Product Review: OutFox Field Guard

The OutFox Field Guard is a protective mask designed to protect your dog's ears, nose, and eyes from nasty foxtails and other evil weeds. This mesh hood allows your dog to see, hear, pant, drink, sniff, swim, play, and herd sheep without fear of icky burrowing plant bits. It is available in five standard sizes, and can also be made in custom sizes for very large or funny-shaped dogs. My girls wear a size small.

We have a massive foxtail problem in southern California. These nasty little grass spikelets actually burrow through your dog's fur. They expand and contract, pushing themselves into the worst possible places. Plenty of dogs have been killed by foxtails in their ears, noses, or even lungs. They've been known to burrow into a dog's heart, or spinal column. My vet treated a dog that had a foxtail enter a rear paw and burrow so far it came out a front paw.

I check Zip and Godzilla carefully for foxtails (and cactus spines, because cattledogs are crazy), but I still have to worry about the ones I miss. I wish that we could avoid them altogether, but here in southern California pretty much every outdoor area is filled with them. Fortunately, neither of them has a coat that picks up a lot of nasties.

The OutFox is a brilliant piece of protective gear. It's surprisingly unobtrusive, most of the dogs we've tried it on haven't minded it. The hood is essentially a shaped bag with an elastic drawstring at the neck. A pair of velcro tabs attach it to the dog's collar for security.

Pros

• Protects eyes, ears, and noses from foxtails
• Allows normal rage of outdoor activity
• Makes my dog look kinda scary to grumpy sheep
• Custom sizing available
• Very easy to use
• Easy to condition reluctant dogs to wear it

Cons

• Mesh tends to collect slobber and dog snot, gets gross pretty quickly
• Looks kind of weird, takes some getting used to
• Collar straps aren't strong enough, ours is now missing in the field
• Only available from the manufacturer unless you live in northern California

Bottom Line

These are becoming standard equipment on the ranch, and we now use them every day. Unfortunately, we lost our first one despite properly attaching it to Zip's collar. When she came bounding out of the head-high weeds without it, I almost panicked. It has taken us three days to get a replacement shipped here, and I've been worried the whole time. I might stick a TabCat tracker on it...

Treat Tuesday: Blue Buffalo Wild Rolls

Blue Buffalo's Wild Rolls are kinda like a roll of salami, only with dog food instead of sausage. There are several different brands of dog food that come in roll form, and they are all very economical to use as training treats. They vary in value to the dogs, and the Wild Rolls seem to be especially tasty.

Good For

• Chopping into tiny training treats of the perfect size
• Staying moist and non-crumbly even after several hours exposed to the air
• Very high-value training treats
• Feeding to picky dogs, as these are also complete and balanced dog food

Not Good For

• Chopping into perfect neat cubes, this stuff is softer and squishier than any other food roll I've used
• Diabetic dogs, or those that need to watch their glycemic index. All rolled dog food contains a lot of sugar

How Much We Like Them

Enough that I buy them on a fairly regular basis to use as training treats. For the price, it's hard to beat the number of treats I get out of one roll. Plus I can chop them exactly as small as I need them.

Dog Tech: LinkAKC Doesn't Work

My LinkAKC smartcollar finally arrived on Friday! It's so beautiful, with such unique package design. Too bad I'm going to have to send it back. See, this is a smart collar that works with a smartphone app, and the app doesn't work, making Link AKC a $150 plain leather collar with a big awkward hunk of plastic.

The Hype

LINK AKC is a smart collar with an unprecedented amount of hype behind it. I preordered mine back in December, and since then I have received AKC's smartcollar newsletter every other day. Yes, every two days I get an email packed with awesome stuff about how great this collar is. Over the last three months I have received 44 different promotional emails about the product I had already ordered and committed to buying. I didn't mind though, because I am a giant nerd and couldn't wait to get it.

The Arrival

The packaging for the collar was wonderful. Very easy to open, but secure with proper protection for the electronics. No horrible plastic to cut through, and the whole thing seems pretty eco-friendly as well.

The collar is a very nice stitched leather piece that is a bit stiff like all new leather. It feels a bit big on Godzilla, but looks great on Zip. The actual tracker and its holder also seem bulky on Godzilla's neck.

The Setup

Putting the tracker onto the bracket and the bracket onto the collar was super easy and straightforward. I downloaded the Quick Start Guide to my phone, which instructed me to assemble the collar an then download the Link AKC app.

This is where things ground to a screeching halt. I should have been mere minutes away from creating an account, selecting and purchasing a service plan, and pairing the collar with my phone via Bluetooth. Upon opening, the app prompts the user to either sign in with Facebook, or create an account with an email address. I tried Facebook first, and after loading for a full five minutes, the app finally prompted me to choose a user picture. 

After selecting a picture of me and my dogs, it was time to activate the collar. The next screen prompted me to activate a service plan, with three possible options. I chose one, and was taken to a blank screen. Nothing ever loaded. Went back and tried again, same thing. Went back and selected a different service plan, same blank screen.

Being fairly tech savvy, I first tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app. No luck. Rebooting my phone had no effect either. Next I tried creating an account with an email address. The app informed me that I already had an account with that address. Login with my password failed, so I tried to reset the password. The password reset also failed. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling again, just in case. At this point I had been trying to get the Link AKC app to work for well over an hour.

Tech Support

 Saturday morning I called Link AKC tech support and spent 20 minutes on hold waiting to talk to someone that couldn't help me. They didn't know why it wasn't working, said it was a known issue, and that they would pass my information along to the engineers. There is no timeline for when this could be fixed, and in the meantime my smartcollar is just an expensive paperweight. Unlike Whistle, Link AKC does not have an online version you can access via computer. The collar will only work with the smartphone app, and the app doesn't work so the collar doesn't work. It is literally useless.

My LinkAKC collar is currently packed back into its lovely intuitive packaging awaiting its return to the company. They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, and I have no way of knowing if it will become functional before that time is up. This smart collar is a huge disappointment. Companies need to be careful how much customer enthusiasm they drum up, as it easily changes to customer rage when the product fails to meet expectations. Link AKC has failed to meet my expectations in every possible way.