The short answer is yes. The long answer is a bit more complicated.
First of all, by ‘whippet‘ I really mean all hounds that have long necks. And herein lies the clue to the answer. Whippets have really long necks, as have Greyhounds, Lurchers, Salukis, Italian Greyhounds and many other breeds. Large breeds like Rhodesian Ridgebacks, for example, also have really long necks and so does smaller breeds like Bedlington Terriers – both of whom could benefit from wearing a ‘special’ collar.
The problem with narrow collars
If you put the more common narrow style collar on a dog with a long neck, what happens is that when the dog pulls on the lead, a very small part of the dog’s neck has to take all the weight. This, in our opinion, is not a good thing. Ideally, you want the pressure on the neck to be as widely distributed as possible – which means you would want to use as wide a collar as is comfortable for your hound to wear.
This means that for a greyhound, for example, a 2 inch wide collar is a great choice. For a whippet you would want a 1.5 inch wide collar and for a whippet puppy you would start with a 1 inch wide collar. As soon as your puppy is big enough to wear the ‘grown up’ collar, we would recommend moving to the 1.5 inch width. This is especially important with puppies because their boisterous nature means a lot of pulling and unnecessary pressure on their necks. However, a wide collar can only do so much on its own. Being a single-loop collar, it solves the problem of weight distribution, but that’s not the only reason a whippet needs a special collar.
The problem with single-loop collars
A whippet has a very small and narrow head, so a ‘normal’ single-loop dog collar is far too easy to slip off over his head accidentally, leaving him collar-less and free to run off. Unless your hound has extremely good recall, you’re in for a bit of trouble. This was the hard lesson I learnt when I adopted Coco back in 2013. I remember having bought him a very slim (around 20mm wide) collar – with a standard clasp. During the day he walked beautifully with me on the lead, but the first night I took him out for a bedtime wee-walk I was completely (and almost literally) thrown over by the transformation in his spirit. In the dark, especially when seeing a fox trotting away in the distance, he became a different hound!
This was not a good moment. The sheer strength of this tall, heavy lurcher upon seeing the fox was mind boggling and slightly terrifying. On the second night, I realised that with the full strength of my newly adopted dog pulling on the lead there was also a huge empty gap behind his neck where the collar otherwise would sit tight. Not so tight at all when he pulled away. The gap was indeed large enough for his small, narrow head to slip out of and I remember clearly the fear that he might turn his head or step backwards and then whoosh – he’d be off without his collar!
And so began the story of how Brindle & Whyte came to exist, which will be the subject of another blog post soon. The upshot of the story, however, was the realisation that a single loop around the neck just would not suffice in keeping Coco safe.
So, do whippets need special collars? Yes, first of all they need wide collars, but only a wide martingale collar can stop your hound from slipping or backing out of it. We have written a longer blog post about how a martingale collar works here. In the short version of the blog post I have explained that ‘a martingale collar is made with two loops. The larger loop is slipped onto the dog’s neck and a leash is then clipped to the D-ring on the smaller loop. When the dog tries to pull, the tension on the leash pulls the small loop taut, which makes the large loop smaller and tighter on the neck, thus preventing escape’.
If you want your hound to be safe when you are out walking, please consider getting a martingale collar next time you purchase a collar for your hound.
With love, Anja