Training Collars on Puppies

I read that, too!!! It made so much sense.

http://www.peterdobias.com/communit...an-cause-disease-and-possibly-lead-to-cancer/

I cannot say I agree with training collars at all. My dogs wear flat, leather collars to keep their tags on. That's it. I use a slip lead or a harness/leash but a leash is ONLY for safety... it is not for training. I want my dog to behave me, not a collar. Imo, a training collar is counterproductive to teaching my dog to obey my commands. It's one more step to overcome to get to a naturally well behaved dog. Leashes and collars break, people make mistakes and drop leads. A dog who obeys you, and focuses on you over anything is a dog who is safe no matter what.

Putting training collars on puppies is unimaginably lazy and careless. When a puppy is in their socialization window, the LAST thing you want to create is associations between painful collar corrections & seeing other dogs/people on walks. I'm not going to say that every dog in every situation doesn't need a training collar - but certainly no puppy deserves that kind of treatment, when they haven't even been given the chance to learn what you want from them.

I don't like it, but at this point, I figure it's unavoidable. For the most part, people don't want to train their dogs. They want them to come out of the box well-behaved and effort-free. So I guess I'd rather have a puppy on a humane piece of "training" (I use that word loosely, because almost nobody I see is actually using it to train anything) equipment than to see them locked in the house or straining on a collar until their eyeballs bulge and their owners lose their patience and get mad.

I didn't use anything except a flat collar and leash with Steve. But he's Border Collie. A different puppy might be a different case.

It bugs the crap out of me, though, when I see all these dogs on head halters who are just *miserable*. They don't want to walk. They're rubbing their faces on the ground or on their owners or on anybody they can access because they want that thing off their nose. Head halters are so aversive to some dogs, but they're billed as humane, so people don't seem to bother to look at the dog wearing it, and people don't understand that they need to desensitize the dog to wearing it.

I thought the same of gentle leaders but we use them a lot at my work and I'm actually super impressed with their help, especially with super reactive dogs. I do find them annoying to put on though.

ITA with this, although I do use a GL on Savvy in some situations (due to overstimulation issues, not for pulling) but he tolerates it pretty well and I did work on desensitizing him to it beforehand. I used to wok at a place where GLs were the main tool of choice for pulling and after seeing how horribly many dogs react to them, I couldn't continue to recommend them to most people for just pulling (which did not earn me any points with the boss...). I think they have their place, especially if the owner puts int he time desensitizing. They can work great on reactive or aggressive dogs and can work well for overestimation. But it's not a tool that I would suggest to most people for pulling problems.

Oh yes, I don't see it as a no-pull tool, but a great training tool when used correctly.

Unfortunately as glamorous and idealist a one-with-the-dog purely positive methodology is it is not well suited for the average population. The feelings of confusion, lack of connection, and frustration more often than not ime bubble up to harsher corrections than would be prior. Not to mention a feeling of giving up and rehoming happens more often than I'm comfortable with because try as try might the dog soon becomes labeled unworkable and frankly the average owner just wants a pet with minimal behaviors, IMO it's much better to train for moderate ease in those cases.

Gotta put the work in but work is relative, many of my clients don't walk their dogs if they pull too much, if a no pull devise or a spray bottle correction solves the pulling then by all means its worth the walks.

This. Just... this, x1000.

If I'm working with my pet OB class, and I have an elderly couple with a 5 mo old American Bully that's already dragging them around the block, so she never gets walked, so she pulls harder... They don't care if they EVER have a "naturally well-behaved dog", they just want to get some handle on her. Prong collar worked WONDERS in this case, they come back and tell me proudly that Roxie now gets 2 walks a day and is doing much better at home.

Selfish, lazy, a crutch, etc? Maybe. They're still using rewards and they're letting her self-correct as opposed to a collar pop, but I'm sure I'm not meeting the glowing ideal of purely positive training. Oh well. *shrug* There are a ton of arguments you can make: They shouldn't have the dog in the first place (true), they should have started this training earlier, knowing she would be big (true), if they just took the time to "do it right" the dog wouldn't need the prong collar (true), but the fact is that they have dog, they DIDN'T train her earlier, and the dog can't afford to go without walks while they spend 8 weeks "doing it right". Reality isn't always ideal - in fact, it rarely is.

When I train my personal dogs, they sometimes wear leashes and sometimes don't. I tell people I use a leash like a fence - it's just there to keep the dog from leaving and keep everybody safe. Flat collar, harness, slip, whatever - my dogs aren't "leash smart" because I never tried to trick them, lol. For most clients, though, it quickly becomes clear that for leash walking specifically, the sanitized, "purely positive" approach isn't always practical.

I don't think it's really necessary to put training collars on puppies - not if you start working on a LLW immediately. But 90% of the population doesn't do that. I'd rather see dogs in Easy Walks or (properly fitted and used) head collars so they can still be exercised. I don't think choke or prong collars are necessary for puppies ever though - ask me how Mu became DR.

I'm a little irked at the assumptions towards adult dogs and training collars in this thread. I have a Gentle Leader for Tipper. It's not because I'm lazy, it's not because I didn't try, and it's not because I just want a quick fix. It's because I literally cannot walk her outside on a flat collar, harness, or easy walk without wanting to kill her. We've taken three basic obedience classes, one class to work specifically on LLW and one outdoor hiking class. I ended the first three sessions of the outdoor hiking class in tears because my dog wouldn't even look at me, she was so overstimulated. I love taking my dogs places, but the massive amount of frustration for both me and Tipper that happens without the Gentle Leader is SO not worth it. And since I've started using it we've made huge strides in our LLW. I dunno, it sucks that they're used as a crutch by some people, but IMO even incorrectly used they're still less harmful than an incorrectly used choke chain or prong collar.

I use a halti on Mitsu once in a while, more for training purposes than anything. I find it helps me teach her the "leave it" or "look at me" game. Being true to her pit bull heritage she is a people lover and its sometimes hard to get her to transfer her attention back to me, and I find when I use the halti its so much easier.

But after a few sessions with the Halti I switched to her harness and I found it was so much easier to do the games.

If the easy walk hadn't been invented, I highly doubt I'd still have Lucy--she'd have gone back to the shelter because she was an overstimulated nightmare when I brought her home. I lived in an apartment, she needed walks. I worked full time, so I had a limited window to get her walks in--I allotted half an hour in the morning, and drove her to the dog park in the evening to RUN RUN RUN off energy, so she became livable.

If that 30 minutes was spent playing "be a tree", we would have made it 10 feet in that half hour, even with me dangling string cheese on her nose. Outside was just way too exciting. The easy walk meant that she actually got a decent walk in the mornings.

Granted, Lucy was 3 when we got her, not a puppy. But if she had behaved the same as a little puppy, I don't know that I'd have had any other realistic choice.

I generally don't like to see training tools thrown on puppies without the owner trying to teach with just a basic collar first. But as others have said, a lot of people just don't like to train or don't have the patience to teach something that will take time. So if that means that the puppy misses out on walks and outings because he won't stop pulling on the leash, I'd rather the person put a training tool on the puppy so the puppy still gets out to enjoy things.

I personally have never used a training tool on any of my puppies until they were about 8-10 months old. And only then if I couldn't get the results I wanted without something else to help.

My dogs were all for the most part taught to walk on a loose leash with a martingale collar. Dance never was taught - she just naturally walks nice. The Dobes both got a couple of prong lessons once they were older and realized that they could out weigh me. I know a lot of positive trainers don't believe in prong collars, but I believe there is a time and a place for everything, and if used right, there is nothing wrong with them. And now that my dogs are older, they all walk perfectly fine on regular collars. But if I'm going on a group walk with them, sometimes I'll throw an easywalk harness on both of the Dobes just because I want a relaxing long walk and don't want to have to remind them to keep the leash loose. I mainly bought the harnesses for my mom as they don't walk nice for her, but I discovered that using them myself is quite nice sometimes.

IMO, putting a prong on a puppy is like using a hammer to kill a fly. Having said that, any collar can be a weapon in the wrong hands. Prongs make me uncomfortable for the 'average' dog owner that hasn't learned any leash finesse. Head halters are the lessor of two evils imo but again if not used correctly it is a problem.
People always say that they have a dog pulling problem..............what I see is dog's having a people pulling problem. For the most part people teach their dogs to pull, don't have enough finesse to stop hanging onto their dogs and very few people naturally have that skill and that light feel for the leash