The Clymb recently held a Ruff Wear sale and I used the opportunity to buy Lola the
Sun Shower dog raincoat
. Northern California has had a pretty wet Spring and Lola was getting a little tired of hiking in the rain. As you can see from the picture above, Lola was not so keen on her dog raincoat from the moment she first tried it on.
The concept of the dog raincoat is great but the reality proved to be a bit different, mainly due to a few design issues. Unlike human raincoats, the hood on the Ruff Wear Sun Shower has no real structure or way of tightening around your dog's head. This means the hood just fell over Lola's eyes so she couldn't see or blew off in the wind.
A bigger problem seemed to be the lack of tail hook at the back of the raincoat like you see in all the D-Fa dog jackets. Without a tail hook, the coat would again just fly up in the wind leaving Lola with a wet back.
The positives about the dog raincoat are that it is very easy to get on and off and fit to your dog with the adjustable straps. The hood easily zips off for those dogs who might not like things on their head. The raincoat leaves plenty of room for your dog to maneuver naturally and the reflective trim means your dog will be visible during those inevitable night walks.
On most of the trails around San Francisco, dogs have to be on leash. I originally clipped Lola's leash into the leash loop on the back of the dog raincoat. Lola saw this as an opportunity to dig her front paws in and houdini herself out of the jacket as I walked forward. Not great when you have a wild turkey running after you at full speed!
I guess the biggest problem for me is that even while wearing the dog raincoat, Lola got mud and water on her legs and stomach. This meant I had to give her the usual hose down when we got back home. So if I am going to have to do the hose down and towel game regardless, why not just let her have complete unencumbered fun in the rain and mud?
For those of you that don't own water dogs or have dogs that really hate the rain however, this dog raincoat might be the incentive they need to go outside in bad weather even for a short walk. I will probably give this to my neighbor's Lab Buckeye as he hates getting rain on his face. We will see how he likes the Ruff Wear Sun Shower or if it's possibly just a Lab thing.
The
Ruff Wear Sun Shower
retails for $74.95.