When dog owners yank on their dog’s collar, they might be doing more damage than they could ever imagine; every time your dog yanks on its leash, it may be causing long-lasting negative health effects. Just imagine wearing a leash yourself, and now imagine having someone pull on it. When people think of it in this way, they often start to realize that collars might not be the best option for their pets.
How Can A Collar Hurt Your Dog?
Thyroid Damage
Dog breeds that pull on their leashes a lot tend to have a lot of thyroid issues. Many veterinarians speculate that thyroid problems happen when a leash pushes on your dog’s thyroid regularly; this consistent trauma can eventually lead to inflammation and bruising.
When your dog’s thyroid gets inflamed, its immune system sends white blood cells to the area to remove the inflammation. The white blood cells do get rid of the inflammation, but they eventually start to wear down the thyroid. Over a long period of time, this leads to a lot of thyroid issues.
Ear And Eye Damage
When a dog pulls on its leash, it restricts blood flow to its eyes and ears. When blood flow is cut off on a regular basis, it causes swelling, and constant swelling damages your dogs organs and appendages.
Paw Licking
Dog collars can damage the nerves in your dog’s front legs. When your dog’s nerves are hurt, it causes a tingly feeling in their front paws, and most dogs will lick their paws to try to make them feel better. If your dog has a problem with paw licking, you might want to consider using a harness instead of a collar.
Neck injury
As stated by Dr. Barbara Hodges, yanking on a leash can give your dog whiplash; it’s never a good idea to jerk any type of animal’s neck quickly. Oftentimes, dogs don’t understand why their leash jerks their neck, so they become frustrated, depressed or aggressive.
The best way to prevent neck, nerve and thyroid damage is to get your dog a harness. When your dog pulls on a harness, it doesn’t hurt its body as much as a collar does. A properly fitted harness keeps your dog comfortable, and it helps you control your dog without a risk of injury.
How to prevent harm to your dog
Unlike majority of collars and other harnesses, Smart Harness™ is a harness engineered to control your pup and not to harm. Our harness encourages your dog to heel, and not pull, giving you more control whilst distributing pressure throughout the body and and not from the neck as traditional collars would do.
Keeps your dog’s neck free which will result in better health and longer life.
To find out more about our award winning harness, see here:
Look care after your pet today, and get them a harness that doesn't cause damage.
Don't just take our word for it, see what some of our other sources have to say about the use of collars and your pet.
Tracheal collapse in dogs with PetMD
5 ways collars can harm your dog
Dog neck injuries from pulling dogs
Harmful to attach a leash to a dog's neck