Dog Collar Warning from Wal-Mart
This morning I am lying in bed. My husband was already up but I was trying to sleep in (it was about 7:00 a.m...not really sleeping in by much, lol). He'd let our three dogs out into the fenced yard when he got out of bed. So I am laying there hoping to fall back to sleep when I hear the dogs crying and going at it. I thought our oldest (arthritic grouchy husky) was going after our middle dog (Roxi). I go running to the back door and see Roxi and our littlest one (Trixie) going at it (or so I think). They're best buddies! Roxi looks like she has Trixie's throat in her mouth and they're crying/growling and flipping all over the place. I go running out and yell at Roxi to let her go.
Then as I look closer, it looks like Roxi's mouth is actually STUCK on Trixie's neck. So, the kids and hubby are out on the deck yelling at Roxi to let Trixie go (they think they're fighting too), I yell up to him on the deck that I think Roxi's tooth is stuck in the collar. He comes running down and is struggling to get the collar off Trixie before it kills her. It's still a bit dark and it's hard to see. By that time, I am talking quietly to Roxi to quiet her down so she stops struggling and hubby is frantically searching for the clasp on Trixie's collar. By that point, Roxi trusts us to fix it (or is just plain petrified as she knows something is wrong with her little dog friend) so Roxi's curled up as still as can be but Trixie has stopped struggling and is no longer crying. She's passed out and her collar is still twisted and stuck in our other dog's tooth. All her oxygen is cut off and she's dying. It was horrible. DH can't get to the clasp the way the dogs are twisted but gets Roxi's tooth out of the collar and he lays Trixie back on the ground, where she lies without movement. Trixie is totally still on the ground. I'm thinking to myself, OMG she's gone and all of our kids are here watching. DH says she's going into shock so I take off for a blanket while DH is trying to get her to move, telling her to breathe, rubbing her chest, moving her a bit trying to revive her. Then I hear him yell, "She's up. Her tail is wagging."
Talk about being so scared and then relieved to hear those words and see her up and breathing. My daughter is crying. She just lost her horse and Trixie is her dog. If she'd lost another pet...OMG. This all happened so quickly.
We bring the dogs in and Trixie immediately runs to her spot and lays down looking a little scared. We offer treats and she takes treats and then eats her breakfast with tail wagging. What a near death experience for our little dog. DH also checked Roxi's mouth to make sure her mouth is ok (she's ok).
The collar Trixie was wearing was one of those nylon collars from Wal-mart called SimplyDog Blue Bones Collar (see pic below). It is brown and blue nylon, but not just the basic nylon. It has a design covering on it (brown with blue bones on it) and there was a small separation where the stitches had come loose between that cloth covering part and the nylon collar - big enough for Roxi's tooth to get caught while they played as they usually do and as the dogs twisted to get away, it got wrapped around her tooth tightening on it, tying the dogs together and choking the life out of the puppy...literally. That collar won't be going on her again.
Of all the things I worry about with the dogs - getting deathly ill, getting out of the fence and getting hit by a car, I never would have thought that something like a another dog's tooth getting stuck in a collar could happen and kill a dog the way it almost did Trixie. She was just a couple seconds away from dying.
It was horrid. I don't know if I'll forget the way Trixie looked on the ground after hubby got her loose. There was no movement from her...she was literally almost dead. Another couple of seconds of her oxygen being cut-off and we would have been having a dog funeral today and consoling heartbroken kids.
I will never buy a collar like this again. Cute is cute but dead is dead. We almost lost a beloved child's pet. All it took was enough room for a tooth to slip into the brown/bones fabric covering of the nylon collar to get them caught and we almost had a tragedy.
Walmart No. 000893440
Please send this post to all dog owners that you know. Stumble/Digg, etc. the post. It's important. It's not something I would have ever worried about before but one of those rare things that can happen.
3 comments:
Thank goodness tings turned out okay. I prefer leathr collars!
That's what I told hubby. I am going to get all the dogs leather collars.
We just recently had a similar scare with collars as well. Our dogs have a bad habit of grabbing each other's collars to flip the other onto its back when playing. Unfortunately this last time, one of them got its mouth twisted in the other's collar, nearly strangling the other to death. Luckily we were home to hear the commotion going on and rush outside. Just wanted to mention that they had leather collars on when this happened. We had to cut the collar to get it off, it was twisted so tight and we were unable to get the buckle undone. The thick leather made it twice as difficult to cut through. I happened to luck into finally cutting through the thinner part of leather, on the tab, where the holes are located. So just a heads up that it can happen with leather collars as well. Needless to say, our's won't be wearing collars unless going out somewhere. We do have our's chipped though in case they do happen to escape us or the yard somehow. It's a horrible thing to see your pet so close to death and as much as I fear them getting out without having visible identification, I'd much rather that than come home to one of my dogs dead from a collar.
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