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

Recharging

Badger plugs in

Mushroom is solar powered

In case you are wondering, yes, we do have dog beds.

Where are some weird places your dogs like to lie?

Something's missing!

You may have noticed something missing from my last couple of posts. Look closely...

I'll give you two more hints:

What could it be?

Do you see it yet?

If you guessed that the Badgershrooms are missing their collars, you're right! When the dogs first started sleeping in our bedroom, the night was filled with the jingling of collars. Now, all is quiet, with the exception of Mushroom barking in her sleep, Badger licking his paw, and Mushroom licking everything. So not really quiet, but quieter.

A typical night's noises: slurp... slurp... flapflapflap (a dog's ears while shaking)... flapflapflap... myoof myoof (Mushroom's sleep barking)... sniff sniff SNIFFFFF (Badger's loud sniffing)... dig dig dig (burrowing into a dog bed)... slurp... slurp... pant pant... thumpthumpthump (tail)... flapflapflap

For two dogs who don't bark very often, Badger and Mushroom are still surprisingly loud. But no jingling, which is a vast improvement. The only thing is, now we frequently forget to put their collars back on (since their leashes are attached to Gentle Leader head collars), which is what happened in Wednesday's post.

Do you have "loud" dogs?

Wordless Wednesday: Fall

Yours and mine

Badger has a bad track record with soft toys. Just last month, L found a stash of soft toys in the closet and thought, "We should slowly reintroduce these to the dogs. They might be better now that they're older." A couple minutes later, Badger had de-stuffed one of his sharks, and the toys were back in the closet. So much for that idea.

We also have some soft toys that we never ended up giving to the dogs. We'd buy them on a whim or receive them in a BarkBox package, realize that Badger would eat them almost instantly, and put them into protective custody in our bedroom. Now that the dogs sleep in our bedroom, we were a little concerned that they would get into our stash of "not-for-the-dogs" toys (and our piles of laundry)...

Like a dragon on a hoard of gold

Luckily, Badger and Mushroom don't even seem to realize that the toys and clothes are for anything other than comfy bedding. In fact, we got a new Molly Mutt stuff sack and constructed a bed for Badger, only to have him pass that up to sleep on a pile of clothes and toys.

"OMG! Mushroom stole my bed!" - Badger

The dogs seem to innately know the difference between their toys and not-their-toys. I'm not sure how or why... Any guesses?