Thank you so much for sending out that email. I hope everyone who hears of this takes it seriously and that the breakaway collar will become the norm rather than the exception.

On another note, Tilda has been doing very well with the things we learned in Basic Manners, and the fear issues we talked about in Fraidy Dog are fading away. I think that within a few months we’ll be ready to move on to some more advanced training. Ahimsa has been a great help to us. You are doing a fabulous job! Thanks again.

I had to tell you what happened to our puppy shortly after she finished puppy class with Ahimsa.

Ava and Tanky were playing in the backyard, like normal, collars on. We’d just upgraded Ava’s collar, since she was growing bigger by the day. It was a normal flat nylon collar, with a metal belt buckle piece for the attachment. They were wrestling, like normal, when I heard an ungodly sound coming from the backyard, Tank was screaming and Ava was making wheezy sounds so I ran out, and they were stuck together.

Tank had grabbed Ava’s collar, and flipped her (she was relatively small to him), so her collar did a figure 8, one part of the eight stuck behind Tank’s molars, the other half tight around her neck. They were both so upset, I tried to undo Ava’s collar and couldn’t, those belt collars have to get a little tighter before they release, and there was no room to do that.

I ran in to grab the kitchen shears to try and cut Ava out of the collar, and when I got back out her eyes were all bulged out, and her tongue was purple. As I watched (and screamed maniacally) she collapsed to the ground. Magically, Tanky’s teeth were freed, and they both released. She seemed to wake up just as she hit the ground, and ran as fast as she could into the house, to hide under the coffee table. Tank was just fine, Ava was incredibly freaked out, but doesn’t seem to carry any emotional trauma to this day. Physically though, she hurt her trachea, it’s now a collapsed trachea, and she honks and wheezes a little when she runs. The vet thinks she’ll be fine as she gets older, just because she was a small puppy when this happened, she seems to be growing out of the honking.

We threw that collar away that day, and got her one with a snap release. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen, and I will never buy another buckle type collar for my dogs. I can’t imagine what could have happened if I hadn’t of been there.

For my dog, we drilled a second hole in her ID tags and sewed them onto the collar, so nothing dangles down.

I would like to tell you about something that happened with our dog that could have been disastorous had we not been sitting right there with her.

We have tight berber carpet in our family room. Somehow, the ring that holds Sydney’s tags on her collar got caught on one of the berber loops. It was the end of the ring where you split it open to slide the tags in. After it got caught, Sydney started pulling and unravelling the carpet. In just a couple of seconds the length that was unraveled was as tall as Sydney. Fortunately, we were sitting right next to her and were able to remove her collar immediately.

While her collar is a breakaway collar, I don’t think it would have helped in this situation. Sydney could have easily gotten tangled up in the loop itself and strangled.

If I hadn’t seen this happen myself I never would have imagined the carpet could present a danger. There were no loose loops. There was no reason for the ring to get caught, but it did. I’m still thankful we were right there.