Howdy and welcome to Wednesday,

The winter is fast arriving and it’s getting dark a little earlier every day. Before the days when Mackenzie was ready for bed as soon as dad got home, I used to take my evening walks at that time. Which was fun in the summer because the days are so long. But in the winter, that meant it was dark, dark, dark. As dark as I am! And a big black Newfie running around in the pitch black is not only spooky, but downright dangerous. People couldn’t see us, we couldn’t see them. Cars didn’t notice us (although that has to do with a some of them just not paying attention) and it was just altogether not safe.

We’ve been through a whole lot of different types of devices to let ourselves be seen at night and they have ranged from super cheap to quite expensive.  We tried little lights clipped to my collar, which promptly died after the second dip into the icy stream. We got a cheap light up collar that might work well on dogs with less hair, but around a Newfie’s neck you can’t see it at all. And so we were beginning to give up the battle when we found something that we still enjoy using, even a year later. That’s right. More than a year later, I still haven’t managed to kill these things.

Have you ever heard of Nite Ize? They make all sorts of interesting LED lights, from frisbees to flashlight replacements to these handy “markers” that now grace my harness in the evenings.

See that green thing hanging on my side? That’s it! I really didn’t want to stand still for these pictures…and we were already home during the second one which was really unfair because all I wanted to do was get that harness off, lay down and dry off from the rain. But no…stand still, Ayla. Let me take a picture of that silly light on you, Ayla.

Gah.

We have two different kinds of these little light things. The LED Collars (for clipping around your arm, say if you go running) and the LED Cinch Marker (with the elastic thing). They both work pretty well and the cinch version is actually a bit older because we only bought one to try it out first. Naturally the humans were skeptical. I personally like the stealth-like advantage I have in the dark. But since we’ve wandered up on people in the winter with no lights at all and they scared the beejeezahs out of me, I guess it’s only fair that we don’t freak out other people too.

Both of them look green when they’re turned off but only one of them actually glows green when turned on. You can get them in either color. The plastic on the cinch one has gotten a bit cracked and worn over time, but I have worn these things in rain and snow (we usually take them off in the mornings so they don’t get over exposed — hence the cinch one really gets folded up a lot to go through the loop), but we have had no trouble with them at all. They’re apparently quite easy to turn on (you squeeze the sun-looking logo) and allow me to be seen from at least 20 meters (60 feet) away…as long as my head isn’t blocking the light!

We also got one of the LED Wands which is really cool and it hangs from Mack’s stroller. It has a tiny little LED flashlight inside of it and the wand is actually just a plastic case that helps it reflect better. You can easily use this thing as a flashlight and it is totally waterproof. You can even take it swimming or boating with you, or use it as a signal flare. You do have to open the wand every time you want to turn the light off and on, which is kinda funky — but it’s a small price to pay for such a powerful light. And really, how else would they make it totally waterproof like that? The wand even has a space to store extra batteries…unfortunately we don’t have any of those, though, and ours is in desperate need of them.

So, those are my thoughts on these Nite Ize products. If you’re looking for something to make your winter nights a little less dark and gloomy, I highly recommend them. There has even been talk about putting a couple of the wands on me when I finally kill the other markers…we’ll just have to see about that!

Stay safe out there!

Ayla

Note: This post is simply a review of products we purchased from Nite Ize. Nothing was provided as compensation for this review — it’s just our honest opinion.