How humans can screw up with a prong collar.
Top 4 Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make
Purchasing a poor quality prong & introducing it incorrectly.
Fitting it incorrectly, ie: having it too loose will stop it from working correctly (We find the best results with the 2mm fine, it must be right behind the ears and prints must touch the skin)
Letting negative emotions affect your dog – dogs read your energy. If you act like something is a big deal, they will react accordingly.
Allowing dogs to object (bark, whine, alligator roll, lie down) because they could no longer do what they were used to doing – look up “extinction burst” .
If someone lacks education or skill in application, it’s not the tool’s fault. It’s the tool behind the tool. For example, if you don’t know how to drive a standard, you could wreck your engine. Is that the transmission’s fault? Or is it the driver?
But how can something with spikes be safe?
The prong collar is one of the safest tools out there. It has been designed in a pretty fascinating way to distribute pressure evenly and protect your dog’s trachea.
But what about those pictures of dogs with holes in their necks?”
That is from a collar being left on a dog for weeks to months and the dog growing into a collar. This actually happens more often with flat collars but no one is trying to ban flat collars because of it.
It just goes to show how much we as humans struggle with appearances and using logic over emotions. Just because something looks scary, it doesn’t mean it is.
But my dog is really sensitive.
Is it the right tool for every single dog? While you could use it on almost every dog (some may require a softer introduction period) some dogs respond better to other types of tools and that’s fine!! But just because a tool isn’t the right choice for your dog, it doesn’t mean you need to put it down.
But why would you train a dog with pain?
Discomfort does not equal pain. Even force free trainers use discomfort to redirect dogs (that’s what front clip harness do to stop pulling, they cause discomfort).
