Chock vs Pinch for BO training - Page 2

Seriously, there was a set of autopsies done on dogs that had been trained with different sorts of collars.  Chain left the most damage, followed by prong.  Why damage what you just spent several hundred or thousand dollars on, and what you supposedly love?


Can someone please provide a link to this?  I've been hearing it for years, and never found one shred of evidence to support it, outside of individual assertions.

>  Excellent reply Two Moons!! Any training device used improperly or excessively will break a dogs spirit to please. How you use the instrument with corrections and praise will go a long way in shaping the final product.

>  Yes I would like to read this study also, as I use the (check) chain exclusively when training and working PSDs and have yet to have any of my students taking their dog in for (any) type neck injury in over 30 years!!

The easiest way to injure a dog with a collar is to wait too long before starting the work, and to do it incorrectly.
Six months works for me.   Building spirit tho begins much earlier in my opinion. I start as soon as I lay hands on a new puppy usually eight weeks.   I'm sure dogs have been injured, but I have never seen it.   I'm also sure dogs have been damaged as pups from not being raised right.
It starts at day one.

Well, a few minutes of Google searching gave me http://www.uwsp.edu/psych/dog/LA/hawgood1.htm, which wasn't what I was looking for but wasn't bad.  I'm pretty sure that my trainer has a copy of the original article or a first-gen copy, and it's from the 1970s or early 80s, so not finding it readily on Google Scholar doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it just means nobody's digitized it yet.  I'll ask her for it as soon as she's home to rummage (will be a few days) and get you all a citation/summary when or if I can.

However, inspired by this thread, I went and posted to my blog with an experiment that you, too, can do at home.  http://sniffydog.today.com/2009/03/21/choosing-a-training-collar/.  Let us all know how it turns out for you.  There's also the question there of "Do you really want to teach your dog to submit in response to pain?" which is something all the Schutzhund/protection people might want to contemplate.

Full disclosure:  My working-bloodlines shepherd tended to feel that if I gave her a harsh correction for doing something stupid, she was entitled to return the favor.  Three or four bites later I decided that, as an imperfect being, I'd rather go with the positive training and the occasional bland, "Well, that was dumb.  Wanna do it again better?"  I could live with getting that back again when I screwed up, and I had a much better performance out of her for it.  She never actually hurt me; she just gave a prong-collar-force correction to my arm.  Never once could I say I hadn't, in fact, both done something stupid and popped her a few minutes before.  Besides, if her drive was on, she didn't feel a prong collar at all, and if it wasn't on, sweet reason worked fine.

Sniffy your dog hated the choke collar so bad it would bite you when you checked her but did not mind the pinch that is strange my girl seems to be doing good so far i think i make it fun still she does get excited when she sees the collar and hears me ask if she is ready to work i guess i just got lucky with her and the collar both Moons we went to our first schH club meeting saturday meet the trainer and a couple of members it was the first meeting for the year we will be going back this saturday with our pup we got to watch a BH schH1 and 2 OB routine it was fun we hope to join and start our pup on her way

Sniffydog, I could not pass this one up,
  you made some assumptions and analogies that are not correct.  First you said ," were you taught to read by being whacked over the head with a board"?  For starters, your analogy is highly exagerated and you are comparing apples to oranges.  A proper correction is not painful,  but merely gets the dogs attention, unlike being hit over the head with a board.  Secondly, you made the comparison to a child learning to read and a dog learning obedience.  Wrong again.  A child has reasoning skills that a dog does not have, a child can understand every word I say to them as I explain how to pronounce a word etc.  To compare a child to a dog in the learning process is not reaonable, even though you say "same concept", think about it.  Third misunderstanding,  I would not teach my child to read with a treat.  This is tragic way of teaching.  I have seen some use treats as a reward for children, and I do not have the time here to go into the problems that arise from it. You also need to understand that animals response to pain, the trauma it causes them is far different than it's effect on humans.  Because of the nature of animals, their need to run and hunt while experiencing pain or discomfort is not crippling to them, they can continue on.  Watch you dog sometime when they are hurt, after having surgery etc. and see how they go to sleep like nothing happened, or when they have to go to the bathroom, yet can go back to sleep if they do not have the opportunity to go.  Can you go back to sleep when you have to use the bathroom?  Tooo often animal activists come on here and want to compare animals to people.  Not the same.

I am well aware of the pet smart training methods.  Teaching young dogs to do obedience with treats only.  What the dog learns to do is respond to the treat, not you.  He learns to respect the treat you have for him until something better comes along.  When I train a dog I want the dog to respect ME, not a treat in my pocket.  I will use a treat or toy to encourage a dog in sharpness and responsiveness in obedience, but not until the dog has learned to respect me first.  By the way, my dogs do not run from me in fear when I bring out a prong collar.  My dogs respect me,  and we are quite bonded because they learned at a young age that they needed to respect me, not something I had in my pocket.  I know that many use treats on young dogs in obedience, but it should not be the main source of motivation.

P.S.  Do you teach your children to obey you with treats?  Do you correct your children for not doing as they were told to, or for willfully disobeying you?  A prong collar is not cruel when used properly.  You must come unglued when people speak of E collars.  In any event, you can use your methods all you want, but when you come on here and make unreasonable comparisons, and imply people are cruel for using solid training methods, then someone will probably call you on it.  You make a lot of statements that defy good old common sense, but I guess that is something that is lost today.
Thanks

blair_built_gsd;  No, she bit me for the pinch, just exactly as hard as I corrected her.  As long as I was communicating and making sense, this never happened; if I stopped making sense and just expected her to do what I was failing to communicate, then she felt I was entitled to a helping of whatever she was getting.  It wasn't disrespect.  It was the expectation that I ought to be a rational being which she COULD respect.  She was a rather remarkable beast, but she was from those same working ancestors many people on this forum insist can only be trained with force. 

Lure-label-reward-praise worked fine, thanks, and it was only under that other sort of influence that I had a single problem with that dog.  If you think you're getting great results now, try ONE DOG with consistent positive training before you diss it.  You always have the option to go back to force if the positive doesn't work, but the other way is much harder.  I've been doing it on a rescue GSD for two years.  Now he doesn't pee in terror when I say "Sit."  All I know of his previous training is that he arrived with a nylon slip that would barely come off.

olskoolgsds:  Children understand English better than dogs do.  I have indeed done some teaching.  What worked best was praise, logic, and communication.  What didn't work worth a damn was, "That's not right.  Try something else.  That's wrong too.  I'll just force you into position.  What are you doing now?  That was stupid."  That's when the teenager shuts the bedroom door and turns up the music, no?  And that's what MOST, possibly not all, prong-collar and choke-collar trainers I've watched are doing.  I don't rule out the possibility that "No!  No!  No!" might conceivably teach something, but is it what you wanted taught?  A Jack Russell of my acquaintance has learned primarily that her owner is terrifying.  Sure, she got the CDX in about a thousand shows, but mostly she got the shakes and a fur-pulling habit.  Product of Prong.  It's a little unfair to evaluate whether the things work on GSDs who have been selected for generations by whether or not it worked on them ("trainable"); does it work on other dogs?  If it doesn't, are you a dog trainer or a this-particular-line-of-GSDs trainer?

Overall, my dogs respect me because I make sense to them.  More importantly, I still have some self-respect after working them.  The rewards are a bridge to conveying what I mean when I say "Sit," not the only reason to sit.  If the dog puts himself in position and finds out that it was what you wanted, then he learns more solidly than if he's trying to guess whether "Sit" means "Plant your butt," or "Avoid this correction by putting your neck higher, which puts your butt on the ground eventually," or maybe "Don't eat that other dog, because that's what the yank meant last time."

The other thing to consider is the nature of pain.  If you are stuck in a torture chamber and immediately hurt a very great deal, guess what?  It hurts a very great deal.  If you are stuck there and hurt a little, then a little more, then a little more, that same level as the first scenario will be far less shocking when you reach it.  This isn't a human-brain thing; this is an anything-with-a-brain thing.  You correct, and if it doesn't register, you correct a little harder, and then you have to correct a little harder next week, and...  If you still haven't gotten the message across, then what?  It's pretty obvious that you're not getting what you wanted, which means the critter didn't understand what you want or cannot do it.  Or won't.

Anyway, I r