of a cat getting a collar caught.  If your cat is wearing a safety collar, there will be no risk of him getting caught on something, wherever he is.

ID Tags Dangers

Because hanging tags are more likely to be caught on objects, check into slide-on collar tags.  They are safer, more durable, and there’s no noisy jingling!  Slide-on ID tags are available on Amazon.com. and Doctors Foster and Smith.  Also check the major pet supply stores for these slider tags.

Slide on ID tags won’t snag on objects and are durable (and quiet!)

Engrave important info on slide on tags for your pet’s safety