The Lab And The Squirrel

A few months ago, when my beautiful, 3-year old, yellow labrador retriever Peachie and I returned home from a long walk on the beach I hooked her up to her 30 foot, anchored, wire lead and undid her leash so I could do a couple of little chores before we went in the house.  As I turned away from her, unbeknownst to me she spotted a squirrel and the hunt was on.  As always, the squirrel simply scampered up the nearest tree to safety and Peachie was once again thwarted in achieving her objective.  By the way, despite literally hundreds of attempts she has yet to catch a squirrel, cat or a seagull but that doesn't seem to bother her in the least when she makes that nanosecond long decision to chase yet another one.

Irresistable Force Meets Immovable Object:  Anyhow, in this case the tree the squirrel ran up must have been 31 or 32 feet away from the anchor point and Peachie hit the end of the tether with all of her 62 pounds running at full speed.  Something had to give and fortunately it wasn't her neck.  I won't mention the brand name of her collar but the buckle, which I had always assumed was metal because that's what it looked like, was actually a thin plastic painted a metallic silver colour and it literally exploded.  Now I was certainly relieved that Peachie hadn't injured herself but at that point I had a different problem - 62 pounds of frantically excited lab off-leash right next to a busy city street.  Peachie is well-trained but when she's really excited it takes a few seconds for her training to kick in and my command to take effect.  Fortunately, again Peachie wasn't injured but could very easily have darted out onto the road and been hit by a car.

Frustration Sets In:  Once we had sat down for a few minutes and both of our adrenaline levels had begun to move back towards normal I began to think about what had happened and how lucky we had been that Peachie wasn't injured.  The offending collar had been purchased at a large pet supply store and I had made the logical assumption that this was a high quality product - it certainly cost enough!  Of course, in my hunt to replace her collar I paid particular attention to the quality of the buckle, as well as inspecting all of the available leashes, and after visiting several pet stores I was finally able to obtain what has turned out to be a very good one - and at a lower price than the original inadequate one.

Need Creates Opportunity:  This was about the time I started thinking about creating a website where dog owners and lovers could source, research and buy good quality dog leashes and collars online.  Leashes and collars only - no toys, no food, no treats, no brushes, no carriers, no crates, no ..., no ..., no ...!  Just collars and leashes.

Look Around:  The menu in the sidebar will take you to many options of the common categories of collars and leashes.  You should be able to find the particular one that will suit the size and breed of your canine pal.  And don't forget to pay particular attention to sizing.