One of the risks of dogs wrestling while wearing collars, is that one dog's jaw can get twisted in another dog's collar. It has happened a few times here at daycare and while we've managed to separate the dogs quickly, it is still a scary thing. So we researched our options...
Some daycares don't allow any of the dogs to wear collars. While this sounded like a great solution initially, we quickly realized that naked dogs create other issues.
1) If we need to walk a dog from point A to point B (i.e. they are holding their feet up outside they are so cold, but don't actually want to come it), we usually grab them by their collar and lead them in.
2) If we need to hold a dog back from the gate, while letting another dog out, we usually hold on to the collar of the dog who isn't leaving yet.
3) While we can recognize all the dogs that come here with or without their collars, when a black lab goes streaking by in hot pursuit of another dog, we may not be able to figure out who it is fast enough to actually call them away. I use collars a lot to identify similar looking dogs when I need to figure things out quickly.
We could overcome all of these issues if we had to, but we thought there was a better way.
We ordered a whole bunch of play safe collars. These collars have velcro closures on two sides so in an emergency, they are really easy to open, yet they don't break open (like breakaway collars) when you need to hold on to the collar. They come in 3 different colours so this will help us identify the black labs quickly (or at least narrow down the options!) and they are easily adjustable so we can get them on and off dogs quickly and efficiently when they arrive and leave.
And the final benefit is that your dogs will no longer be going home with slobbery, chewed up collars!
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