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Lol I have never needed to zap my dog to teach it something. Or hit them, scream at them or abuse them. A little treat and patience is all I ever needed. And if they get feisty/not paying attention a small squirt bottle with water squirting them on the butt is enough to get their attention.
Last edited by Electrician4you; 01-25-2014 at 08:30 PM..
Lol I have never needed to zap my dog to teach it something. Or hit them, scream at them or abuse them. A little treat and patience is all I ever needed. And if they get feisty/not paying attention a small squirt bottle with water squirting them on the butt is enough to get their attention.
You will have to show me your way sometime........BTW.....the dog will be very near a wild bear.
If they don't listen.......they will be attacked.......and so will you.
I am looking forward to you just controlling these dogs with a treat.
None of these dogs have shock collars on.......they have learned.
What a sickening way to "train" an animal. How lazy can you get.
Did you even GLANCE at the videos on the collar site or read the PDF?
I'm the first person to accuse people of being lazy, willfully uninformed, clueless and overly and incorrectly opinionated about theories that I consider set in stone - such as the pack concept. You can't even get people to WALK a dog they're so lazy and only want the dog as their personal entertainment, regardless of the DOG'S needs!
But...That's an indictment that isn't fair to all people.
The hunting and competing dogs LOVE doing it. They are only getting a SIGNAL. You can't make a dog hunt or compete if they are not cut out for it or if they are afraid or nervous or paranoid.
A BEEP, VIBRATION, PAGE is NOT abuse when it's a "CONVERSATION".
LOL that Shar Pei dog client would MOCK the owner with the collar. It was a GAME with him. Nobody was SHOCKING him on top power.
Try one on. Even though I would never use them because I am not a professional trainer of ANYTHING, they are not abuse, used correctly. And do I think that they should be used by "most" people? NO. However that doesn't mean everyone who uses them is lazy or abusive IN FACT, those people put more work into their dogs than 95% of the COUNTRY.
That dog's 100 lb owner had to get a double mastectomy and had nobody to take the 80 lb.dog. The dog was a POWERHOUSE who LOVED attacking her older Shar Pei because it never got enough exercise and her home was turning into a complete danger.
So her only option was to turn him into a rescue or figure out a way to be able to train him without using her BODY.
I guess farmers shouldn't use electric fences either.
Last edited by runswithscissors; 01-26-2014 at 08:19 AM..
People will say hunting is abuse. People will say even fake hunting without killing anything is abuse.
People will say if you can't make the dog do all the tricky fancy competitive field work or training without a collar that they have no business doing it.
People will say the HUMANE thing is to feed food 24/7 and watch tv.
People will say that running in a circle chasing a laser is "exercise".
People will say anything without even researching the thing they object to.
People will also claim that there should be NO KILL SHELTERS in America, while willfully ignoring the reason why there are so many and of course, that there are no people to rescue all these dogs - let alone TRAIN THEM.
People will make up their OWN ideas of animal behavior based on nothing but their imagination, or thinking dogs are just small people anyway so...
I started this thread in order to learn about the ways dog owners use e-collars. I am somewhat familiar with the newer techniques certain professional trainers are using, however I have never used a shock collar personally. Some of the methods professional trainers employ kind of perplex me and I am interested to know if these more subtle, nuanced e-collar techniques are understood by the general remote training public.
I'll give an example of "gentle" shock collar training that confuses me:
A trainer will set the stimulation level very low, just enough to annoy the dog / "get his attention". The dog has already learned the Place command with no shock collar on. Once the dog grasps the command, the shock collar goes on. As the dog makes his way to Place (as he is supposed to) the trainer begins a continuous stimulation and only releases that "pressure" once all 4 of the dog's feet are on Place. In this application, the electrical stimulation is said to be a motivator, similar to leash pressure. I can't imagine shocking a dog who is not only doing nothing wrong, but is actually in the process of doing exactly what the trainer wants!
I am curious to understand exactly how dog owners use these devices. I suspect that many people would only begin a stimulation once they have already given the dog a chance to comply without one. Yet this is not how I've seen the new school shock trainers do it.
I shock my dogs all the time, especially this time of year - as in when I'm petting them on carpet the static electricity builds up and zaps both of us. My dogs are certainly not traumatized by this level of shock, and there is a small group of professional trainers that claims to use such a low level of shock in their training that a human can barely perceive it. I have observed this type of training and I do see precisely when the dog is being zapped - I see giveaways like quick head shakes and split second tics - but I am willing to believe that this level of shock does not cause the kind of pain and terror most people think of when they hear "shock collar". The part I can't get past is the practice of using shock as motivation - i.e. applying a low level, continuous stimulation to create pressure, so that this pressure can be released as the reward for compliance. We see this basic style of training with horses (apply annoying leg pressure and once the horse goes forward, release the pressure to let him know he's done the right thing) and we see it with dogs in other forms such as leash work and prong collars. Pressure and release. Motivation and reward. But somehow when shock is involved the power imbalance just seems amplified to me.
I like to fully understand dog training methods in order to form an opinion about them. There are different ways of using e-collars and I am very interested in ascertaining whether the general public is actually using these collars in a more humane way than the professional trainers whose stated goal is to use these collars in the most humane way possible. I want to know if dog owners use these devices as punishment when the dog knows better and makes the wrong choice or if they use shock as pressure to influence the dog to make the correct choice, or both.
Good thing. If 50 percent of the people are humanely and intelligently using these collars, another 50 percent are equally stupid, overdoing, ignorant, lazy, mean, or outright evil. No dog, that appears to require these collars by their owners or poor trainers, could not be trained, using another fashion. Back when I was a child riding horses, a few of the "cowboy" trainers would tie a horses 4 legs together and beat them and beat them and they couldn't get away, then of course they were beaten until they fell down and while they were down until they could no longer move. And then they were considered "broken" and they would then begin the training process! One a-hole my family new well, a Kansas cowboy, always carried a long training whip when he went into the stall of his stallion, so he could remind him who was boss. The horse shivered and actually made whimpering sounds whenever he saw him. Ignorant evil is what he was. That guy found out that people who wanted him to train their horses were upset at his tactics so to make lots of money, he finally stopped breaking in that manner, he became pretty famous horse trainer, but much was still done in secret.
OP, I can only tell you how I use the collar. I don't know how anyone else uses it.
The collar teaches nothing. The dog must have some sort of traditional training method to teach him what the command means before the collar is introduced.
I have used the collar to break several different dogs of livestock killing. The livestock killing is self-rewarding and almost impossible to stop once the behavior is learned. The shock collar, turned up to full power, is used to remove the fun and to make it appear like the livestock itself is causing the shock. If the livestock appears to be able to shock the dog, then chasing loses it's appeal.
The other use I have for the collar is for a dog who believes that he no longer has to obey once he gets a distance away from the handler. The command is given, ignored, and the message sent that, yes, indeed, I really can still reach you way out there.
This is generally not something needed for a well raised dog who has been properly trained from puppy. The disobedience at a distance can be an issue with a rescue who has been shown, at some time in his life, that once the people can't catch him, he can do as he pleases.
Wyatt McRiot wears a shock collar. It is turned down so that it only beeps and doesn't shock. He believed I could not make him obey once he was loose and he was also a livestock chaser. Chasing livestock, by law in Oregon, is a mandatory death sentence and it can not be allowed as it puts the dog's life in danger.
Wyatt adores his beeping collar, because when I put it on him, he gets to run wild and free, anywhere he wants, as long as he can still see me and as long as he does not chase the poultry. He can chase the jack rabbits as long as he breaks off the chase before he gets too far away from me. He can go camping and be loose in the campsite.
He wears the collar so that I can "beep" him as a gentle reminder. He has not been shocked since the first day when he had to be shown what the collar was capable of. I don't even beep him any more. He has the rules figured out.
Without his collar, he would be living either shut inside the house or on a leash and never anything else. He is high energy and he needs his high speed race around the property every day. Without it, he would burst at the seams.
Last edited by oregonwoodsmoke; 01-26-2014 at 09:53 AM..
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