Do you walk your dog in areas where there are coyotes or hawks? Are you worried about taking your small dog to the dog park or the beach, where there are so many incidents of larger dogs injuring or killing smaller dogs? Do you own a larger dog that won't stop picking on your smaller dog? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then your small dog needs CoyoteVest™ body armor.
Um. No.
What you need to do is put your dog on a leash and get some off-leash control of your dogs.
I'm not sure there is a real market for these things. Are there really that many paranoid poodle owners and attention-whores at the dog park? I guess we'll see!
That said, in the name of ridiculousness, I am thinking Moxie and Misto could rock the world with these spike collars.
7 comments:
or with these collars
http://www.cobankopegi.com/collar.html
If I had a small terrier that loved being offleash, I'd consider one of these in some areas. It depends which risk pool you think you're in, as regards exposure to coyotes. The thing with off-leash control is that the coyotes can act pretty quickly, so recalling your dog may not do any good. Yes snakes are likely a bigger risk in all events. Feeling you need one for the dog park may be a sign to find another dog park, or better yet avoid the dog park.
Well to be fair, the ones *causing* the trouble are the ones off leash usually.
As far as bigger dogs being the problem -- not always! Heck I remember once when I was younger my friend and I were walking my neighbor's German Shepherd mix and boxer mix. Walking by this house and someone's pekingese flipping out and he pushed open the screen door, came flying out and started attacking the GSMix while we stood there trying to prevent the little thing from biting the GS's balls off (which he clearly seemed to be trying to do, as the GS and I spun around in circles trying to avoid it).
Man comes running out of the house, picks up a piece of wood from the yard (a 2-3 ft piece of 2x4) and ran up to us and... WHACKED THE SHEPHERD and yelled some profanities about leaving his dog alone... this GS was old, on leash, still under control and trying to avoid his snotty little dog! He picked up his horrible little dog and brought him back into the house. Doh!
If we had had a clue we would have immediately gone home and called the police, there was no reason to hit my dog! But we didn't think of those things back then.
I go jogging with my two small dogs in the very early morning hours in the Hollywood Hills. Almost every morning I see coyotes. They never bother me or the dogs, which I keep on leashes. I don't let them off leash during "Coyote hours", and I never leave them unattended. I carry a small canister of pepper spray with me, but that is mostly for the transients that are in the area. I'm more worried about harassment from them, than I am about the mountain lions and coyotes.
Is it wrong that after seeing the photos of those puppy mill poodles, and the wife with the crazy eyes, that my first thought was "That poor, poor man..."?
I'm pretty sure my two guys together would kick a coyote's ass. They are relentless once they've decided a creature is a target and have harried pitbulls, a German Shorthair Pointer and even an Anatolian Shepherd to quivering masses...
While I consider this vest to be a silly marketing scam, I have actually witnessed an osprey take a toy white poodle right in front of its owners. It was out on a lovely green lawn adjacent to the beach and I'm sure that little white speck of fluff was so clearly visible that it made a great target. If it had been on a leash, I'm not sure that would have helped, it's neck or back would have been broken. They might have had a tug of war over the body, though. Raptors have astonishingly powerful grips, those talons are like knives. It's something I'll never forget. I was young and I remember thinking if a dog is small enough to be taken by a bird, maybe it's been bred waaay too small...
I did not know about spike collars and thought that they were just for show for ego centric urbanites and knuckle dragging rednecks. But there is a practical side to them. Livestock protection dogs (LPDS) in some ancient farming/grazing animal societies wear a spike collar (big spikes a couple of inches or more long) to deter injury to the LPD by wolves and other larger predators on the flocks.
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