Dog Life Jackets, Your Best Friend Needs a PFD Too

Life vests for dogs, a wise investment.

About Canine Life Jackets

Most dogs are pretty good swimmers, but once they get underwater they just can’t do it. Keep them on the surface with a dog PFD and they can pretty much get out of any situation. If your dog is old or on the heavy side, you should consider picking them up a life jacket for dogs. They are not very expensive and could easily save your dogs life if it’s not a strong swimmer.

Dog wearing a life jacket on the riverIf your dog is anything like mine, it is likely to jump out of the boat to go after animals or just being clumsy. Once your dog is in the water they are very hard to get back into the boat. Dog Life vests have a nice handle on the back of them to easily pull your dog back on board. My dog has on numerous occasions jumped in the water to follow me after I got out of the boat to fish a particular spot. Without her vest on, it would have been tough for her to make it to the bank a couple times. Dog Life jackets are a very good thing to own if you love your dog as much as I do mine.

Here is a Scary Story that Caused me to Buy My Dog a Life Vest

A few years ago I watched as a dog nearly drowned on the South Fork of the Snake in Idaho. It was early spring and his owner and him had waded at a downstream angle out into the middle of the river. This was a particularly dangerous spot, where just downstream from them was a series of dozens of logjams and very deep fast water. The fisherman realized that he had made a huge mistake only after he tried to walk back upstream to his car. As I watched from the far side of the river, I was freaking out trying to figure out if there was anything I could do to help. The fisherman decided to try to make his dog stay in the semi shallow spot, while he went to the car to drop off all of his gear. He started walking away—and of course the dog followed. The fisherman walked back to the dog and told it to stay a few more times.

The dog stayed for about 20 seconds and could not take it anymore, he began following his owner.. Within 10 feet, the current caught him and started sweeping him down stream. The fisherman was wading upstream in a very tough wading current past his waist, he didn’t even see that the dog was on it’s way down river. I watched as the dog got pinned up against a log jam and then it went under. I lost sight of it for at least 20 seconds as it was trapped underneath a huge pile of logs. These logs were stacked by the current throughout the years to almost 6 feet above the water—all the way down to the bottom of the river (which is over 6 feet deep). Picture this dog under these logs being pushed by about 15,000 cubic feet per second current. I was just telling myself that the dog doesn’t stand a chance at this point, when suddenly in between 2 of the logs its head popped up and it scurried to the surface.

Now I was pretty relieved, but just when I was wondering how this dog was going to get out of this situation, he jumped back toward the bank and into the heavy current. He hit another pile of logs and somehow made it past them, but big trouble was still ahead. The dog was on the final stretch and only had about 50 feet to go before he was on the steep bank, but it is a very, very fast bank. Every inch of it is covered in piles of fallen trees and logs that the dog could easily get pinned under, but he made it.  I honestly don’t know how that dog did it. Any human would surely be dead after that and I know my old, slightly overweight dog surely could not have pulled that off. I am sure of one thing, that dog would not have almost died if it had on a life vest.