Prong Collar Excuses

[catstina]

I found this linked on a Facebook page called "We Are Their Voice (Stop Animal Cruelty)." Apparently they advocate the use of prong collars...

~ Pinch Collar ~

A pinch collar is something that many many many folks who rescue dogs must end up becoming very well adept at using, as rescue usually means bad behaviors, aggression of some sort, and a dog who has been raised, but not trained, then tossed because of it's unruly behaviors...

A pinch collar becomes necessary under a few circumstances...Once a dog becomes too large, and will push beyond the strength and ability of a human to control...Once a dog decides to attack others and cannot be stopped using regular devices...And once a dog decides to maybe take a bite out of a human...

These actions on a dogs part mean this....This is a rehab, something which most rescues actually require, this is not simple dog training as many would mistakingly think it is...

The act of picking up a puppy, and immediately taking it for training is how we can avoid ever needing a Pinch/prong collar, the act of using a pinch/prong collar is the act of attempting to save the life of an aggressive animal who is on it's last chances at life...

The crazy reality is that most dogs in America require rehab because we do not decide to raise and train them as puppies...

This is the reason why folks use Pinch collars, in a serious rehab situation folks and it's to save a life !!!

So next time when you see someone out there busting hump to save a dogs life, instead of immediately judging them, stop for a second, and politely ask them...Whats the story with this dog how did his behavior get this way ?

You may be surprised to hear the real truth behind this story, and you may just end up supporting a hero who fights the good fight, rather than piling judgment on to someone who is already on the front lines...

Support the troops folks, those in the battle to save lives right here at home...Tyson Kilmer.

[RealPitBull]

Really, I wish people who have no legit education in dog training/behavior mod would just shut up.

P.s. I hate the term "rehab". It's behavior modification.

[zaeva06]

Since when did being a rescue animal mean that there was somthing 'wrong' with the dog.

There are plently of reasons I can think of why an animal would end in a rescue or shelter and be perfectly fine in temperment; Death of an owner, runaway or stray, owners had to move, not enough housing space, backyard breeding, etc...

Besides, even if a dog does need to modify it's behavior, their are certainly better, more effective ways then pinching a dog's neck.

I'm certainly no trainer or behaviorist but their logic on this article sounds about as good as giving the person down the street living with 90+ cats in the filthy one bedroom house a pat on the back, because hey, at least they are giving them a home.

[johnr]

I've been kind of biting my tongue, as some of these issues are another area of the dog world in which I find that for too many the zeal to believe exceeds a desire to learn. I was sort of immunized to the notion of there being "one true path" in dog training by two things: (1) My general recognition that life is full of trade offs as various goals and principles that one can easily hold ceteris paribus, ie when all else is equal, will eventually come into conflict, as all else is never always equal; and (2) My early rescue experience with dogs at the Animal Orphanage, where I kept trying new things, kept finding them working great in many cases, but also fizzling in others.

Now, my own personal preferences. I generally use just a English slip lead when handling dogs at the shelter. I like martingales and am impressed with the no pull harnesses, though I am appalled that they are apparently being called "comfort harnesses"????? There's a sucker born every minute, I guess!

I am so not into pinch collars that to this day I don't even know how to put one on. I have only seldom used choke collars and have never used haltis or "gentle leaders". I for sure don't use shock collars and caused a major ruckus at another shelter I volunteered at when they wanted to start having run of the mill shelter volunteers using shock collars on any and every dog there. The program was cancelled after I raised hell, but there was so much ill will over how I called out the volunteer coordinator on this that I was thrown out. (That volunteer coordinator was herself tossed a few years later. That place seems to be great at having civil wars. I don't miss it.)

I have problems, however, with the overly easy descent into ferocious denunciation of some of these more forceful methods of training, as I have seen the dark side of "purely positive" training, which is the massive declaration of doom for lots and lots of high drive, often dominant but also quite rescuable dogs who overwhelm trainers whose "soft" methods seem based more in fear than true compassion. Don't get me wrong. I have seen people like Mary and others in action and have only high praise for them. But I've seen others who wouldn't "dream" of using a pinch collar, but are all sorts of quick on the trigger about applying the ultimate correction: euthanasia. And again, don't get me wrong. I make decisions relating to euthanasia all the time, It's horrible. But some dogs are really thoroughgoingly bad news and others, I'm sad to say, are not necessarily beyond hope in principle, but are beyond what actual resources on hand can deal with, especially given time and space constraints and the never ending influx. But I've also put some wildly unruly, dominant dogs through their paces and rehomed them. The fact that the process was not all rainbows and lollipops seems a very small deal once you see them happily walk out the front door rather than get bagged and tossed into the freezer.

I have also sent dogs to rescues whose default training method is significantly harder nosed than mine is. But that is also only when all other options appear to be closed. It is not an ideal situation, but pretty much NOTHING in shelter work, starting with the fact that shelters are even needed in the first place, is anywhere near ideal. It is not helpful when ideological idealists who I never seen at any shelter on 8am on Monday morning ready for another week's slog bitterly denounce some less than ideal things while glibly swallowing others. (I will never forget one former friend of mine who thought any "correction training" was virtually on a par with dog fighting who would all but giggle over the fact that even good dogs got euthed where he used to volunteer. Total fatalism tinged with gallows humor for death doesn't really mix well with an insufferably high and mighty tone about training techniques that are only meant to be transient and which undeniably have saved many lives from needless euthanasia.)

There are also a lot of people out there w/o degrees or apparently even a single psych class under their belts trying to rewrite history and claim that behaviorist theory itself validates a "positive reinforcement only" method, which is absurd. Behaviorists have always studied all four quadrants of the positive/negative X reward/punishment grid and have produced reams of measurable results for each. The hubris of some of this uneducated rhetoric is simply breath taking. (The widespread ignorance of the fact that there even IS such a thing as canine ethology, ie the study of the genetic basis for variation on behavior is another bugaboo of mine regarding the disconnect between the aggressive certainties spouted versus the apparent low level of actual education of the partisans on all sides of the "trainer wars".)

All this said, I too find the facebook page troubling. First, it does seem to imply that rescue dog = behaviorally troublesome dog. Nonsense. While most dogs in shelters don't have much "high end" training, the typical shelter dog has a perfectly fine temperament and some have stellar temperaments. Some ARE trained to some extent when they come in and with a little bit of staff and volunteer competence, many more can and do master a few crucial commands and get clear on the concept of staying in communication with the handler.

Even more troubling about the facebook page is that many, many dogs who do have issues have specifically fear issues and the absolute rock bottom last thing these guys need is some chest pounding alpha ape of a trainer coming at them with implements meant to increase force and control when these animals need to learn to trust SOMEONE and then generalize that trust. I have a dog at BCAS right now who could be a poster child for the disasters that can and will ensue when high force methods (shock collar in this case) are used on dogs with trust issues, in this case (and sadly no doubt others) the upshot being that all but the last drop of capacity to trust was squeezed out of the dog.

But I've also seen dogs go from bad to worse through tepid, wimpy handling. These are generally high drive and/or dominant dogs that people allow to do as they please. If the dog wants to run, they run with it (or flap in the breeze behind the dog as it runs). If the dog wants to stop on a dime and double back, these people are perfectly willing to be whipsawed however intensively and frequently the dog chooses. And so on.

To handle these dogs safely and make them MORE handleable and therefore more adoptable (and more likely to succeed in their adoptive homes), you MUST use force. You DON'T need to use BRUTE force. But if you make a dog who wants to run stop, you have used force. It's simple physics. Look it up. You can call what you do whatever you like, but dog trainers have no more right to rewrite the laws of physics than they do to rewrite the laws of behaviorist psychology.

And the kicker irony is this: The same dog who was once a poster child for the ill effects of excessive force DOES need a lot of structure and guidance. So when she was adopted out to someone who said all the right things, but did all the wrong things and refused to listen to me re keeping her on a short leash or do anything by way of teaching her what is and is not acceptable, she came back a poster child for the ill effects of lack of supervision and instead of cowering around everyone was now lunging at everyone - except me. We got back on the right wavelength together immediately and she is now doing great. But right now I am very fearful of who will find a way to screw up with her next. She is really a pretty easy dog to succeed with, as long as you follow a commonsensical middle ground that seems lost in the rhetoric of the trainer wars.

[emilys]

great post, JohnR...