So, recently I had the chance to do something I'd wanted to do for a long time. I got to shock myself. Not emotionally shock, literally shock, meaning with electricity.
No, it wasn't some sort of masochist thing; I wanted to find out what an e-collar, also called a shock collar, used on dogs, feels like.
And I've been using one to give corrections to my dog, with great results.
There's a widely held view that e-collars are torture devices. The truth is...it depends. The brand I use has 180 settings. The lowest are too gentle for me to even feel. The highest settings are indeed painful. I use only the low, gentle, settings on my dog.
It's easy to guess how such a tool could be misused. If someone were to use settings that were too high and too painful, that would be a misuse. If someone were to be bad at giving corrections, being inconsistent, so that the dog never knew which behavior would lead to a correction, that would also be a misuse. The trainer who introduced me to the use of this tool told me that she sees a lot of dogs who have emotionally bad reactions to e-collars, because of past bad experiences. My dog is not one of those. I plan to keep it that way, by using it only carefully and correctly.
No, it wasn't some sort of masochist thing; I wanted to find out what an e-collar, also called a shock collar, used on dogs, feels like.
And I've been using one to give corrections to my dog, with great results.
There's a widely held view that e-collars are torture devices. The truth is...it depends. The brand I use has 180 settings. The lowest are too gentle for me to even feel. The highest settings are indeed painful. I use only the low, gentle, settings on my dog.
It's easy to guess how such a tool could be misused. If someone were to use settings that were too high and too painful, that would be a misuse. If someone were to be bad at giving corrections, being inconsistent, so that the dog never knew which behavior would lead to a correction, that would also be a misuse. The trainer who introduced me to the use of this tool told me that she sees a lot of dogs who have emotionally bad reactions to e-collars, because of past bad experiences. My dog is not one of those. I plan to keep it that way, by using it only carefully and correctly.
