PupLight Dog Safety Light

Rating: 4 paws

The Puplight Dog Safety Light is a flashlight / safety light which is worn around the dog's neck. The Puplight comes in 4 colors. The company also makes a "Neklight" for people.

The Puplight is like a flashlight for your dog. The light includes an elastic band which you can hang the light from, or you can attach it directly to your dog's collar. The light housing is made of plastic and also includes a hinged piece which allows you to adjust where the light is pointing (up and down.) The Puplight is useful for night time walking in dark areas. This is the only pet safety light I have seen on the market which actually projects light like a flashlight, which allows the Puplight to help light your path as well as making your dog more visible to others at night. As a safety tool to make your dog more visible, this light works better than the other collar lights I have seen. Most collar lights for dogs do not give off much light, so if the actual lightbulb is blocked by your dog's fur or if a car or person is on the wrong side of your dog and the dog blocks the lightbulb, little or no light shines through. The Puplight claims to illuminate up to 200 feet in front of the dog, which provides a great deal more visibility than other safety lights for dogs.

The Puplight also works fairly well as a flashlight to illuminate your path. One benefit I have found is that if your dog sniffs something on the ground, the Puplight will show you exactly what it is, which can help you prevent your dog from eating unknown objects.

The only problems I have had with the Puplight was with one of my dogs, a Golden Retriever. She would tend to walk with her head lowered much of the time, and that would block a lot of the light from the Puplight. I tried various configurations to allow the light through but she still blocked a lot of it. If you have a hound breed or a dog who likes to sniff a lot, this could be an issue. This problem causes the light to be less useful in illuminating the path in front of us, but does not affect the usefulness as a safety/visibility tool.

Champion Canine Seatbelt System

Rating: 4 Paws!

In my ongoing search for a good, comfortable seatbelt harness for my dogs that was also strong, I finally came across the Champion Seatbelt System. Before that I had tried a Four Paws seatbelt harness, Petsmart harness, VestHarness, and Ruff Rider Roadie seatbelt. The Champion is the strongest-looking seatbelt out of all of the seatbelts I've tried, and it also is the easiest to take on and off, and has a padded chest strap for comfort. I attach the leash strap to the shoulder part of my car's seatbelt, so it is higher up and the dog does not get tangled very often.

The harness attaches like a normal harness, and the strap part attaches to the harness using a bull snap (used to restrain large livestock) and to the seatbelt or cargo hook using a chainlink "quick link" which takes a few seconds to get on and off but is very secure when it is attached. The harness itself is made of 1 1/2" wide webbing (on the Large size) which is wider than the other seatbelts I've tried. It appears to be very strong. Unlike many dog seatbelts, this one does not rely on plastic buckles to secure the dog in the car. It does use very wide plastic buckles to attach the harness to the dog, however there are two large metal D-rings on the harness, one on each side of the buckle, which you hook the leash strap to so that even if the buckle were to break the harness would still be secured on the dog. According to the company, the Medium and larger harnesses can hold over 2000 pounds. The company also offers a special seatbelt system for dogs over 80 pounds, called the Survivor Big Dog Seatbelt System. The Champion Seatbelt is one of the few dog seatbelts on the market which has actually been safety tested to forces which it would be exposed to during an accident.



For information on how to use a Champion Seatbelt, please see "How to Use the CARE Champion Seatbelt System"


Note: Several people have reported problems with not recieving the product (after they were charged for it) when they ordered the Champion Seatbelt direct from the manufacturer.
For this reason, if you want a safety-tested dog seatbelt, I would recommend either the Ruff Rider Roadie seatbelt or the PetBuckle seatbelt harness. These are the only two dog seatbelts I know of which have actually been crash-tested.