About Csinieb
This excellent Sport Jacket was made by Csinieb, which is a small Hungarian company. They do an incredible job of coming up with different designs and fulfilling all your requirements. They can make a coat for you from different colors, with velcro or buckles, with holes for the collar and harness or without them to make it more waterproof - just tell them what you have in mind, and they will make it happen!
Csinieb Sport Jacket Review
Csinieb has a few different types of coat styles, but they make the coat using your dog’s measurements to be sure it will be a perfect fit. Even just looking at the pictures, you can see that they did a fantastic job with this coat: it fits Mia like a second skin - not too tight, not loose - just perfect!
The Sport Jacket is made from a waterproof neoprene material with fleece on the sides and the inside. While the coat is lightweight and thin, the neoprene material keeps the heat inside and protects from the wind.
We like that the coat covers the chest, the stomach, and the shoulders completely. This is important because if you are doing any kind of training where the dog has to wait between turns (like agility), you want to keep all these warm to minimize the chances of an injury. The “turtleneck” can be entirely extended for dogs with longer necks (like greyhounds) and can be rolled back, as seen on the pictures here.
The downside of the full-body coverage is that you have to pull the coat over the dog’s head and lift up one leg to get the coat on. In the case of our coat, the zipper is on the left side - blending in with the reflective stripe nicely.
The zipper is small but starts right behind the leg, so it is much easier to use than the one on the Didog Coat that I always had a hard time with.
On the order form, you can choose if you want to add a hole for the collar for free. I think it is most useful if you have a greyhound type dog with a long neck or maybe a small dog; I haven’t used it much with Mia.
The coat covers as much from the stomach as possible to keep the cold and snow away, but well… they had to make sure it also fits male dogs. For this reason, they left the coat a little shorter on the stomach but used an elastic piece to hold the back of the jacket down instead of making it floppy in the wind.
The inside of the coat and the orange parts on the outside are made from fleece which usually absorbs water well but it also dries very fast. We were surprised to have no trouble with the coat soaking through the fleece lines on the sides. We went for hikes in wet snow, and it did not stick to the coat at all. We haven’t had a chance yet to see how waterproof it is in the rain, but it’s not meant to be used as a raincoat.
The one definite con of the fleece material is that it’s a hair magnet. It collects all the loose hair from the dog - much more than the fluffier Csinieb Premium Comfort Winter Coat did, which also surprised me.
The best thing in this coat is that it does not restrict the movement at all, it is not bulky or fluffy but provides everything that you need for a hike or training during the cold months.
Update after a year
We used this coat a lot, even over the second season. We really like that it doesn’t have a buckle or straps that could get stuck on bushes while out hiking. The coat got completely muddy multiple times on playdates, and we had to wash it in the washing machine. Surprisingly it still looks almost like new! The reflective stripes got scratched over the playdates, and the fleece part is a little worn, but altogether the coat holds up much better than expected!
We also have to mention that the zipper broke during a playdate with another dog (the other dog grabbed it, so not the fault of the material at all). We contacted Csinieb about replacing the zipper, and they told us there is a lifetime warranty for problems like this! Although we wanted to pay for it, they didn’t let us. Customer service as it’s best :)
Checking Dog Coats with a Thermal Camera
We wrote an article checking 12 coats (including this one) with a thermal camera to see the insulation capabilities of different materials and coat designs.
If you want to learn more about our findings, click here to read the article!
Review Summary
The Csinieb Sport Coat is probably the best fall/spring coat we tested so far. It is not a serious winter coat (at least not during the incredibly cold New England winter) if you walk around slowly with your leashed dog. At the same time, it does exactly what the website says: keeps the active dogs warm without overheating them even on cold days with keeping the heat inside. The coat is closed, windproof, and the brown part of the coat is waterproof. I like that it’s straightforward to store: the lightweight, softshell material fits easily into your backpack. It’s really like a second skin that keeps your pup safe and warm during your adventures.
Where to buy
You can buy this coat from Csinieb on their website. Since their English website is not available yet, feel free to shoot them an email to csinieb.sales@gmail.com, describing what you have in mind. They do ship abroad ;)
Mia’s measurements
Many of you asked Mia’s measurements to better understand the different products’ fit. Your best chance of finding a good fitting gear is always to measure (and remeasure) your dog. Even we grab the measuring tape before getting a new product - even though we tested a lot of them, and have a good feeling of her size by now.
I share her measurements below, but don’t go ahead and order the same size just because your dog is similar to Mia ;)
Shoulder height: 19.5 inches (50 cm)
Weight: 37-44 pounds (17-20 kg)
Widest chest circumference (where the most harness would have the chest strap): 25-26 inches (63-65 cm)
Neck circumference for collars: 15-16 inches (38-40 cm)
Back lengths: 22 inches (56 cm)
