Serious Lighted Dog Collars for Search and Rescue Dogs (and your pet too!)
Hi John
Thanks for the product review. If I may I'll add one or three points of explanation.
First off I chose durability over mass produced / high profit margins and made in a place where they think of dogs as a cheeseburger on a leash. I think our working dogs are worth the extra effort. It is a small niche market and I'm sure the big guys out there think I'm nuts but I know the dogs are as safe and visible as I can make 'em. To my knowledge there is only one other product on the market that will light up a dog brighter than my collars and tracking harnesses. Naphtha.
One point you made was the dog is NOT very visible to oncoming traffic. This is true as the power pocket is usually at the throat so the lamp starts at the side of the neck and goes right around to the other side. As a good % of my sales are to Law Enforcement agencies (just finished orders to L.A. County Sheriff's Dept and Durham PD) they don't want the dog visible from the front. When the dog is rushing a bad guy the first thing they want him to see is a mouthful of pearly whites. The SAR people are usually behind or to the sides of their dogs and both from feedback and observing my own dog, not only can we see where the dog is but what it is doing. This increases training efficiencies at night and allows us to get our dogs either back to work or away from something gross about to be rolled in! That alone would be worth the cost of the collar IMHO. (where's the grin smiley?) Visibility by the Air Units is unparalleled.
An option in the near future is a banding and possible pouch made from the super 3M retro reflective material (used by GloDog now). For "just" pets the retroreflectives is a great idea and I have been working on it. For the Police it is a bad thing. For the SAR types it is not an issue.
No D ring on the collar.
The entire collar is lamp. It is an electric circuit and as such is much more subject to repetitive stress fracturing when tugged from one spot over and over again. I could have a floating D ring which would climb to the back of the collar where the light is when attached to a leash and that would put stress on the lamp. It would, in time, fail and in my estimate, a long time before it normally would. Many of my collars have been on working dogs for 8 ++ years now. I have seen how some dog handlers yank on their dog's leash ALL the time and when I saw that I made the decision not to include the D ring. The safety collar is really designed to go on over a regular collar anyway. If dog ID is required and that is the only collar worn, then I think a plastic tube containing a phone number and $40 taxi fare IN the battery pouch will work better than a ring for tags and a leash to clip to.
The battery / power pouch.
This is a simple solution. It ain't purty but it works. The switch can be depressed through the material and the battery changing via the zippered pocket is a bit of a pain but not significantly more-so than opening a sealed plastic container that holds the inverter / switch and battery. I have the shells made here near Toronto. My option on that was to go to you-know-where and have a molded container made for $80,000 and order a quarter of a million of them - which would at present sales volumes last me about 90 years! (more grinning smilies needed).
The pouch is not waterproof BTW but the circuit has very little resistance and shorting a 9V battery through water is about 80,000ohms and needs well over 100volts ... so the juice goes through the lamp circuitry instead. The dog is safe. The light still works even if the collar is sitting on the river bottom (see testimonials) so this option - the flexible pouch - to me, beats another made in China option.
The continuous lamp idea.
Tried it. Major pain. The continuity of the lamp has to change to mount the electronics, develops a fold and wear point that can cause premature deterioration of the whole collar. If there's a design that works lemmie know. I've tried two or three and they were a pain.
Battery life.
I've been using NiMH this last year. There are 300m/amp ones out now so the avg collar can run around 7 hrs and then get recharged. You're good for a week's worth of walks and then you can do a recharge which according to the manufacturers of the batteries, is good for 1,000 cycles!! AT that rate the battery should last about as long as the collar - 19 yrs of 1 hour dog walks a night.
The TRACKING HARNESS.
Developed by looking at 5 of the best selling harnesses from the USA and Germany. I added a supportive strip across the back and the harness now provides a light source about the same length as the XL collar but over the back and down both sides. The lamp unit is removable so you can take it off and wash the rest of the harness. I have had people who have had their dogs skunked and ran the collar through the washer half a dozen times. The collar still worked but I do NOT recommend that level of "abuse."
All I can say at this point about the Y Tracking Harness is that I have put it on dogs who have never worn a harness before and they - ignored it ... went back to playing with the other dogs in the park. If the dog is going to act like he doesn't have anything on it HAS to be comfortable. To date all the SAR and Police who have ordered the Tracking Harnesses either already have the collars or ordered a collar too. A lamp around the dog's neck AND one over their back provides a level of safety that has never existed for a dog before.
Thanks again ....
BE WELL & STAY SAFE
DAVE
www.auroralites.com
