Product Review: Nite Ize Nite Dawg LED Collar

Although fall is my favorite season (leaves! holidays! pumpkin flavored things!), one thing I don't like is that it gets dark earlier and earlier each night. In the summer, we had plenty of extra sunlight to take Badger and Mushroom for a nice long walk/run after I got home from work. Now, it gets dark before I even head home. Last month, I started looking for some nighttime and colder-weather running gear, both for humans and dogs.

After some research and soliciting suggestions from friends, we ordered the Nite Ize Nite Dawg LED Collar from Chewy.com. The collar comes in two colors, red and orange, so we ordered one of each because we like Badger's and Mushroom's things to be easily distinguishable. When we first received our order (along with a bag of dog food and some treats), we found that Chewy had forgotten one of the two collars, as there was only one in the box! This was easily rectified by calling them - they sent us the missing collar immediately. We were pleasantly surprised at how easy they made it.

So far, the collars have worked well. They are bright and easy to turn on/off by pushing a button on the collar. We've only used the solid glow setting, but there is a blink setting as well. Here is a picture of what they look like at dusk:

A good warning to bunnies as well

The collars are most visible when viewed directly from above. From the front, sometimes the dog's head can obscure the collar's light. When we were running on the trail at night, Mushroom was perfectly visible by my side, which helped me avoid running into her. When Badger and L were coming toward us, I started being able to see Badger's collar light at about 30 feet away.

The one issue we've had with the collars is that sometimes they loosen up by themselves. This isn't as big a deal with Badger's collar, since his neck is about the same size as the collar on the largest setting (we bought size M). Mushroom's neck is smaller, and we have had to readjust the collar every few days as it slips to the loosest setting. Normally, this is okay because they wear Gentle Leader head collars when we walk them.

When I run with Mushroom, though, I prefer to use a flat collar. We ran another doggy 5k race yesterday, and she wore her old, non-light-up collar because of the fit. We also didn't need the light because the race was during the day. Badger wore his new LED collar. Overall, the collars are good for short-distance visibility, which works well for our purposes (walks around the apartment complex and running on trails where motorized vehicles are not allowed).

Waiting for L to get our post-race fried chicken