Your Questions About Dog Training Collars

admin answers:

Have the dog wear the collar for a week with the collar turned off. Make sure that you remove it at night when the dog is in the house. These collars are not meant to be left on 24/7. Doing so can cause severe skin issues. Be very neutral when putting on and taking off the collar. You want this to become as normal as clipping a leash on and off. After about a week just calmly reach down and turn the collar on while petting the dog. Again you don’t ant to make a big deal over the dog wearing the collar. Then start weaning the dog off of the collar by turning the collar off certain days but not removing the collar totally. Done correctly, many dogs can be weaned off of the collar. The important thing is not to wean off too soon or too quickly. You also need to understand that some dogs have to wear the collar forever too.

admin answers:

Yes, that is an excellent program! I’ve used many other training programs, and as hard as I tried, they weren’t complying. I’ve got 3 mini-dachshunds, very hard-headed. But when I saw the infomercial, I thought it was too good to be true, but I’d try it. My dogs literally changed in minutes. I wasn’t able to get through the entire program before I had to stop due to health problems in the family, but it’s been a year without training and they still do what they learned and know that I rule the house, not them. It turned my little terrors into little angels. And, believe it or not, they loved training and were so excited. I really need to start back up and finish the program. I very highly recommend the program!

admin answers:

Using pain for this issue is very likely to make it worse.

Save your money and teach your dog to be calm in the presence of other dogs.

Leslie McDevitt’s book, Control Unleashed, has some wonderful exercises for self-control – I recommend getting it.

One of the exercises in it is “Look at That.” It gets the dog in the habit of glancing at whatever distracts or upsets him, then automatically looking back at the handler. It works better than “watch me” or “leave it” for a lot of dogs, since it allows looking at the distraction, and includes an automatic, trained habit of looking right back at the handler after doing that.

The first step, before even playing the LAT game, is to get the dog in the habit of re-orienting to the human often. So standing beside a crate (rather than in front of it) when opening it, stopping after going through a door together, stopping while your dog is walking with you in the house or yard, and rewarding with lots of attention (and perhaps a treat) if and when the dog turns toward you, comes first.

Once that is habit, LAT works better. I usually teach the game starting with a neutral stimulus, like a boring object held in my hand, but waved in the dog’s peripheral vision (works well with two people, one to be the distraction, the other to be the person to whom the dog refocuses).

You can then escalate to other movements, objects, noises, etc. Temptations, rather than mere distractions, can be part of it.

A description of the exercise can be found here, and a video of a dog being trained with it is below that:

http://www.akinfdt.net/look_at_that.html

With your own dogs, you can also try this:

Always make the presence of other pets a pleasant experience – tensing up, scolding, shooing and grabbing teach that another animal is to be disliked.

Learn the signs of peacemaking and stress in dogs.

Praise any appropriate interaction that you see – polite dogs can help one another learn.

Serial feeding is a handy way to support several goals:
– helping an animal learn its name
– getting an animal to enjoy the company of another animal or person
– encouraging animals to remain calm around one another
– strengthening the idea that food should not be taken without permission

Have all of the animals within reach, and equidistant from you. If any know “sit” or “down,” and are comfortable doing so in one another’s presence, ask for it. Say an animal’s name, your cue for giving permission to eat something, and feed that animal a treat. Then do the same with the next, etc., until each has had a treat.

Any animal that gets pushy, bothers another animal, or does anything else that you don’t want, doesn’t get a treat when their turn comes around again. Keep moving yourself, if need be, to keep the distance equal between you and every animal.

Periodically repeat this ritual, to remind all that the presence of the others brings good things, but only if they are all calm and polite.