Is Your Companion’s Collar Too Tight?

While it’s important for our dogs and cats to wear collars (although never choke or prong collars) and proper identification when they go outdoors, just putting a collar on and assuming that it’ll be fine for the animal’s entire life is a recipe for disaster. As animals grow or gain weight, a too-tight collar can result in severe neck wounds, as the following cases illustrate:

• Dan, a staffer from PETA Foundation’s Literature Department, was trying to help a neighbor get his semi-feral cat spayed when he spotted this cat in the neighborhood. Dan sat with the trap for more than two hours (at 10 p.m. in a neighborhood with a high crime rate) until the cat was captured. The unneutered male cat had a deeply embedded flea collar wrapped around his neck, armpit, and torso.

 A PETA fieldworker spent the day on Saturday waiting for this feral dog—with a deeply embedded collar—to appear after being alerted to her condition by an out-of-town visitor to the area. It was the deepest collar-related wound that the fieldworker had ever seen.

 Remember: If you can’t comfortably slip two fingers between the collar and the animal’s neck, the collar is too tight. To learn more about how to care for companion animals properly, check this out.