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I've had a total misconception of how doggie shock collars are supposed to be used.
Posted by
Dr.Vermin (aka Dr.Vermin)
Jul 10 '09, 14:55
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(from Ernie's House of Whoop Ass - ehowa.com)
I think I mentioned before that 0.0000374 seconds after I let Bianca off the leash one time, she made a mad dash straight into the lake behind my house, thus requiring me to jump in right after her. She didn't stop when I told her to, she ignored my calling her name, instead she went where she wanted to. Thus I think we can agree that she is *not* off-the-leash-trained, which is one of the things we're trying to accomplish with this trainer. And when she's on the leash, giving her gentle (and not so gentle!) tugs with leash correction has been for the most part, ineffective.
She'll pay attention for a minute or so, and then go back to running out her leash with arm dislocating yanks. Now enter the shock collar -- or "stimulation collar" as the trainer would like them to be referred to. Put that on Bianca, give her a little zap -- or stimulation -- until she looks up at you, guide her back to you with the leash, give her another stimulation, and praise her. Take a few steps away from her -- zap -- guide her back to you -- zap to stop -- and more praise. Why the second zap? Because otherwise you're calling your dog to you and she could run right past you. The first zap means 'hey you come here' the second means 'hey you stop'. If the dog wanders away or gets distracted by something else -- a quick zap 'hey you pay attention' to get them focused onto you, then more praise.
As far as the dog knows, when they wander away or don't pay attention, they get this weird uncomfortable feeling. But when they stick close to their owner, they get praise. So within ten minutes of starting out, both dogs had stopped running the leashes out to the end and were instead dutifully following us around like well behaved little pains in the asses.
And guess what? They weren't scared, they weren't broken, they weren't cowering in the corner. They were actually happy because of all the praise they were getting. We're supposed to work with each dog, ten minutes at a time, four times a day for the next week. So while I don't want there to be any misconceptions about me being totally onboard the shock collar thing just yet -- I can certainly see how they could be abused in the hands of a sadistic asshole -- I can certainly see their usefulness, too.
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