Warning - choker collars

Written by a former CP foster home

Please pass my horrible experience on to anyone you know that owns dogs.

I have owned dogs all my life, for over 40 years. Mostly at least two at a time. All my dogs were kept inside and I was a stay at home wife for 25 years of this time. All my dogs wore choker chain collars. I believed that they would be safer in the event the collar got caught on something. The dog could slip his head out of the collar and not choke to death or tear themselves up trying to get loose.

WELL my dogs now wear cloth collars. I'll save the chokers for walks, training or whatever.

My two Westies, Murphy and Fyffer, were playing when I heard screaming and growling. Fortunately I was only a few feet away. Somehow Fyffer had got her bottom jaw caught inside Murphy's collar.

They had twisted the collars so tight that Murphy was choking and Fyffer's jaw was being torn up because her bottom teeth were also trapped in the collars.

We held them together as close as possible but could not get any slack to work the collar off of Fyffer's chin. We couldn’t move them without putting them in further pain and choking them.

It was like that for over 30 minutes while my housemate, repeatedly called 911, the fire department trying to get someone with wire cutters or bolt cutters to get them loose. No one would help us because they were dogs.

In a moment of sanity I had her call my neighbor across the street who fortunately came over with the wire cutters and managed to cut through the chain collar and set them free. I never hugged anyone tighter in my entire life. Both dogs would have died if he hadn't been home.

Murphy's neck is bruised and has many cuts. Fyffer's jaw was red and several areas of her bottom lips were abraided. But upon further inspection by my vet, there are two small gouged spots on her gums surrounding one of her canines. She is on pain meds and antibiotics for a week. Then she will return to the vet for a follow up. There is a chance she might lose that tooth.

Ok this is probably a one in a million occurrence and may never happen again. But it did happen and could have caused the death of both of my precious dogs. So please don't have your dogs wear these collars.



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