I love talking theory, so loving this thread
In theory the possibilities really are endless, people like SG, Denise Fenzi, et al are so inspirational! In practice, with my own dogs, with my baggage, with their baggage, I fall *way* short! But I’m going to keep trying
Ecollars bug me, they really do. Not because of people like AdrianneIsabel who use them thoughtfully and purposefully on drivey dogs who are engaged in an activity that the dog finds hugely reinforcing, but because of the SMS types who put them on every single dog who walks in the door. And the truth is, 99.9% of the people who slap an ecollar on their dog’s neck are the latter, not the former.
And that’s the rub. People see someone like Michael Ellis working a dog wearing an ecollar and equate that with their local trainer who uses an ecollar to teach LLW to anything that weighs more than 20 pounds.
A highly driven dog, doing something he loves more than anything in the world, with an impeccable clicker-y foundation, with a handler who the dog trusts implicitly, getting a few nudges from an ecollar is 110% NOT the same thing as a pet dog trying to go for a walk not allowed to feel “safe†unless he stays in an invisible zone of proximity to the owner.
Sometimes its just easier to say screw ecollars and avoid them like the plague.
Gal on the dane forum has an 8 week old pup and is already asking if she should be looking in to e-collars. Stuff like that makes me cringe. And worse when you get posts in reply that “my ecollar was a life saver, I love itâ€. Its hard to reply to stuff like that without sounding like a rabid PP psycho
As to the OP, honestly, I have no idea what he is doing or trying to accomplish. I skipped most of it, scrolled to the end, and never saw the dog do an actual retrieve - did I miss it?
I taught my first ever formal retrieve with a clicker. Lots of people were very condescending and did the figurative pat on the head “oh, that’s nice dear†while adding that I’d eventually have to introduce force to make sure the dog knows he *has* to retrieve every time.
Well, a few weeks ago I threw the dumbbell, it bounced weird and landed under a table behind a box filled with recyclables. Curious to see what would happen, I sent my dog. He ran to the box, thinking it was in there, shoved his nose around, couldn’t find it, shoved the box aside, knocked the table, dumping a display of zukes bags all over himself, saw the dumbbell wedged between the table leg and the wall, nosed it out, grabbed it, and came running back. Sloppy front through - maybe I need force there?