Hand Made Heavy Duty Dog Collar

We had a problem for a while. Our 135lb. rottweiler Zeus kept climbing our fence to take afternoon strolls through our neighborhood. I thought it was pretty funny when I would go to get him and see him cruising down the side walk like he was the king cock of the block. Unfortunately the people who were crossing fifth east when they saw him headed their way did not get the same laugh out of the whole thing that I did.

I just love aircraft cable, pulleys, and rigging. You can trap anything with the stuff! This being the case I decided I would make a tie off to keep Zeus in our yard. I drilled a hole into one of the roof beams for our porch and put a 4" long hook bolt in it. To the hook bolt I attached a spring shock absorber, up to 800 lbs. I then strung a piece of 1100lb load cable to it with bolt clamps. I secured the other end to our fence post across the yard. To do this I used a piece of chain with connector link to loop around the post and connect to a 400lb load cable rigging ring. I then secured a carbine clip to the other end of the cable and hooked this to the rigging ring to make the cable removable. A pulley is threaded onto this line with another cable running off of it. It is the cable that runs off of the pulley that attaches to Zeus' collar.

I thought we were good to go. It took Zeus a week to bend the rigging ring from a circle to an oval, bend the hook bolt to angle, and snap his supposedly indestructible store bought collar. This being the case I decided that if I wanted a collar made the right way I would probably, like most things, have to do it myself.

The pictures you see here are the finished product. I used a 1 1/2" 9oz. piece of latigo leather strap, the same thing the use to make the strap on the saddle that goes under the horses belly. I punched a hole for the buckle and doubled the whole strap over to make it twice as thick. This collar is held together with heavy duty copper bur rivets, 16 in all. These are the same rivets used in saddle making. Noted the nice D-ring for securing him to the cable. you guessed it! more saddle hardware. I know he is not breaking this collar. Now I am just waiting for him to rip the fence post out of the ground or tear my roof off.