i’ll never forget a call i got at work a few years ago. a woman called to ask about our martingale collars and in the conversation i told her we didn’t recommend leaving them on unsupervised. what ensued from there was a horrifying conversation. a store had sold her one of our martingale collars and not educated her about the dangers. one day her dogs were playing, one got tangled in the other’s collar, and before she could get them free, her dog had passed. this has played in my head over and over ever since.
i’d heard of breakaway collars but to be frank i didn't understand how they worked and poo-pooed them out of the gate. i didn’t understand how you contained your dog with a collar that snaps off with pressure and it seemed more bad than good to me.
i did get a little more educated but the issue still remained that any breakaway collar opens with a very small amount of pressure. i bought one and it was gone within a few hours - it did turn up again a few months later (dogs…am i right?) but was very quickly gone for good after that.
that’s when we set out to design something better and i’m so proud we did. our (patent pending) velcro closure system adds an adjustable tension to the breakaway collar, giving you controlled release if a collar gets caught, without constant accidental pop-offs that ultimately hurt your wallet.
like you, my dogs’ safety is really important to me and i’m so happy we're able to offer a safer version of a collar should people want it. i believe wholeheartedly that collars should be worn 24-7 for a myriad of reasons but there are inherent dangers with that for some dogs. We’ve been lucky over the years, but others haven’t been as fortunate and i didn’t want our luck to run out.
living with one dog teaches you a lot but living with a pack of dogs for decades teaches you everything. over the years we’ve seen it all; wrestling matches that go awry, sprinting the fence line, dogs in crates, dogs grabbing each other by the collar while playing, a dog tag getting stuck in a vent. all of those can be accidents waiting to happen unless your dog is wearing a breakaway and with other breakaways it’s also a lost collar. dogs don’t move carefully…the live life to the fullest.
what we set out to do was pretty simple: if a collar ever gets caught, it should open but it shouldn’t fall off just because dogs are being dogs.
that balance, safety without constant loss, became something we thought about for a long time.
when you live in a multi-dog home, you see how collars are really used. they’re tugged, rolled on, grabbed mid-wrestle. they go through mud, rain, zoomies, and naps in a tangled pile. safety isn’t theoretical here. it’s daily life. that’s why we built a breakaway system differently, something that releases under real pressure, but doesn’t just pop off during normal play.
if you’re curious how our breakaway system works (and whether it’s right for your dog), we put together a full guide explaining it here:
read the breakaway collar guide
i’m personally really proud of what we created and i’m intensely grateful for that extra sense of safety (and more importantly the absence of fear) these collars bring to our lives and our dogs’ lives.