# Flat collar,Prong, choker or E-collar



## Hil Harrison (Mar 29, 2006)

Seeing as this came up in Al's vid of Elvis post, before everyone gets carried away there :lol: I decided to open a post here about collars.

Mike said he didn't like chokers. Ok we will take it from there then :lol: 

A lot of people in Holland use a flat collar or choker. Probably Selena can back me up on this one, but you hardly see any members of the general public walking round with prong collars let alone e-collars. I have prong collars, but just havent needed to use them on my lot. Except Ascha ...she has one for bite work and OB, but other than that the rest have chokers. They react good to them and I have only used them a few times for big corrections. All I need to do now is a soort of \"tick tick\" effect using the leash to tick on the choker and they realise they have to watch out.

Im not anti e-collar by no means but I have seen people use them here when they didnt even know the front end from the as* end of the dog :lol: 
If the correction is badly timed by people who know zilch about what they are doing I often wonder what they are in for in the future. I do think they are a great method to train though.


----------



## Selena van Leeuwen (Mar 29, 2006)

E-collars and prongs are highly rejected by non-workingdog owners here in Holland.

I use: flat, leather collar, halfchoke/half leather,choker but not often (can´t work it properly myself) prong (normal, with less pins and sharpened pins). 
E-collar I only use when my husband is around, and I prefer to let him give the corrections for the best result/timing. E-collars we don´t use regurarly. Usually only at the last stages before the exam, on a low sensation to remember the dog were still in charge. During training, if needed, we prefer voice or fysical correction.


----------



## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

In order for my pup to get accostumed to all of them, I alternated all his collars during the day. When my wife occasionally walks him, she uses the pinch for control, even though he responds well to her. I use the e-collar only for bark control at home. (He worse than ANY terrier I've ever owned). When he was in SAR training, I used different collars, and different commands, for different types of search work (live vs cadaver). For all his sport work, our team uses either a flat leather or a fursaver on the dead ring. Since Thunder is an outside dog. I use the fur saver. He doesn't give a rat's a$$ about rain, and I don't think a leather collar would hold up.


----------



## susan tuck (Mar 28, 2006)

I use all 4 collars. When used correctly, they are all great training aids.


----------



## susan tuck (Mar 28, 2006)

except I don't use a choke chain. I use a fur saver.


----------



## Mike Schoonbrood (Mar 27, 2006)

This is how I use each collar...

*Choker*
I used this when he was 5 months old, listened to bad training advice combined with a dog that doesn't train very well, he's stubborn, wants to do his own thing, you can hang him by the choker with his front paws off the ground for 5 seconds, then 2 minutes later he'll do what he did wrong again, so all I achieved was ruining the bond I had with my dog from 1) Correcting too young and 2) Using a tool my dog doesn't respond to. With a dog like mine, you will sooner damage his neck than get him to listen.

*Prong/Pinch/Prikker/Whatever the hell you wanna call it*
Anytime he is in public on a leash, or formal training sessions where we go thru his routine.

*Flat Collar*
Don't really use a flat collar much, I don't even know where it is :lol: He is much more controllable now, but when I have to give a correction, the flat collar doesn't do anything at all to him.

*E-Collar*
Anytime he is off leash... except in my back yard, he doesn't wear any collar in the house or the back yard, but if I take him in public somewhere off leash to run in a field, or training at a distance, I use the e-collar. My dog can still ignore the e-collar if he really wants to do his own thing, so I don't consider the e-collar reliable control, it's good for training, but not for control. If my dog sees a cat, unless I catch him before he starts to react, it's useless... if he's already chasing the cat I can hold the continuous button on maximum level n he'll still chase the cat.

His obedience is much better than it used to be, I don't correct him much anymore and his training is still very motivational, but he has his moments, and when those moments come, he needs a prong.

I laugh at these people who think you can motivationally train any dog with a clicker -- my dog will pee on your clicker if he decides he wants to do something else, he's just stubborn, n unless you've encountered a dog like this, it's easy to say it's just a training problem, but in actuality, it's just a dog who has less drive to please the handler than to please himself. The best thing I've found for him, is that if he has his nose in the grass to smell something n he won't keep walking when I'm triyng to walk with him, instead of ripping his head off with 1 hard correction, give him 3 medium corrections and he will stop sniffing the grass n start walking again. The e-collar does NOTHING to him if he's focused on something else, he'll just sit down and scratch his neck if it gets annoying LOL.


----------



## Greg Long (Mar 27, 2006)

I use a prong about 75% of the time and a flat collar the rest.Ive used the ecollar before also.Incidentally,some of my dogs have a very soft temperment.I still use the prong on them.Its always on the dead ring.I use it to guide and direct much more than to give a correction.

Greg


----------



## Hil Harrison (Mar 29, 2006)

susan tuck said:


> except I don't use a choke chain. I use a fur saver.


what does a fur saver look like? I'm trying to figure out what the dutch version of that is. Is that the soort of choker but with longer more oval shape rings?


----------



## Al Curbow (Mar 27, 2006)

With my dogs, it depends which dog we're talking about. My older male doesn't need a collar, he's so soft, voice corrections do the trick, lol. My female on the other hand requires hard corrections (prong or ecollar) to even get her attention (much easier to own than my extremely soft dog) and my youngest just listens to me all the time, which makes it really easy to care for and live with .  ,
AL


----------



## Mike Schoonbrood (Mar 27, 2006)

Hil Harrison said:


> susan tuck said:
> 
> 
> > except I don't use a choke chain. I use a fur saver.
> ...


Correct.


----------



## Hil Harrison (Mar 29, 2006)

ok thanks Mike. I dont like those things much because they dont run smooth along the links when you do a slight correction.....they seem to snag and get stuck. But for fur saving they are good yes. Mine do lose fur from the chokers which pees me off, and not from correcting but just rubbing the fur while they run. I'm just going to put some shoelaces throught the links now as we speak :wink:


----------



## Mike Schoonbrood (Mar 27, 2006)

My dog used to wear a collar of some type 24 hours a day, but it left a horrible ring around his neck of flattened hair when you take the collar off, so now my dog never wears a collar unless we are going in public or training, n the prong doesn't have any problems with the dog losing hair


----------



## Kristen Cabe (Mar 27, 2006)

I admit I started out using a choke chain on my dog, because that's all I knew at the time, but once I discovered the prong, and compared the two (both in their ease-of-use and potential for causing injury to the dog), I put the choke chain away and have not used it for almost 4 years on _any _dog. 

The prong is, in my opinion, much easier to use (you can't put it on backwards and you don't have to wear yourself out jerking and yanking on it just to give an effective correction), and easier on the dog as well. With a choke collar (chain OR nylon), you absolutely can do damage to the dog's neck. We were discussing this at training a couple of weeks ago, and one of the decoys said that when he still used a choke chain, he actually had his dog lose its voice after a day of training with the choker, because of the level of corrections that he was having to give with it. He said that since he switched to the prong, he's never had a problem. 


The prong is what I used to train my pet dog, and is also what I will use for corrections with Jak. Gypsy, my pet, doesn't wear a collar unless she goes out of the house, and then it depends. If she's just going out in the yard, I put on the ecollar; more to reassure the neighbors that she \"can't\" leave the yard than anything. I don't have a real fence up yet, but she is trained to invisible fence and all I did was put up the flags and she knows to stay inside them even without the ecollar, but there are a few neighbor kids that are afraid of dogs and they think that if she's wearing the \"special orange collar\" that she can't leave the yard and get them. If we're going out, she has her nylon spike collar that she wears, in addition to the ecollar usually. It has all her tags on it in case of an accident or whatever. 

Jak wears a fur saver all the time, and it has an ID tag on one of the links just in case he gets out of his kennel or whatever, though after being zapped a few times, he has never tried to leave the yard. For SchH training, I just hook the leash to the dead ring of the fur saver - at training, we don't use agitation collars or harnesses or anything; just fur savers and prong collars. When I let him out of the kennel, the ecollar goes on, for the same reason as Gypsy's - in case he tries to leave the yard.


----------



## susan tuck (Mar 28, 2006)

Hil, Fur savers look cool!!! I have a brass one from about 12 years ago. When my dog is full grown, I'll use it in place of a flat collar for going on walks & stuff. With my dogs in the past though, I used a pinch for obedience, pinch/flat/e-collar for protection, collar/harness for tracking. Will probably do the same with the new pup.


----------



## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

The fursaver was never ment to be a correction tool. As Hil said, they aren't smooth, and they hang up. They are just what they say they are. :wink:


----------



## Woody Taylor (Mar 28, 2006)

I use a prong. High prey drives on my dog and two very small kids (and a fat and clever cat) in the house...I need the control it gives me. 95 percent of it is self-correction. I keep it on the live ring only...I still am uncomfortable with what you get when you link up live and dead rings on a prong collar. I think you have a different collar at this point.


----------

