Dog Tags: Not so "music to the ears"
We choose what we wear on our bodies. If we wear jewellery, what jewellery we wear. We can take it off at night if we want too.
Our dogs don’t get those choices.
We must put ourselves in their paws with every choice we make for them and consider life from their perspective (recommended reading “Inside of a Dog, What Dogs See, Smell, and Know” by Alexandra Horowitz, also on the Audible app).
This brings me to one of those choices – ID.
The common choice of adorning identification on the dog, aside from microchips is dog tags attached to a collar around the neck. They serve the important purpose of having quickly available contact information on hand should your dog find itself having an adventure of their own.
It’s well known that dogs hearing is far more acute than our own. Can you imagine living with that crashing metal sound around your neck right near your ears 24/7, every time you rolled over in your sleep, walk, run and play (basically moved). The same goes for bells and any other collar adornments such as luck charms.
There have also been some horrific deaths where dog tags have gotten stuck in things like outdoor decking and the dog has perished in full sun or injured themselves trying to free their body. They often fall off too.
Example case study: A common complaint amongst many of our customers is fussy eaters. Upon quizzing one customer I asked them to not feed in the bowl and try on food on the lawn or other surface and the dog started to eat. But each time they tried the bowl, the dog refused. I then asked them to remove the metal tag off the dogs collar. Hey presto, the dog started to eat. It turned out that every time the dog went to eat out of that bowl, the metal tag crashed against the stainless steel bowl causing a racket in the dogs ears.
A much dog friendlier method of identification is to have a collar embroidered with your dogs name and your number. You can order a soft lightweight bamboo collar which is a natural mould-free fibre via us in-store. It takes just 1 week to process. If you're not able to come into our store, you can order online here.
If you do need to temporarily attach some form of ID to a dogs collar, make sure it’s plastic such as a plastic key tag. They’re lightweight and far less noisy.
To learn more about dogs hearing: https://eileenanddogs.com/blog/2019/03/21/dogs-hearing-vs-human-hearing/
Want to learn more about dogs and noise phobias? Listen to Karen Webbs interview “Noise and the impact on our dogs lives” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnaJCUbO-xM
