An Electronic Dog Training Collar
- Best For Obedience?
Getting a dog to behave, especially the unruly ones is a problem that many owners face in the first weeks of ownership.
You can change a dog’s behavior in several ways but the popular one at the moment is by use of a dog training collar.
Dog training collars are the source of much controversy amongst animal welfare people as basically, the collar gives off an electric shock when the animal has misbehaved.
This is judged to be animal cruelty by the critics and there are demands for dog training collars to be banned.
Manufacturers have responded by producing collars that have either variable shock programs or a much lower shock altogether.
The Theory Behind A Dog Training Collar
Collars work on the basis that animals have an aversion to pain and anything they do that causes them pain, will be something they quickly learn not to do again.
The idea behind the newer collars is that although the shock is slight and is not likely to cause physical harm, it does get the dog’s attention that it is doing something unwanted.
Similarly, confinement training with an invisible fence buried in the ground, will give the animal a shock once it passes a certain boundary point.
The dog training collar is placed on the dog and a wire buried underground emits low-level electricity much like an above-ground electric fence used for cattle.
To mark a visible boundary many people use flags placed in the ground to mark the boundary helping them and the dog to recognize the invisible line that is not to be crossed.
In a reasonably short time your dog should learn where the boundary is located and you can turn off the power to the fence and even turn off the dog training collar too.
As long as the dog feels the collar it will not usually try to cross the boundary line having learned its position.
Our view is that if you love your dog, presumably you do not want to cause it pain, however small this amount of pain is.
Therefore, instead of using a dog training collar we prefer to use the traditional positive reinforcement methods of training.
