I don't use prong collars or choke chains, or headcollars when I teach loose lead walking.
I re-educate the owner, then the dog, then teach the owner to lose the habits that encourage the dog to pull even when it's trying to walk walk nicely...
I had a nice loose-lead walk trained into my dobe pup using nothing but rewards and 'stop/start' methods. I was so proud.
Then when he hit adolescence, it all went to crap, literally overnight. Which I was not expecting, because I'd always carried on with the training.
Carrying on with the treats and stops/starts, which had always worked so well in the past, did nothing once he had his teen head on.
He didn't care about treats, he didn't care how often we stopped and started. And when a dog is so 'in the zone' that treats do nothing, where do you go?
Add to that the bad habit that popped up at the same time of him jumping up and biting me when he got overstimulated on walks, and frankly, this was not an issue that training alone would solve.
You can't train a dog when it is so ramped up it is unable to listen or learn.
Oh sure, it had worked wonders
before this phase, when he was able to keep his focus on me and was all about treats. But when a dog gets over excitement threshold in the blink of an eye, without any clear trigger, and is pumped full of adolescent hormones, treats and praise alone will not do much to solve the problem in many cases.
So yes, I use a headcollar on him. Because, right now, its the only thing that allows me to walk him without being yanked along, nipped, or dragged into the road.
Having it on puts him in a different mindset; a calmer, more relaxed mindset, and since using it, I have not had him go over threshold ONCE. Prior to this, it was many times each walk. Thats a huge thing.
And once again, I am someone who has trained, and did have a non-pulling, well behaved dog for a couple of months, I am someone who is a firm advocate of putting the donkey work in instead of just resorting to a tool from the offset, and Im someone who kept up the training every day.
But I challenge anyone who thinks all dog problems can be solved with a few treats, to take this dog out on a collar and lead at his worse, and tell me how you do with that.....
Using a head collar does NOT mean someone doesn't know how to train, or hasn't trained the dog. It can simply be a tool to help a dog through a phase, or re-mould their behaviour, used alongside treats.
Sure, I persevered with the collar and lead when the problem first popped up, figuring it had always served me well before, why not now?
And all I got was a dog who actually learned as a
habit to jump up and bite me when he got excited, who learned I had no way of stopping him from doing this, who learned he got away with it.
Because he did.
Because I couldn't stop him once he started. And you can't always avoid triggers, nor can you 'reward for calm' when calm never comes, or the dog isn't interested in treats at that point.
I fully intent to return to a collar and lead when Dresden is over this stage. But I also would highly recommend a head collar to people who have dogs that are doing this. NOT
in place of training, but
alongside it.
With his head collar on, Dres keeps his focus enough for me to be able to use treat rewards and to show him what to do.
Without it, not a chance right now. The treats wouldn't register.
I can almost guarantee you, you would do the same with Dresden, so never say never to head collars; you might need one too someday.
Because I, too, used to be a bit snobby about things like head collars. I used to think 'why can't the just train the dog rather than attaching all these gubbins to it?!' Because after all, I'd trained my puppy a nice loose lead walk using nothing but treats and stop/starts. Why couldn't everyone do that?
And boy did Dresden change my view on it when adolescence hit, and I realised that I was completely wrong, and for some dogs, it was absolutely necessary.
I still think training should be everyone's first port of call, and should be stuck to and worked at.
But my dog has a good foundation of training; he's just going through a hyper adolescent phase, coupled with the second fear imprint period, which is making him extremely reactive and apt to go over threshold in a second, which manifests itself by jumping at me, biting my arms and thighs, ragging on his lead, and pulling me into roads.
This is a dog that weighs over 30kilos, and when he wants to do this, there isn't much you can do to stop him. And I sure as hell wasn't going to let him carry on practising the behaviour, because that's exactly what he was doing (it became clear, because the behaviour got worse and worse each walk).
With a head-collar, and a double ended lead, one attached to his regular collar and one to the dogmatic, I can actually walk my dog again. And carry on training him as we always did, because he remains calm enough to focus and learn, AND I can get control back in a second if he does try the old ways again.
I challenge ANYONE to tell me this is wrong, or that this wasn't necessary.
Its always very easy to judge other dog owners until you've been in their shoes.
I was the worst. I was so dam judgemental before I got Dresden. Anyone I saw struggling with their dog in the street, I thought 'awful owner, hasn't even bothered training!'
Im embarrassed at how snooty I used to be.
So while Im not a fan of choke chains or prongs, I see head collars as not even close to being in the same category.
And even though I
am opposed to prongs and choke chains in 99.9% of situations, I still retain the belief that somewhere, there
may be a dog who needs a prong. It would be arrogant of me to say I know enough about every single dog on the planet to conclusively say what they should and shouldn't have used on them.
I actually had someone tell me a story on a dobe forum about a GSD that had been shifted from home to home to home for being extremely lead reactive, dog aggressive and impossible for anyone to walk.
He'd been trained again and again using the 'traditional' methods, for many years, and never improved.
The dog was due to be put to sleep, because no-one wanted him or was prepared to put up with this any more.
They tried a prong as a last ditch attempt, and the dog walked like an angel.
The guy telling the story said something about how even a 9 year old girl could take him out without any issues once the prong was on.
The dog, obviously, wasn't put to sleep.
Now, I don't know what other people think of this, but for me, this seems like a situation in which a prong is better than death.
No, prongs aren't the sort of thing I think people should be using routinely, nor are they something I'd ever use, nor do I like how commonplace they seem to be in the USA, and Im not putting myself forward as any kind of lover of them.
But what I am saying is that I believe a properly used prong has the potential to do far less damage than a badly used choke chain.
And how often do we see choke chains used in the street by people who have no idea what they're doing, yet they don't seem to come under the same attack as prongs.
If I walked my dog on a prong, I'd get comments. If I let my dog drag me along on a choke chain, wheezing and doing god knows what damage to it's neck, few people would say anything, but I know which I think is more damaging.
And I have heard of a couple of dogs that were not responding to traditional training/reward based training, and were in very sticky situations regarding their future.
I'd rather see a dog on a prong on a lead walk than a dead dog.
Oh, I know, I'll probably get people saying 'omg you approve of prongs!' now because I've dared to even hint that there might be a
very small minority of dogs that are better off on a prong that dead. Thats not the case.
I don't
like them.
But I am open minded enough to know that with so many dogs in the world, there might just be a handful for whom a prong is the only answer.
We'd all like to think not, of course, and so would I. But.....I dunno. I'd not feel comfortable slamming my fist down and saying 'NO! NEVER EVER EVER!'
On a puppy though? Hmm....no.
