Alternative for the Prong Collar

[Eric]

This looks like a nice modern alternative to the Prong Collar.

http://www.tbicatalog.com/005-020.html

[CDN_Cocker]

Basically like using your e-collar to teach the dog to walk on leash. Personally I don't like the idea.

[DonF]

I've never had a problem teaching a dog to walk on leash using the old fashion choke chain. Any tool you use won't work if you don't use it properly.

[jhoughton]

Wonder lead workseverytime for me and by end of first session they dont pull

[gundogguy]

This looks like a nice modern alternative to the Prong Collar.

http://www.tbicatalog.com/005-020.html

I'm all for progress. Not Progressiveness. This just a gimmick. It will snare the inexperience training population. The basics are a couple of hundred years old. Learn and install the basics in your dog and the birds will come. There are no shortcuts. Healing and basic obedience are only necessary to the point, you the handler, needs them. Each person needs are different!
For example the little dog in my avatar has never had a healing lesson of any kind yet she will heal quite comfortable to the line. Her other basic training has been exquisite. Dogs before her were trained the same way with same results. The pronged collar was "outlawed" in my sport years ago, so we Spanielers had to rely on the fundamental basics

[polmaise]

You can imagine my confusion and miss understanding to the thread as I don't have a lead on any of my pups until they understand walking to heel without a lead .
I bet I could sell thousands of the invisible ones if I just get the marketing right

[Neil]

The product is at least 10 years old, it works much better than an e-collar as it is instantaneous on and off, the dog learning to control it with compliance. Unlike a Wonder Lead, choke chain, or prong collar, it's use is easily learned without expert instruction.

I find it surprising you guys can fully evaluate a tool from a photo and a brief description.

I recommend it and have wondered why it was not marketed.

Neil

[polmaise]

it works much better than an e-collar as it is instantaneous on and off, the dog learning to control it with compliance. Unlike a Wonder Lead, choke chain, or prong collar, it's use is easily learned without expert instruction.
Neil

Run that bye me just one more time ?

[Neil]

Don't understand your confusion, I typed it slowly. I use a word you don't understand.

I have watched 1000's of people misuse all types of items, including toilet tissue. And maybe 10 that knew how to use a choke chain without hands on instruction.

[polmaise]

Don't understand your confusion, I typed it slowly. I use a word you don't understand.

Thanks , I appreciate the clarification .

[Swampbilly]

I find it surprising you guys can fully evaluate a tool from a photo and a brief description.

I recommend it and have wondered why it was not marketed.

Neil

Git what you're saying Neil -
Respectfully, I'd wonder how many would be able to employ some kind of decently timed command for the pup to associate all this with.
Inasfar as E-collar-
At least the dog is given the chance to beat the *nick* and gets timed commands...same.with a good 'ole choker.
Heck, seems like it should work,.but crap!, one could miss out on some human interface.
Would much rather dog believe pressure comes from me...not the lead.

[Neil]

I think the intent is the dog learns that a tight lead leads to a stimulation.

I just know it works, and it works with the inexperienced and those lacking confidence.

I will also a say f you know how to use a choke chain or Wonder Lead, there is no need to buy it.

[DonF]

I'm all for progress. Not Progressiveness. This just a gimmick. It will snare the inexperience training population. The basics are a couple of hundred years old. Learn and install the basics in your dog and the birds will come. There are no shortcuts. Healing and basic obedience are only necessary to the point, you the handler, needs them. Each person needs are different!
For example the little dog in my avatar has never had a healing lesson of any kind yet she will heal quite comfortable to the line. Her other basic training has been exquisite. Dogs before her were trained the same way with same results. The pronged collar was "outlawed" in my sport years ago, so we Spanielers had to rely on the fundamental basics

I think he's got it right. New and improved training tool's are made to sell, they aren't necessarily any better at doing the job. People taught their dog's to fetch with stick's long before the training bumper came out and then with the training bumper long before that Doken dog deal; never even seen one. Dog's were taught to walk nice with you before there was a nice leather leash and choke collar and even with the e-collar, the lead device of some kind is used. That Wonder lead won't teach a dog to heel any better than a piece of rope simply tied around the neck or the leash and choke collar. Don't believe it? Go to a dog Obedience Trial and watch. Then go around and find out who used the Wonder Lead. New type tool's are usually developed to make training easier or faster but what they do best is make money for the people selling them. Easier faster training is a product of trainer experience.

[GWPtyler]

With all due respect to the old curmudgeons on this board, I've used the collar and it works slick. If you know the basics of heal training with a Wonder lead or choke chain or prong collar, this works the exact same way and you don't tear a rotator cuff in the process.

In no way is it a short cut. You still have to go through the steps. But if your dog is collar conditioned, this basically simplifies the process because you don't need to be finger-on-the-button with a remote. If the dog tugs, pressure on. When it backs off, pressure stops. Tug, on. Back, off. It's everything I did with heal training my dogs, but streamlining it. Plus you can set different sim levels, or even set it so the pressure increases the harder a dog pulls.

I don't know. I thought it was pretty cool.

[Neil]

With all due respect to the old curmudgeons on this board, I've used the collar and it works slick. If you know the basics of heal training with a Wonder lead or choke chain or prong collar, this works the exact same way and you don't tear a rotator cuff in the process.

In no way is it a short cut. You still have to go through the steps. But if your dog is collar conditioned, this basically simplifies the process because you don't need to be finger-on-the-button with a remote. If the dog tugs, pressure on. When it backs off, pressure stops. Tug, on. Back, off. It's everything I did with heal training my dogs, but streamlining it. Plus you can set different sim levels, or even set it so the pressure increases the harder a dog pulls.

I don't know. I thought it was pretty cool.

Hey, I am proud to be an old curmudgeon, but I am will to try something before I condemn it.

[Trekmoor]

I am neither proud nor pleased to be an old curmudgeon, I may have more experience but I was definitely a better trainer 20 and more years ago...... I could move faster and for much longer.
Heelwork is something I have been doing for very nearly 60 years and I read a book from the library in order to learn how. That book was "Training the Difficult Dog" by a lady called Barbara Woodhouse. I made the mistake of mentioning her name once on a "Positive Gundog Training "forum and all heck broke loose...... She was "cruel" so I was cruel to use her methods etc. etc. ...... I resigned from that forum after 1 month before I got chucked off.

I have not changed her methods much over all the years since then because they work . It was very simple, if your timing was good, it was just praise-correct -praise -correct on a choke lead while walking in a small square until the dog wanted to keep in place at heel. With most dogs I found that very quickly I was giving far more praise than correction, dogs prefer praise to correction.

The main thing I changed from the instructions in her book was that I did only right angled turns or right about turns while walking in small squares. Most dogs of working breeding can be trained on-lead heelwork within 5 minutes by using this method .....if your timing is good. Always turning away from the dog at heel makes the dog focus on staying with you. Left turns push a dog away from you and are taught only after the heelwork is about perfect while doing turns away from the dog.

Nowadays I do very, very little heelwork with my dogs but if I trained labs for trials I would do more. My dogs do what I call "loose heelwork" off lead and they do it after maybe only 15 minutes worth of heelwork training in their lives.
I find heelwork training boring so maybe that is why I continue to train it as fast as possible.

I have no doubt this "new" training device would work but, being a true Scot, I see no reason to spend money on what a length of rope can do equally well.
I already have two electronic devices, an e-collar and a couple of pigeon launchers. The launchers haven't been used for at least two years and the e-collar has been unused for even longer than that.

Bill T.

[Neil]

The key words that jump out of your excellent explanation is, "- if your timing is good". This device has two advantages, the timing is always good and there is no learning curve in its use.

I recommend people spend even more money and attend a good, established seminar, where heel trading is one of the many things they will learn or consider this device.

You were able to learn and even improve a technique from reading a passage in a book, few learn that way.

[shags]

I remember Mrs. Goodhouse. "Walkies!"

[Sharon]

"I am neither proud nor pleased to be an old curmudgeon, I may have more experience but I was definitely a better trainer 20 and more years ago......." quote Trekmoor

I don't believe that Speed and stamina are wonderful things, but nothing takes the place of experience ( learning over many years what is good training and what isn't.) I've never had a spaniel , but I read the spaniel section to soak in the experience of the trainers there, including yourself.

[Trekmoor]

Yes ! "Walkies" is what Barbara Woodhouse used to say when she eventually got on the T.V. as a dog training guru. I think that was in the seventies or early eighties. By then I had begun to feel a bit embarrassed by the ladies rather eccentric behaviour but I still rated her as a dog trainer. "Walkies !" became a sort of fun word in Britain following those t.v. programmes.

Britain has become an odd sort of country where gundog training is concerned since then. Many, like myself, still train in the ways our fathers or even our grandfathers did but more and more people seem to want to train their dogs using no force/correction/punishment at all. As far as I am aware only one person , a lady trainer, has managed to have any success in trials using the so called ..." Positive Only" methods so far however. I would dearly like to know if the dog or dogs she has had success with were easy going submissive types or the hard going heck-raisers that I prefer .... and usually end up with !

I have seen the use of force and of punishment greatly reduce over the last 30 years or so as more trainers try harder to get dogs to do things because they want to do them rather than correct dogs for not doing them .......long may this trend continue. Unfortunately the Positive Only camp feel under attack and have responded by cutting themselves off from even discussing the use of corrections.... including the word "NO !" as I discovered within one hour of joining one of their forums ! I very nearly got banned from the forum there and then but I lasted about another month. Both sides of the dog training coin have something to offer the other but we seem to be pulling further apart rather than pulling together.

Bill T.

[polmaise]

There is no one recorded achieving success at FTCH status using 'pure positive' training techniques only...US OR UK !
There is many who use the 'Hillman type approach' in early conditioning both this side and that side of the pond more than 50 years ago.
There is a myriad of folk on the internet proclaiming positive training techniques as a 'brand' ? ..or marketing phrase.

[Trekmoor]

I think you are correct Robert. The lady I mentioned is the one who wrote a book about clicker training gundogs. I think she has won a Novice trial and has been placed in an Open ? ..... The positive only folk say so anyway .

Bill T.