Modern Dog Blog

I came across a post over at the Dogster Dog Blog, the one about “A Shocking New Way to Walk Your Dog,” and I can only imagine that Maria meant to get her readers all whipped up and pissed off. I’m always stunned at how adamantly people react to anything that they don’t understand. I don’t use remote collars often in my training, but I do use them. We always go with the gentlest route possible, and if a problem can be handled or a dog taught using treats, toys, and happy fun stuff, then great. If I can get the owner to follow directions and follow through with a program, great! Unfortunately, most owners are incapable or unwilling to do the work needed to actually train their dogs. And there certainly are dogs who simply need some compulsion if you want the training to actually “stick”. Some dogs need remote collars, some dogs need pinch collars, some dogs need to know that there is a yucky consequence for a bad choice. It’s just a fact. I don’t believe that you can fix everything by throwing food at it. Well, not with dogs anyway. I totally believe that in my personal life – have you seen my rear? Yikes, I threw a few too many cookies at it.

I’m really disgusted by the crowd over there, they are so adamant that they are a “touchy feely” group with the dog’s best interests at heart, and yet they find it ok to attack each other? It doesn’t make sense to me. Yes, I have seen people abuse ecollars, but I’ve seen people abuse cookies. I actually had a student in class once that was literally shoving food into her dogs mouth, like cramming it back to his molars, all the while saying “good doggie, here’s a treat!”. That dog was desperately trying to get away from her and her treats, but she had him trapped on a chair (little dog), he couldn’t get down, and she was putting nearly her whole hand in his mouth and forcing food down his throat! Tell me how that is fun or rewarding for the dog? I assure you, that dog looked sadder and sadder each time he came to class, and no amount of direction, suggestion, or demonstrating on my part could get her to stop. Poor dog. I often wonder if he ever just ran away.

Anyway, here is my comment to this charming post on how anyone who uses an ecollar obviously is going to rot in hell, I’m sad that just don’t even listen to another view, just jump to “oh, no bad bad bad – people everywhere abusing dogs!” Riiiiight, because my dogs are abused. Yup, the ones sleeping on the couch right now. The ones who are going to go to the park later to play ball, the same ones who get the best food I can provide, daily exercise, tons of toys, and we even pet them! Abused, yup.

I just hate it when people are so one way that they don’t even listen to the other side. Yes, you are entitled to your opinion, but with that comes the understanding that so is everyone else, and just because they don’t agree with you doesn’t mean they are wrong. Grrrrr!!

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Comment on Dogster Blog in response to their post about the simpleLEASH

“You all have gone off the deep end, shaking fingers and getting all self righteous, it’s kind of sad to see. Just throwing around ugly words about how horrible people are. So much for a dog “community.”

I have seen almost every dog training gimmick misused in some way – dogs with neck injuries because they have been whipped around on a “gentle” leader, dogs that have worn gentle leaders to long they have cut into their nose – how is that “gentle”? Choke chains can cause permanent skeletal damage, pinch collars can get embedded in flesh, and I’ve seen dogs absolutely tortured with electronic collars. Heck, you can even abuse cookies and end up with a fat, confused dog!

Really, anything can be abused if someone tries hard enough. Electronic collars are not bad, certainly the way some people use them is awful, but used properly, with the right amount of training, they can be valuable tools, especially with higher drive dogs.

I think the biggest problem with this product is that without a proper introduction to what a dog should do, chances are high that they will misunderstand the stimulus and bolt away from it, or, yes, some dogs will have pain induced aggression and certainly could bite the person closest to them. It’s not a product I would recommend just putting on your dog and hoping for the best, however, if you are going to do ecollar training, do it correctly with the help of an experienced professional.

I have four dogs, and have trained thousands more in the last 20 years. I’ve done almost every method out there, starting in the “good old days” of yank and crank and hope they get the idea eventually, to now where we are using clickers, food, toys, and markers to shape the most minute behaviors. Of course, I prefer toys and food and dog that wants to work with me, but you know what? Some dogs are so damaged that they need something else. I have worked several dogs through fears, as well as aggression problems, using a remote collar. Cookies wouldn’t have helped these dogs.

I have a dog that wears a remote collar whenever he leaves the house. We have done years of work, and he will still kill a dog given the chance. I choose not to give him that chance. He understands exactly what he should do when he feels the collar, and he knows darn well I can turn it up should he choose to ignore me. And I’m sorry, but all the cookies and counter conditioning in the world is not going to stop that dog when he takes a dislike to a particular dog.

I realize how you all think ecollars are “cruel” to the dog, but did you ever stop and think that if I didn’t use one how cruel it would be to let my dog attack another dog? How would you like to be the owner who’s dog gets picked up and shaken? How cruel would it be to me for my dog to have to be destroyed because I didn’t take steps to control his dog aggression? How cruel would it be for my dog to never be able to leave the house for fear that he would hurt another dog?

Tolerance people, and stepping back to listen to another viewpoint.
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Posted on March 25th, 2010 by michelle
Filed under: The Naked Part, Training