The dog collar, so often taken for granted, has a long and illustrious history. Anyone fortunate enough to share their life with a dog in the present day is participating in an ancient tradition every time they place a collar around their dog’s neck and take it out for a walk.
The dog collar is a global link between people in the present, no matter their nationality, religion, or political affiliation, which also connects them firmly with the past and each other.
Some Stats?
According to the AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association), 43,346,000 households in the United States own dogs while statistics from Rainwalk Pet Insurance place the number for 2022 much higher at 70 million. The Insurance Information Institute, in their 2017 survey, concluded Americans spent $69.4 billion on their dogs in that year alone, while the recent A Pup Above dog food infographic, drawn from the APPA (American Pet Products Association) 2021-2022 survey, gives an estimate of $1,480.00 in annual expenses for dog owners ($81.00 in “treats” alone), who now, as noted, number close to 70 million in the USA. It is no surprise that dogs are among the most popular and best-loved pets in the present day, but the designation of “man’s best friend” is no recent development. Dogs and humans have been walking together since ancient times and the dog collar has been the common denominator in every era.
Oldest Depiction of Leashed Dogs
The basic design of the collar has not changed since the time of ancient Mesopotamia but variations on the collar, specifically ornamentation and style, reflect the values of the various world cultures that kept dogs. These subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, alterations to the central design can be quite telling in the role dogs played and how they were regarded in different time periods and cultures.
The oldest depiction of what seems to be dogs on leashes – suggesting some sort of collar – comes from the region of Shuwaymis in modern-day northeastern Saudi Arabia. In a November 2017 article in Science magazine, author David Grimm describes the work of archaeologist Maria Guagnin of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany. Guagnin and her team cataloged over 1,400 rock art panels at Shuwaymis and another region, Jubbah, which include depictions of hunting dogs. At Shuwaymis, one panel shows thirteen dogs and a male hunter; two of the dogs are linked to the hunter by lines which have been interpreted as leashes. This panel is dated to 8,000 years ago.
Collars in Ancient Greece
Egypt’s long-standing association with Greece through trade most likely influenced the Grecian dog collar, but the Greeks needed a collar which would not only control the animal but protect it from predators such as wolves. The ancient Greek invention of the modern-day choke-chain collar and spike collar was inspired by this need. The Greeks also valued the dog, as evidenced by their regular appearance in Greek mythology and Greek literature such as the three-headed dog Cerberus who guarded the gates of Hades and Odysseus‘ loyal dog Argos, among others. Plato even claimed that the dog is a true philosopher owing to its ability to tell friend from enemy and truth from falsehood without instruction.
Greek collars express this admiration through elaborate ornamentation and bright colors. Evidence of this comes from the Greek drinking cups (rhyta or rhytons, plural and rhyton, singular) and other tableware which are ornamented with images of collared dogs. Few actual dog collars have survived but collars in art and these figurative collars are thought to represent actual collars.
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