About two months ago we received an email asking us if we wanted to review the Dog Bark Collar. Per their website: “The collar is made from a highly durable polycoated nylon-webbing. This makes the collar maintenance free and will give you many years of rough and tumble with your pup. The Toughhound is designed to handle outdoor play, hunting and long training sessions. The collar can tolerate extreme cold and heat. The ToughHound non-porous surface drys quickly, will never absorb offensive odors and makes removing mud just a wipe away.” Knowing that we were moving back to Alaska, the land of snow and rain and wet things we jumped at the chance.

The first decision was to decide which dog. It seemed a little bit heavy duty for Big Carl so he was out of the running.Wanting to make sure we REALLY tested it we opted to get a collar for Mesa as she would be the hardest on it. For us color was an easy choice, bright pink. There are many bright colors available and we knew we needed one that would pop since Mesa tends to blend in with the scenery. See the photo below to see how the color pops. It’s great!

The hardest decision for us was what to put on the collar. Obviously we knew that we needed to put Mesa’s name and our phone numbers on it but there was one remaining line for us to put something on. After talking it over we decided to go with “I must be lost.” This serves two purposes. One: if a person finds her it is quite obvious that she is lost and we want her to be returned. Two: it makes us giggle (and all of our friends too) since Mesa always has a “I’m lost” look about her.

Then it was time to let Mesa test the durability of the collar. She ran and played and got wet and the collar stood up to the test. Thanks to its coating the collar itself would not absorb the water making it simple to dry off. The material is durable to the games of “lets drag each other around by the collar” that Baily and Mesa like to play with each other.

For as bulky as the collar may look, it is surprisingly light. The metal tag has super smooth edges so there were no worries of the pups getting cut by it. The smooth coating also withstood Mesa running through the bushes (some cloth collars would get burrs attached to them or get tangled up in branches).

Overall we love the product and think it is everything that was advertised. If there was one thing we would change, it would be that the collar comes with preset holes for the buckles. I have never found a collar where the holes were set exactly where it fits best on my dog so I tend to lead towards the adjustable collars. Luckily for Mesa, her head is so big that even if a collar is a little loose on her neck, it won’t slide off her