Product Review: Hot Dogs All Dressed Collars

Hot Dogs All Dressed makes leather flat buckle collars in an enormous variety of styles, colors, and styles. They include cat and puppy collars for tiny necks 6" around, and get big enough for dogs with 24" necks.

Photo by Erin Koski

I didn't realized just how many Hot Dogs All Dressed collars I owned until I looked at their website and recognized them all. Brisbane and Ru each have two, and the cats all wore them until recently, bringing the total to seven. Looking at their website, it's not hard to figure out why we have so many. The options are nearly endless. All of our collars were purchased at local stores, the first at Petropolis in Camarillo, and the other six at Pet Barn in Ventura.

Photo by Erin Koski

We would probably have a much sillier range of Hot Dogs All Dressed collars if I had bought them all from the website. Stores can only carry so much stock, and I don't think anyone has enough retail space to display every possible combination they offer. Just attempting to total them up is exhausting. For regular collars there are 20 different length/width combinations, fourteen different colors, and at least 160 different decorations, with multiple different decorations allowed on a single collar. Cat and puppy collars come in 30 different colors with nearly that many decoration options. The company also offers laced collars, leashes, harnesses, muzzles, ID tags and horse halters all in a broad range of colors and decorations. They'll make just about anything in any color/decoration combo.

Brisbane has a 1" wide black leather collar with skull decorations, and a matching ID tag with my parents' address on it. He also has a 3/4" wide brown leather collar with enameled green peace sign decorations. Ru has a black suede collar with red enameled hearts, and a brown suede collar with blue sparkly stars. The cats had one plain purple suede, one black suede with skulls, and one pink leatherette with skulls.

Pros: These collars seem to last forever, Brisbane's skull collar has been around for nine years now. Ru's are still looking sharp after four years of near-constant wear. Really though, my favorite thing about this company is their skull collars, and how many different options they offer.

Cons: The elastic on my cat collars gave out after about four years, and the leatherette one started looking dirty after about three years. Ru's tiny suede collars tend to come unbuckled and fall off when set on the last hole or two. Long people hair tends to get caught under the skull decorations.

Bottom Line:  I nearly bought Briz a purple monkey collar once, but it wasn't big enough. It might be time to make that dream a reality.