OMG Lolly's collar got stuck!

[Sudilar]

I am so glad that Lolly and all the rest of the dogs who have had a close call with their collars are ok!!!! How scary is right! My two never have a collar on in the house.

[dappledoxie]

I'm so glad Lolly is ok!

[Cinder & Smoke]

There ARE dangers with dogs and cats wearing collars -
They CAN get hung up ...

But there are MANY dangers that come along with the
Kritters NOT wearing collars ...

Consider an EMERGENCY while you're at home with Fido or Fluffy
while they're *neked* >>
A fire;
A medical emergency;
A sudden storm...

All are situations where you may have only seconds to capture and
lead (or drag) your pet to safety...
and the pet may be terrified and NOT cooperative.

Any of these emergencies may incapacitate YOU -
resulting in "strangers" (Fire, EMS, Police) opening doors to
come into your home...
Fido or Fluffy may not "bolt" when YOU open the door -
but I've seen MANY a pooch take one look at ME in full FireFighter gear -
and it's I'm OUTTA here!

Not to mention the problems Emergency Personnel face with dogs
while trying to attend to their owners...
A collar on an un-friendly dog at least gives us a "chance" for control.

I've "told" my Three - if there's ever a fire or
storm damage to the BigHouse -
THEY are "goin OUT" the nearest door or window!
Since I'm not sure they "listened" to the part about
"meet at the big tree", I'll have to rely on their ALWAYS Worn collars & tags
to help get us all back together.

Give it some serious thought!

/s/ Phred

[lizbud]

Wow, I'm so glad you were there when this happened to
Lolly. She must have been scared too.

One day after coming in from a walk with Buddy I didn't take
off his choke chain right away and he somehow got the chain
hooked on a round handle on a cabinet in the bathroom. He
pulled like crazy to get lose I was afraid he would choke himself.

Adrenaline kicked in & I tryed to calm Buddy & shove him closer
to the door & managed to slip the collar lose from the handle.

Believe me, I never forgot to change collars again.

[chocolatepuppy]

Phred Never thot much about emergencies and collars but I always leave my furkids collars on until now with Sassy. I'll have to check into a different type of cat collar but it has to be somekind of safety one.
Nuther story- last fall my brothers house caught on fire (furnace) and thank God he and his wife and three teenagers made it out! It happened in the middle of the night. Their GSD made it out because he wanted to follow them. Their cat hid under the computer desk (fireman found her)and of course she didn't make it.
I always said I'd be throwing mine out windows if I had to!Then I guess it'd be a good thing to have on a collar.

[aly]

Heh Phred, thanks for the advice but my dogs are as far from aggressive as you could get. I am sorry, but I really don't want my dogs choking to death while I'm not home. Strangers have come in before when I'm not home (workmen, friends, etc) and my dogs do not bolt the door. I know it'd not be so good in a fire, but there is way more of a chance of their collars getting stuck again than there is of a fire IMO. So I'm not rethinking this decision

[lv4dogs]

Glad everything turned out well. It sure is scary.

I too always take their collars off when I can not supervise them. A few years ago, Nanook my shep mix was just laying on the floor, I kept hearing his tags gingle, but they sounded different than usual. After a couple minutes I went into the room he was in to see what he was doing and his tags were stuck in the heat run cover. Good thing I was home & I was also lucky that it was summer, if he was home alone during winter when the heat kicked on that could of caused some helath problems.

[ParNone]

Wow glad everything turned out okay with Lolly. I know how scary that can be. I had something similar happen, when Murph was a puppy. He got his tags caught and totally panicked. I think he could have easily choked to death, if I hadn't been there. So after that incident, no more collars on mine, if I'm not there with them. Tattooing or microchipping seems a lil' safer way to go.

As to emergencies, I think you have to look at your situation and dogs and judge which route would be the least risk to them. I keep my 3 confined in my bedroom, which is at the back of the house and the bedroom door leads out into my fenced back yard. They're not normally bolters, but if they did in the scariness of the situation, hopefully the firemen would open the back door, so they could bolt into the back yard.

If I awoke to fire, I would also be tossing them out the back door into the yard. But your comments do bring up a thought Phred, that I should probably put a set of collars and leashes on a hook by the back door, so I can grab those on the way out. When we go walking, I usually have to hunt for where I laid them down last. So they're not going to be easily accessable in an emergency.

Par...

[MariaM]

I know somebody who put a flea collar on their cat and it got stuck in his mouth, really hurt him, he were bleeing.