****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I bought this after we returned from our most recent vacation. We realized that our dogs do better with an evening walk as well as a morning walk. (They’re chihuahuas, so we thought we could get away with just having them in the yard, but they’re older now--thirteen--and we have to pay attention to what they need).When on vacation, we needed to walk the dogs at night with a flashlight. We have a headlamp which worked pretty well. Also one of those little flashlights works pretty well.Note that I saw this product several years ago and thought, why would I need that? You have to buy all the parts you want.Let me take that back now. It’s handy to have everything in one place. Not go looking for all the separate parts when you’re still basically asleep!One other reviewer said she zip-tied a house key to her gismo, and that seems brilliant to me. When we have an extra house key, I’ll definitely try that. Lately I’ve been clipping my house key to the carabiner and that seems to work well.So I bought the flashlight attachment. It doesn’t seem very bright, but it’s summer now and I’m walking the dogs while the sun is still out. If it’s not working in December, I’ll notice it. (side note: it charges on usb, and the charge does hold for a long time.)My partner feels better about me walking the dogs in the evening. With the flashlight (and the little light up part in the handle) I’ll be visible to motorists when it’s dark.I saw several reviews where folks who complained about the bag dispenser shredding the bags. Mind you, the “free” blue bags they give you with these things are always super cheap and shred if you look at them wrong. I put my regular bags in the dispenser (yes it takes a bit of practice) and they work great! They tear off cleanly (which is totally a new experience for me, since usually it takes two hands to tear off a bag), the little hook for holding a loaded bag works fine.Before using this, we had used bag dispensers attached to their leashes. This is way better than that!The gismo itself is just the handle with a carabiner attached. If I were walking two large dogs, I would get the double carabiner, but for our small dogs, it works great with the single. No tangling. It’s much, much easier to pull the dogs along when they find a tasty bit out on our walk.Some folks say the handle is too big for their little hands. I have large hands and I think it works great. It says it’s the size of a women’s tennis racket, so should fit a bunch of folks, even with smaller hands.I like it because it’s the same shape as the grip of my walking poles. Hey, maybe there should be a combination dog-walking device/walking pole? Nah, too niche.I don’t think it’s at all heavy (too heavy for your hands? Maybe if you’re also looking at your phone?!?) Note that when I walk my dogs, I don’t carry my phone and I don’t try to do anything else. It’s just me and my dogs, walking.
