Prong and E-Collars - Blog Four

Hi all! I would like to wish you all a happy Easter, and hope you all enjoy it, however you chose to celebrate!

In this blog, we are going to talk about prong and e-collars, when they should be used, and why you might want to consider using them if your dog is able to handle them. This follows our previous blog, which mentions them briefly. We felt we should expand our opinion and explain in depth.

Before we get in to the nitty-gritty, never put a prong or e-collar on a puppy. Prong and e-collars should only ever be used on adult dogs, 3 years of age or older. Puppies cannot handle the stress these tools place on them. Also, never use these tools on small dogs, such as chihuahuas, yorkies, or mini eskimoes. They are not large enough for these tools to not hurt them, even when used properly. Smaller dogs can be trained using other techniques.

These tools are often considered controversial, and rightly so. Like with any tool, it is easy to use them incorrectly. Just as you wouldn't allow someone who has never welded before use your arc-welder without proper education, the same principle applies to dogs and the tools that can be used. When used improperly, prong and e-collars are without a doubt the most inhumane treatment from a training tool that a dog can suffer through, and that is why your dog must be the proper personality and why you must consult a professional before applying these tools. They should always be considered a last choice if other training tactics have failed, the owner is not totally consistent, or when the dog is a working-type dog that is expected to perform flawlessly, such as protection dogs, or hunting dogs. You should never place a prong or e-collar on certain personalities of dogs.

There are many things to consider when deciding if you want to try one of these two collars. Most importantly, what temperament of dog you have; is your dog shy, or is he bold and confident? Is he aggressive, and defensive? Will he bark at strangers, and pull on your pant legs, will he snap at you if you try to take a toy, or will he yelp when you raise your voice? If given a firm verbal or physical correction, will he act like you just hit them with a 2 by 4, or will they look at you as if to say "Ha ha, that's all you got"? These questions help guide you to the personality of your dog; we call them soft, medium, and hard. A soft dog would cower if you raise your voice. A medium dog would simply obey at a raised voice, and a hard dog would totally ignore you. There are variances; a very soft dog would likely mess on the floor, and a very hard dog would either totally ignore you, or try and bite your face off.

Prong and e-collar are not appropriate for aggressive-type hard dogs, soft, and very soft dogs. These tools will exacerbate the symptom you are trying to correct. Prong and e-collars should only ever be used on a medium to hard dog, assuming the hard dog is NOT aggressive. The reason for this is because to a dog these tools are the equivalent of someone poking us with a stick, or if set properly on an e collar similar to your cellphone set on vibrate and startling you.

A prong collar should never be used to deliver hard corrections. Your dog will likely yelp, but this should be from surprise, and never from pain. You should never yank hard on a prong collar, unless the situation is life-and-death, such as your dog charging a bear, your dog running into traffic, or your dog charging another dog or child.

There are two type of e-collars; one uses electricity, and the other uses vibration. An e-collar should never deliver more than a gentle tingle; set only barely high enough to usher a reaction from your dog, such as a glance, blink, or gentle yelp of surprise. It should never ever cause your dog to panic, yelp more than once or twice, and should never cause pain on any level. The best way to ensure your dog's e-collar is not set too high is to test it on your wrist, which is about as sensitive as your dog's neck. If it is hurting you, it is set too high. The goal is not to stun your dog or force it to stop; the goal is to cause your dog to go "Oh! What was that?" and proper training teaches the dog what that buzz means. Some dogs will get completely spooked by an e-collar. They are generally best used for training at a distance, and you have to train your dog to be able to use one efficiently. It is not simply plug-and-play; there is a learning period. The uses of an e-collar is touched on very well in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBb9PZ5SJrE

These tools are not designed to replace proper training; they are merely tools to make training easier and faster, so you do not have to spend extra time physically correcting your dog; the tools do it for you. Most people equate prong and e-collars to a fix-it-all tool; they are not. They are merely a way to correct your dog faster and make a greater impact in the mind of the dog than just going "no".

Prong and e-collars have a bad reputation because of how they look, they usually are not employed correctly, and have dire consequenses. Its like spanking your kid. Some may not agree, but everyone can agree that it is not okay to smack a child with the full force of your arm - or even a quarter of your power. The same goes for prong and e-collars. If you use a prong or e-collar correctly and teach your dog how to respond to them, you will find that just the act of putting the collar on them is enough to stop certain issues. They are also not to be left on all the time; only have them on when you absolutely need to have it on, when you cannot consistently correct them, such as when you are training a dog not to pull, or playing fetch with a dog that loves to chase squirrels. Also, you need to have a back up collar of some type with prongs. Prong collars will come apart, usually at the worst possible time, as seen in this video. It is important that the collar is fit properly, which is snugly right behind the dogs ears.

http://leerburg.com/flix/player.php/42/Prong_Collar_Safety/


When you go to give a correction with a prong collar, you never do three or four tugs on the leash. That is incorrect, and won't tell your dog anything, besides "my human is causing me pain" and not "I should stop". You need to do one tug, hard enough to get your dog's attention, but soft enough that you don't hurt them. This takes practice, and you can try it on your own arm to perfect it. You also do not need the biggest prong available on a collar. The bigger prongs cause more pain, and less reaction; the opposite of what you want. Use the smallest prong size you can get, usually around 2.5mm is more than enough no matter how big your dog is. The whole idea behind a prong collar is 99% of the time your dog will end up correcting themselves and you really shouldn't have to do anything but put light pressure on the leash unless you have to. Think of it as power steering for your dog. When getting used to a prong, your dog can bite the leash and put on a mighty show of protest, but it is because of a lack of control. If you are hurting your dog, they will usually shut down, ignore it, or attack the handler. The mighty show is just show.

Before you consider trying either of these training tools, please consult a professional dog trainer. We will happily teach you how to use a prong or e-collar. We do urge customers to however to train their dogs with other means, and we strongly advocate engagement training, and gentler methods. If you are at your witts end and need a quick switch in your dog, we can help you. Please only consider these tools as a final resort, unless you have a working class dog. Never place these tools on your dog without a professional present, and never use max settings or hard corrections. If you witness anyone issuing a painful correction to their dog with these tools, please report them immediately to the SPCA. If a trainer tries using these tools first, or tries placing them on your dog without permission, please walk away and encourage your friends to stay away. Never trust a trainer that uses prong or e-collars as an instant fix to train your dog unless there is no other means.

Off Leash - Blog Three

Hi everyone!

In this entry, I would like to talk about the dangers of off leash walking, and why you should never let your dog off leash in public.

What are the benefits, and dangers of off leash walking? The benefits of off leash walking is really the fact that your dog gets to wander in a more natural, wild pattern compared to on leash walking, and you aren't being pulled around. While this is a very common occurrence with many dog owners and brings joy in a way to have your dog out with you that is relaxing, it is not safe for your dog, and sends the wrong message to your dog that he or she does not need to pay attention to you or listen to you, and that they are in control now.

Life today presents your dog with many dangers; cars being the biggest one, among others depending on your area, such as predators, poachers, or even your neighbors. Your dog being on leash not only gives you a great way to communicate with your dog, but it also physically connects you giving you a way to stop your dog from unwittingly putting themselves into a dangerous situation. It also primarily guarantees that your dog won't get away from you, and won't get out of sight. Even the most perfectly trained dog can get a one-track mind and stop listening, but when on leash, what could have been a sad or expensive mistake becomes a two second correction. Sometimes, no matter how much training we do, how much time we spend, there is always a chance a dog will not obey a command. No one wants anything to happen to their dog, and the only way to lessen the chance of something happening is to keep your dog on leash. If allowing your dog to roam is an absolute must, while highly not reccommended, you can purchase long leashes that allow your dog freedom.

Though we strongly caution off leash walking, we realize it will happen, so for the above noted reasons, if you want to have your dog off leash, please make sure no matter what, you can get your dog to come back to you, on command, first time, every time. This requires intense and dedicates training that goes beyong the scope of puppy classes. Consider letting your dog off leash in an area where you can control the environment; a fenced in field would be an ideal place to let your dog off leash as an example. Other tools, when trained how to use them humanely and properly, e-collars can be an excellent tool to guarantee a recall, every time. Please contact us to show you how to correctly use an e-collar before ever placing it in your dog - there are many breeds and personalities that cannot have an e-collar used, and we are trained professionals - we won't ever intentionally hurt your dog. We at ideal companions prefer a solid, guaranteed recall, but for some people, the time is not there to dedicate to training. We can teach proper use of an e-collar if solid recall training is not possible.

We do not recommend going to an off leash dog area for much the same reasons, excluding our previous blog post where we explain why dog parks are a bad idea altogether. Please request a copy of our "human social vs dog social" post for more information. Dog parks lead to an incident which starts pack mentality, and while sometimes it goes by fast and unseen, it can lead to a quick and violent pack attack - and unless you know what you are doing, it is unwise to attempt to break up a dog fight.

You might be wondering what this leaves for exercising your dog. When a dog is on leash all the time, it can be complicated and frustrating to exercise them, especially if your dog hasn't learned leashed bike run skills, or long leashed fetch. There are a lot of options to excercise your dog on leash, or off leash in a controlled environment such as a yard or enclosed buildings. You can get your dog into agility, or play fetch/frisbee/search in the back yard. Dogs also need more then just physical exercise; they need mental stimulation, or thinking games, as well. Playing games that make them think are a great way to burn mental energy, which when there is too much of can cause dogs to misbehave or destroy things in your home, and they can be combined with draining physical energy as well, such as fetching a frisbee over a jump, or teaching new tricks, or search games.

Be creative when it comes to exercise with your dog. Things within the environment you are in can be used. If there is a low wall while on a walk, have your dog jump up onto it, and then back down the entire length of it, or have them walk across a park bench; run them on a playground, and have them climb onto the equipment as long as it is safe, and supervised at all times, preferably with minimal children, or later at night with older kids. It is mostly safe to play on a playground, as long as you are monitering closely, and do not allow your dog to get too hyper to prevent injury. Accidents happen, so take caution.

No dog is ever perfect, just as no person is perfect, but we can certainly help make your dog as close to ideal as possible.

Socialization - Blog Two

In this blog, we will be talking about what it means to socialize your dog, the differences oin human-type socialization and dog-type socialization, and how the common perception of socialization may not be healthy or acceptable for dogs.

We first need to define socialization for dogs; general society regards dog socialization as a dog being comfortable with everyone and their uncle, both human and dog alike, coming up to them and interacting in some way. In reality, dog-type socialization is the ability to continue on in daily activity without confronting, meeting, or interacting with other packs that are around, and instead just smelling their pee and carrying on with their separate lives. Dogs, being descendents from wolves, don't have the traditional all-dog pack they are driven to need. Their pack consists of their humans; meaning the ones who live with them. A human pack is very different from a dog pack, and we do fulfill that pack need, but dogs are wired to pay more attention – not healthy attention – to other dogs. Dogs that are allowed to become excited about strange dogs and people instead of ignoring them are not having their needs fulfilled; instead, it is expecting them to be something they are not. Wolves in the wild do not interact with wolves outside of their pack unless it comes to two alpha males who fight and the loser breaks off to form their own pack, or terretorial disputes. We as humans have passed on our need and desire to socialize with others, which is healthy for a human, onto our dogs; it is normal for us to talk and interact with strangers, but this mindset can lead to undue stress, reactive behaviour from our dogs, and is not a healthy habit to let your dog get in to. It can also cause your dog to be more excited about everyone else than yourself and your pack, and this is the opposite of the goal. This is where problems like not listening and excited behavior pop in. If your dog is more excited about everything else, how can he be expected to listen?

We at Ideal Companions believe that expecting your dog to be comfortable with this level of non-pack socialization is not healthy. For dogs, the idea of being social with other dogs is stressful, as they are programmed to think “fight or flight”, and they present behaviour that tells us they are not comfortable with the situation. We need to pay attention to these signs in puppies and not expect them to be human-type social. Most often this is by barking, or growling, as another dog approaches, or looking away, lowering down, and moving away. This behaviour is easy to fix, but our advice if your dog is exhibiting this behaviour is to not force outside pack socialization on your dog and to phone us to help you train your dog to act in a less unacceptable manner, and to move forward with teaching your dog to ignore others, rather than greeting.

Training a puppy to be dog-type social can happen the day he comes home. We believe it is less stressful to train your puppy to focus and be engaged with you, and to ignore everything else going on around them. This means, in the initial stages of learning and training, it is more work, but in the long run you end up with a much more responsive, and usually a less reactive dog. If your dog cares more about you than the things around him, he will listen every time, without fail, even if there is a steak being waved around. Puppies rely on their owners to protect them. They are not born with the ability to be human-type social, and rely on the older pack members to keep strange packs away from them. Whether they act happy or not, they are aware their humans are not keeping strange packs away and they're not ignoring them, so they have to learn an entirely new and unusual set of skills that are not natural to a dog. After time, this can lead to a dog becoming confused on who is safe and who is not, being suspicious of everyone around them, or thinking that their humans will not keep their pack safe, so it is their job. This is why it is important to teach your dog that you will protect them, by ignoring other packs. Now that being said, it doesn't mean you can't have your dog interact with close friends. These people are part of his “extended pack”; people that are not around every day, but are accepted into the pack when they come. These people are “safe”. These “safe” people should not encompass everyone you meet on the street.

To train a puppy to be dog-type social, you must expose him to as many different scenes, scenarios, and situations as possible, while maintaining their focus on you. Start small, and work your way up to things like crowds, or great noise. Every day should bring something new, or two new things. Adult dogs are a little different; since they already have established behaviors, you must train them that the rules have changed. It is the same basic concept, only adult dogs can take longer.

The simple fact of the matter is, in this day and age, it is safer to train your dog to ignore others, random food on the ground, situations, and focus on you. If your dog is interested in another dog across the street, it would be far easier to say “no” and have him listen than to bolt over and get hit by a car,or get into a fight. The perfect example of the benefits of dog-type socialization is, recently in local news, there was someone hiding sausages laced with drugs that are deadly to dogs, left for dogs to eat - or a story from Vancouver where a dog that was allowed to be off leash, and it got into a fatal fight with a larger dog on the other dog's property. If these dogs were not interested in other dogs or things around them, this kind of thing would never have happened.

In closing, your dog being social is important; but we need to respect the level of outside pack socialization our dogs are comfortable with, what is normal for a dog, and what is never acceptable. Unless you are going to visit with the people or dog on a routine or regular basis, it is better to leave well enough alone, and teach your dog to ignore them.

Our Philosophy - Blog One

Hi everyone;



Congratulations, this is our first blog post! To start off with, I thought it would be a good idea to explain the theory of why we train dogs the way we do. This way, we can have a basic understanding on how we are going to train your dog.



In our day to day lives, we communicate with people all the time; everyone understands how we as humans communicate with each other. Dogs do not have the benefit of knowing our language right away, so we have to create a way to communicate with them that is not only simple, and easy to understand, but gentle in nature. This type of training is often referred to as balanced, motivational, or natural; regardless of what term you wish to use, it is simply the most effective way to train your dog.



Balanced/Motivational/Natural training is the style we use. Put simply, we do not support large behavioral modification abuses such as those seen on the Dog Whisperer like placing a dog on his side, however properly powered corrections are important and do have a place in training, but only with properly trained, adult dogs that are misbehaving. Unlike most dominance theory trainers, we believe this is stressful and harmful to puppies. By using a Balanced/Motivational/Natural training, we utilize normal, natural canine pack and puppy behaviors to our advantage, and train them to use their natural thinking abilities with fast, effective, reliable response times. To be a Balanced trainer, we start off gently, and work up into more reliable responses from the dog. This way, you can always teach your dog something new, and it won't ever overwhelm them.



Here at Ideal Companions, our training means using a communication system rooted in marker/clicker training. While in the learning phase, which is the stage where the young puppy is still trying to figure out what we want them to do in order to get the reward, we do not correct a dog. This is critical, as it can confuse and stress out the dog into believing it can never do anything right. Once we know the dog understands what we want from them, consistently, we add in corrections for incorrect behavior, and distractions to ensure they perform the task, no matter what. This way, by the time you are finished training a command, it's instant, accurate, and reliable every time the command is issued, no matter what - which is something one rarely sees in the vast majority of pet dogs in the world right now. The moment you say "down", wouldn't it be marvelous to see your dog, whom could be chasing a duck, cat, or squirrel, to immediately drop into a down, and wait for you?



These goals are achieved by using luring, and marker training. Lure training is simply using a piece of food to manipulate the dog into whatever position you want him to go into. It works best for teaching sit, down, and stand, but can be adapted into all commands very easily. We want to use the least amount of correction, force, or negative reinforcement possible, to get your dog to where you want them to be. Food rewards are a huge part of our training; they must be something that is of a high value to your dog. Some dogs will not work for food but will work for a toy, and this works well for this style of training, albeit a little longer in time consumption to allow for play time. Marker training and clicker training are the same thing; and is simply either a sound via a clicker or your lips clicking, or a word to mark that the dog did the right thing, we prefer to use 3 words for our marker training those words are “YES” and “GOOD” for correct and continue, and “NO” for incorrect/that wasn't done correctly. This doesn't mean the dog gets corrected physically; just withhold the food reward and try again. It is important to note that if you use "No" inside the house for a stoppage of behavior, you will need to use a different word to mark the incorrect behavior, otherwise the dog will think it is to stop performing the behavior altogether. We suggest using "Uh-Uh" or "Ahh!" because it is different enough from "No", rather than "Nope" or "No-no".



Our system creates a clear and easy way to communicate what we want from our dog, and it allows the dog to think and figure out what we are asking of them. The more force you use to train a dog the less motivated the dog is going to be to want to please you. You can implement this system with any dog, at anytime, at any age, and it sets the dog up for success instead of failure. It is important if you are going to start this type of training to come and book an appointment with us, as we have only outlined the basics - there is much more information on the topic that we have left out. This system was originally created by a dog trainer named Michael Ellis. We firmly believe that his method of training will get the best results possible from your dog, and will give you a much better relationship than an older more forceful training method.



"Michael Ellis is an internationally renowned dog trainer, and teacher, with 30 years of experience in the competitive dog sports. He has taught extensively to a very diverse group of trainers; from competitive sport trainers, police departments, and the US military, to search and rescue groups, service dog agencies, and pet dog trainers. Michael’s clear, concise, and patient style has made him one of the most popular coaches of trainers in the country. He has given over 300 seminars in the United States, Canada, and South America, that’s well over a thousand days of lecture and practical work in the last eight years alone, and as a result, has been one of the driving forces in popularizing reward based training systems for the protection sports."

- from http://michaelellisschool.com/