Lou Castle

This comment was made by another poster in another thread. This is a fairly common way that people try and use the Ecollar. It's usually the "next step" in escalating the form of compulsion from one level to a higher level. I know people who have gone from this to a cattle prod. I've never had to do this and I think there's a problem in using a tool that was created to hurt 3/4 ton animals, to get them to move, on a dog.

I'll suggest that using just compulsion is not the best way to get the out. Sometimes, as with this dog, it has no effect. Only rarely does it work perfectly. Sometimes it causes all sorts of problems that can take weeks to fix; such as a dog that won't leave his handler's side, one that becomes weak on the bite, or one that anticipates the out and releases prematurely.

Many of us spend months training our dog to bite once as hard as he can and to hold on. Getting the dog to release the bite after months of building it up, by causing him pain is often counterproductive. Most properly trained dogs think that the decoy is causing any pain he gets during the fight. The best way to stop that pain is to "kill" the decoy, by biting him even harder. Not to release him.

The Ecollar can be used on these dogs at very low levels of stim quite consistently giving results in 10-20 minutes. Once the dog catches on it's very easy to maintain. It's simply a matter of first showing the dog what the stim means. Not that it's just a novel way to cause pain. I've had dogs that instead of using the "maximum setting" worked on a 8-12 (of 127 levels). These dogs will release the bite in the middle of the fight, something that is essential to working a dog on the street.

The Ecollar is a very subtle tool when used properly. Many people use it as a hammer and find that it doesn't work, or worse, that it causes more problems than it fixes.

__________________
Regards,

Lou Castle, Los Angeles, CA
Uncllou@aol.com
www.loucastle.com