choke/Correction coller

[scubajohn]

Ok after reading a bunch of info here I was wondering when it becomes apropriate to use a correction collar on a young dog?

My pup 11 weeks old and starting training. I chose to go the private trainer once a week to show me what to do and work on between trainer visits. At least till he gets all of his shots and then group classes will be added. He was with his mom and littermates up to about 9 weeks. just had his 3rd set of shots.

I have never been one for training with treats but decided to go with a trainer that starts with treats and is willing to use every method including ecollers if needed. Well with me not beleveing in treats and the puppy never getting them he was not interested at all in them :) and basicly said I am not doing what you want for that nasty tasting stuff hehehe We tried several types and got the same results. The trainer recomended a choke coller and see how he responds to that. I told him I did not like the idea of the choker at this age and he explained he wanted to try it and would only use very minimal corrections if needed. And the dog got the Idea with only very minimal and I mean MINIMAL pops of the leash. One or 2 and he was on his way.

The first class was basicly to meet and to give him a chance to take a look at the dog and see how the dog acted and the dogs temperment. The only lesson we learned was to start working with recall on a 30' leash starting with a couple of steps and working our way up from there.

He seems like a good guy and seems to generaly care about dogs. We have a 7year old Boxer at the house and he even took some time to play with her. Now I know it could all be show till he gets his cash what do you all think ?

So should I look for a new trainer or stick with this guy ? What besides toys and food could be used for rewards ? And Blusifer did great with the choker.

Thanks for all the advice in advance.

[Judi W]

Actually, I don't consider using treats a matter of faith, believing or not believing, but you must use what works for your particular dog. Many dogs are a bit discriminating about what they consider a treat but that does not mean they will not be motivated with one, just that you are not using the right one in their eyes.

If you have expressed disinterest in treats as a motivator, it rather leaves the trainer with not too many places to go which is probably why the use of the slip collar. Personally, I think 11 weeks is too young for that training tool. You can be working the dog with your approval as motivator, but you must teach the dog to view it as such. Don't be in a hurry, spend time showing what you want and then praising.

PS - who is handling the leash? You or the instructor? If the instructor is, he does not have a relationship with the pup and must use something - treats or corrections. Using compulsion as a teaching technique leaves a great deal to be desired.

When you say you've never been one to believe in training with treats, how much experience and to what level have you done training? In other words, perhaps you might reflect upon what you base this on and reconsider your position.

[Anne]

Your trainer sounds OK to me. Doing the recall on a long line is good. Getting to know your dog and showing interest in your older dog also sounds pretty good to me.

We trained my dog with treats. We used cheese as she is a BARF fed dog. I have also given bbq chicken pieces. Not too many dogs will refuse either of those two type of treats. My dogs will do anything for a piece of tasty cheese.

Must say I don't like choke collars and your little one is a bit young in my opinion to be using a choke.

I think if you find the right treat to use you will probably be able to get a good response from your pup without the use of the choke.

[Rott-Wiley]

In my opinion, your puppy is too young to be working him on a choke collar. This might be just the impression you are giving but what is the hurry to get him into formal training? How long are these classes with this instructor? A puppy doesn't have much of an attention span at that age and the only thing you may wind up teaching is that learning is no fun.

[scubajohn]

I have no real training exp. I have read a few books and have owned and worked with several dogs. Including one female rotty. All of them have been great dogs friendly and well manered. I usualy would just let them be untill they get older and then start working with a choke and praise. But in the past there has always been several people in the house and always a guardian to keep an eye on the young dogs. I recently sold my house and the one I purchased got hung up in escrow and I am stuck in my mom and dads for 2 months till the people I am buying from get the mess strightened up. But thats another story. I am 34 years old and living at home sucks :) hehehe. So when I get into my new place its going to be just me and him and I want him to have at least some of the basics down.

I spent the last 3 years living with a co-home owner that had a BIG male boxer it weighed in at over 80 lbs. And had absolutly no manners and was a compleate pain in the butt. I never did work with the dog becuase it would have been pointless with the owner never working with him and letting the dog get away with murder. That is not going to be the case with my Rotty.

So the combination of all of that led me to getting a trainer. His methods are to show me what to do. He has the leash and walks me and teh dog through the exercises then gives the leash over and I work the dog while he corrects me on how to do it . I then spend the week working the dog till he comes back and sees how things are going And then introduces the next set of instructions if all is going well.

The food bites are still offered and I will keep trying to find something he likes I did not tell the trainer not to use the treats that was the dogs choise not to eat them. If I was not willing to go by the trainers methods I would have looked elsewhere. But I figured with the pup food might be the best way to get him under controll. Not that he is bad he is actualy very mellow and already has the NO thing down when he grabs socks that I leave laying around and ya its my fault :).

I guess from how little of a correction is needed a flat coller might work just as well. But before I looked into a trainer I tried letting him drag a leash around for several days and he was fine with that but the minute I pick up the leash his butt hits the ground and the brakes were slammed on. No amount of coaxing praise jumping around like an idot would get him to move.And I was not going to drag him around or choke him with a choke chain so I chose to go with someone that has exp.

The trainer is at the house for about an hour and spends about 1/2 the time going over how to and then 1/2 the time with the dog and me. He said to work the dog 2 times a day for about 1/2 an hour each if he did not get bored or tired. If so then try 3 times at 15 minutes a day.

I am just trying to be a good daddy

[Rott-Wiley]

I think I would cut the formal training back to 15 minutes twice a day and even that is more then I would recommend for a puppy that age.

Are you feeding the pup 3 times a day now? You should be, and you should plan your training sessions before he eats - when he is hungry. As for the treats, my dog is on a raw diet so I use "String Cheese" as a motivator for learning. All you need is to bite off a piece about a quarter to a half inch long and that makes an excellent reward or lure for training them.

It does sound like you're on the right track with you new pup.

[Anne]

Agreed: it certainly sounds like you are doing the right thing by this puppy. Your trainer sounds good too.

I think 1/2 an hour is too long to expect a young pup to concentrate. He may well get stressed and bored by the whole thing and training won't be fun for him.

I had two 10 minute sessions per day with my girl and sometimes these sessions were only 5 minutes. Training sessions were always concluded by play. She enjoyed the training and knew the play time was coming after as she would go and get her ball as soon as I released her with "OK, off you go".

Keep up the good work and try the cheese.

[scubajohn]

Right now I will fill his dish with a mix of Iams and Canidae dry. His breeder was feeding iams and I am using less Iams and more Canidae with each meal. He will eat some and then play then eat and sleep. Over and over. He ends up eating 3-4 cups a day. He looks skinny and everyone says feed him more. I am watching to make sure he stays lean. If he starts to get a belly I will regulate his food closer.

He gets lots of praise and so far does not seem bored but I do make sure there are lots of distractions between Iris the boxer and 2 cats and toys we keep it exicting. Its definatly not just sit and do the recall over and over and over :) Well it is but he gets to sniff around bug the cats and pester the boxer inbetween getting the recall command.

He also is getting the hang of sit but he was doing that pretty good at 10 weeks.

I think I am going to stick with this this training for a while as long as Blue does not protest and stays happy. I will definatly give the cheese a shot and keep looking for what works.

Thanks

[Luvs]

A treat I have found that my puppies just love is Louis Rick chicken breast strips, I get them grilled chicken. That is what I use for training and showing since they like them so much. I also sometimes use cheese, although I prefer not to since I don't like to put it in my mouth:p

I definately think that your puppy is too young for a choke collar. I personally feel that at such a young age training needs to be fun and VERY motivating. Your puppy is too young for corrections since he most likely doesn't understand what is being asked of him yet. I waited until both of our puppies were at least 6 months old before giving any type of correction during training. I wanted to make sure that they truely understood what I wanted from them first. At 6 months old the corrections were still few and far inbetween. I am a firm believer that with puppies you get much better (and faster) result by using praise, treats, and toys. I still use all three during training and our puppies are 12 months old. Granted I do use a choke collar now and they do get corrections when needed, but motivation still works much better for them.

When Akasha was four months old I signed her up for obedience classes. During sign ups they were testing for CGC. I thought what the heck I have nothing to lose so I went ahead and had her tested. During the heeling portion Akasha did so well that everyone watching started clapping. I was told afterwards that her heeling was better than some dogs that already have their CDs. She did so well because she LOVES to heel. Not one time I had I ever corrected her during training at that stage and she truely enjoyed everything we were doing because it was FUN! She did very well, passing all the tests and became the youngest dog at our club to receive her CGC.

Please don't start correcting your puppy until he is truely ready. Keep training fun and he will do much better than if he is corrected all the time.

Good luck with your puppy and keep us informed on his progress! :)

[Carina43]

I also feel a choke collar is a bit much for an 11 week old pup; I personally don't like the idea of compelling a puppy in order to teach him..but your trainer does sound like he's being gentle. I never used treats to train until I got Cooper, I always thought that was just teaching a pup to "perform" for food - until I learned that the treats gets mostly phased out later, and it really does work. At least with most dogs. :) Maybe trying REALLY good treats (hot dog pieces, cooked meat, etc) and waiting a couple of hours after he eats so he's hungry?

How about incorporating more training with play, instead of having structured training sessions - or at least as well as short sessions. When I was taking Coop to puppy classes, a trainer told us that training should be "structured play" and I thought that was a great description; I've kept that in mind since.

[CJW]

We have a 9 month old, and we started the choke collar at 12 weeks. Since she is extremely head strong, we found the choke collar worked excellant for her. Our trainer told us to stop using treats because then the dog is not working for you but for the treats. Then if you don't have any treats to give, the dog may not obey your commands. In my opinion, the trainer sounds good to me. Our rott went into the pinch collar at 15 weeks because she has such a high pain tolerance level that she stopped responding to the choke, regardless of how hard we snapped. I think it just depends on the dog, and if the dog is responding to the choke, you should definately stick with it.

[Judi W]

Originally posted by CJW
We have a 9 month old, and we started the choke collar at 12 weeks. Since she is extremely head strong, we found the choke collar worked excellant for her. Our trainer told us to stop using treats because then the dog is not working for you but for the treats. Then if you don't have any treats to give, the dog may not obey your commands. In my opinion, the trainer sounds good to me. Our rott went into the pinch collar at 15 weeks because she has such a high pain tolerance level that she stopped responding to the choke, regardless of how hard we snapped. I think it just depends on the dog, and if the dog is responding to the choke, you should definately stick with it.

Well, if you don't want to use motivation, then that does kind of leave you with pain/adversion. Of course if she truly does have a high pain threshhold she will learn to absorb the pain from the pinch collar just as she learned to work through the choke collar corrections. What are your plans for that time?

Too often people who have never trained to a high level think dog training is a contest against the dog rather than the building of a partnership with the human as leader, but a partnership nevertheless.

There is nothing wrong with using a lure for a puppy, changing that to a reward as the dog learns to understand what is wanted, and then teaching them to work for a delayed and uncertain reward. The time for compulsion (yes I do believe in compulsion) is after the dog fully understands what is wanted and is mature enough to be expected to perform with reliability.

PS, you don't have to be real smart or brave to beat up on a puppy

[Anne]

Fortunately I am not as aware of the pain threshold of my dog as you are. I don't need to cause her pain to train her.

She was taught her commands with treats which were gradually phased out. She obeys her commands and I have not needed to hurt her in order for her to comply.

IMHO the reason your dog stopped responding to the choke collar was because your particular method of training was not working for you. The probability of the same thing happening with the prong is about the same.

I am very lucky that the trainer we have does not need to teach me to cause my dog pain in order to have her comply with commands.

[Rott-Wiley]

Originally posted by CJW
We have a 9 month old, and we started the choke collar at 12 weeks. Since she is extremely head strong, we found the choke collar worked excellant for her. Our trainer told us to stop using treats because then the dog is not working for you but for the treats. Then if you don't have any treats to give, the dog may not obey your commands. In my opinion, the trainer sounds good to me. Our rott went into the pinch collar at 15 weeks because she has such a high pain tolerance level that she stopped responding to the choke, regardless of how hard we snapped. I think it just depends on the dog, and if the dog is responding to the choke, you should definately stick with it.

I would suggest that you try to find a better trainer to work with although I would think you will never have a quality working relationship with this dog. I am sure she considers that you are unreliable and violent.

[CJW]

Obviously, you have never had an alpha rott. She is actually very happy in our family as well as very well adjusted. I am sure you know that if the dog considered us unreliable and violent that she would have a serious behavioral problem, which she does not. The relationship we all have with her is very strong. We would never abuse her in any way. The training program I belong to is one of the top in the state, and known for their training with larger bred dogs.