Our tiny Jack Russell puppy (Poppy) who was a rescue and is now 13 weeks, has been wearing her normal webbing cat collar now for a few weeks and it has a proper buckle with tongue to stop the end of the collar just slipping out.  It has all been going well but occasionally she scratches at the collar and has made the surface of the collar fray as its made of normal collar webbing.  She has been checked over by the vet and has no fleas/flea dirt and as we have another dog we flea treat anyway, so the vet was of the opinion that there was nothing causing her to scratch other than just feeling the collar around her neck and he confirmed that it wasnt too tight or anything.  However today she got a claw caught in the fraying, so I need to replace the collar (I've taken it off).  Would a leather collar be too hard and stiff for her as she is only tiny, as the webbing ones fray.  And if a leather one would be ok, where do I get a really small and soft one?  She really needs to wear a collar all the time, in case she escapes as she is so tiny as she can slip through tiny gaps. I dont want her to get her claw caught again, especially if its when I have to nip out somewhere. (She never gets left for long, her bladder is not big enough for that, but it's always when you blink when something happens).

They do lovely handmade collars here.  http://www.accoladeleathercraft.com/

Personally I wouldn't use a leather collar until the dog was older.  

Hi Scattergood, can you tell me why that is though, is it because its too stiff and may rub? or is it some other reason.

You can get soft leather collars though

I prefere cloth collers so they can be easily cut with scissors...after having two pups playing and the coller ending up strangling one, both pups paniking and making things worse, we where thankful pup still had a fine "puppy coller" on still, now we won't allow collers on in the house and only have cloth ones.

Lambs leather collars are very very soft so much so I ended up wearing my last puppies first one as a bracelet and the lead I use for showing made of the same folds up in my hand as a material one would.Thay also could be cut in an emergancy by a normal pair of scissors if need be but obviously don't frey as the material ones do.I got mine  Here HTH

Mainly because they can be hard at first and puppies have sensitive little necks - I wouldn't like to train a puppy with a leather collar - there are times when they are young when they just pull really hard and a hard collar would hurt.  I know you can get soft leather but I thought they were a bit expensive especially for a puppy and doubtless you may need a bigger size in a few months.   I used a nylon type whilst Oscar was a puppy and moved on to to leather as soon as he became adult size.

I've ordered a lambs leather collar for her.  I need to keep collars on both my two indoors with id tags on, as it will only need the children to leave the front door open for more than a millisecond for the pup to follow us out of the door.  I just cant take the risk.  She does a perfect recall even at 13 weeks, but I'm not going to take any chances.  I looked at some ordinary leather collars today and I agree that they are much too stiff and hard edged for Poppy, we walk her in a harness anyway so she wouldnt have it pull against her neck, but it would rub.

She got her claw caught in the fraying again today even after I trimmed the points on her nails, so I really cant put a cloth collar on her, so at least a very very soft leather collar would be comfortable and safe.  The website with the lambs collar says that her size is £5.95, so it wont break the bank and if she needs a bigger collar in a while then it wont be a problem.

Thanks ever so much for your help, we start puppy classes this week, and she learns everything really quickly, so we are going to have great fun :D