Cabelas Neoprene Dog Vest for Safety and Warmth
By Joan Young on
The neoprene dog vest from Cabelas provides warmth for outdoor dogs, and in blaze orange color will make your dog highly visible during hunting season.
A friend gave me this vest several years ago because her current dogs are too large for it. The dog I have is always cold, so this has been a wonderful item for her to have for fall and winter.
It slips over the dogs front feet and this one zips up the back. I see in the Cabelas catalog that they now close with velcro. Im not sure that I would like that as much as the zipper. The advantage would be that if the dog gets the coat caught on some brush or something that the dog would be able to pull free and get away. The disadvantage would be that if your dog doesnt like to stand still to have the coat put on I think that the velcro would be harder to line up and get fastened.
Also, I see that the new vest design has a reinforced chest panel to protect a hunting dog from being poked in the chest from branches and corn stubble. But even with just the neoprene (its over 1/4 inch thick) its very protective. And neoprene will provide some buoyancy for water dogs such as retrievers.
This vest has been very well used. My friends dog used it several years, and now Maggie has worn it forat least 30 minutes a day from about mid-November (start of hunting season) through the winter for the past five years or so. There are a couple of small tears in the surface of the neoprene, but none of them has penetrated all the way through.
This one has a very heavy duty plastic zipper, and it still works smoothly.
The only issue I have with the vest at all, is that the blaze orange color has faded somewhat.With the coat on, Maggie is still easy to seewhich is great because in a brown fall woods she either disappears or looks very much like a small deer, but the color isnt what it should be for maximum visibility.
The current models come in five sizes, and sell for $33 to $37 depending on the size. It also comes in camouflage for hunting with dogs during bird season.
Maggie doesn't seem to mind the vest at all. That's terrific! I wonder if you could add yellow reflective tape across the top to help make up for the faded orange. Hmm...would it even stick?
Cute Dog...