Best Dog Accessory? 25 Carabiner Life Hacks for Your Dog
Is a carabiner the most useful dog
management accessory not sold in a pet
store? We’re gonna find out right now.
Hey everybody Ian here we’re Simpawtico
Dog Training sharing creative and
intelligent techniques to help you
manage, motivate, and learn about our
beloved canine family members. Now before
we start clipping carabiners to
everything please make sure you
subscribe to our youtube channel so you
never miss any of our videos. Also don’t
forget to check that YouTube description
for notes links and resources about the
stuff we talked about. Now a carabiner is
an amazingly awesome and versatile
little multitasker.
I have a couple in my everyday carry and
it is definitely one of my dog gear go
tos. Now before we start going over ways
that you can use one of these with your
dog you need to know a little bit about
how to choose a good one that fits your
needs. So I have done my share of
bouldering and rappelling in my day and I
can tell you that a good quality
carabiner is a beautiful thing with a
million and one uses. But they’re not all
made the same. So for example these are
the carabiners that you get on bags and
kits that you buy at the store. So like
this came on a treat bag I bought, this
came on a first aid kit,
this came on a makeup bag my wife got.
These are not rated for quality or
durability. They’re just made from cheap
materials if you put these on your dog’s
leash they will break. Now the strength
of a carabiner comes from the gate and
the frame creating a complete loop so to
be effective the gate has to mate up or
interlink with the frame. These don’t do
that; they’re just small pieces of metal
to keep the gate from flying open
altogether and over time that metal
blows out, and the gate just flies open. So these
are not strong or safe. All crap. Even for
a small dog: all crap. This is the kind of
carabiner you pick up at Walmart or
Target or the drugstore to put your keys
on. This particular one you can see that
the gate mates up with the frame so it’s
a little bit stronger but it’s still not
strong enough.
Even a small dog can exert a
tremendous amount of force on the leash.
And in my experience the pins in the
hinge here come out over time which
means that the gates just fall
completely off. Now we’re moving into the
correct kind of weight class for a
carabiner but we have another
consideration and that is a locking gate
and I can tell you from experience that
any carabiner that does not have a
locking gate will open if the line wraps
around it. So all it will take is for
your dog to walk just right around
whatever you’ve tethered them to get the
leash wrapped around it and then that
gate will pop open and then it’s “¡Adios
Perro!” So for example this is a Nite
Ize S-Biner. This is rated at a hundred
pounds so it’s probably strong enough
for most dogs but as you can see the
gate doesn’t lock. These things come open
all the time; I have small S-Biners on
my key ring and they come off all the
time in my pocket. Now Nite Ize makes a
locking version of all they’re S-Biners with a
little collar that slides down. That does
not look like it will stand up to any
kind of wear and tear over time and I’m
not willing to bet my dogs long-term
safety on that. Now Nite Ize does make
other sizes of their S-Biners. These
might be okay for accessories like poo
baggies and lights and things like that.
This is a heavy-duty carabiner from the
hardware store. You can see how the gate
mates up with the frame here.
This sucker is strong. You could climb
with this. You could probably even do
some light during recovery or towing
with this but
the gate doesn’t lock so we still run
into the same issue. Plus this sucker is
too heavy.
Now those come in different sizes too so
if you buy these little guys at the
hardware store you can see how the gate
mates up with the frame on this little
guy.
This is a strong little carabiner. This
would be a better option for accessories
than this in my opinion. THIS is a
climbing carabiner and you can see how
the gate mates up with the frame like a
key right there.
Plus it locks. Super safe. This is rated
to take the fall from a human being
which is way more force than your dog would
ever put on it so this is like the
perfect melding of safety, durability and
quality. And it’s really lightweight. Now
you can pick these up at outdoor stores
or online. I paid about sixteen dollars
for this one and if you’re like me I’m
perfectly willing to pay the extra ten
bucks or so to get something that not
only does the job right but that I never
have to replace. So now that you know how
to choose the appropriate equipment what
can you do with it?
Well here are 25 of our favorite
suggestions!
Also these are ridiculously useful for
all sorts of non-dog related items. I
definitely recommend that you put one in
your purse or your backpack or the
glove box of your car, and for sure make
one part of your every day carry with your
dog.
Now I have a question for you: what are
your favorite ways to use a carabiner
with your dog? Is there anything that we
forgot to add to the list? Do you have
some more creative ideas? I definitely
want to hear from you so let’s connect
in the comments. Also I just put together
a free basic gear buyers guide: 28 pages
long, it goes over all sorts of things about
how to choose harnesses and leashes and
cleaners & accessories and it also has
some bonus material with some training
tips too. So if you’re interested I’ll link
to that in the description. Please don’t
forget to give us a thumbs up if you
found something useful today and as
always keep learning, keep practicing, and
we’ll see you next time. Thanks for
watching!
