Is ecollar best for Poison Proofing?

Patrick Murray said:

My thought would be to have someone drop some hot dog in my back yard. I would walk my dog on a leash and prong and command him to leave it. We would walk by it an additional number of times...if he paid any interest in it he would be corrected on the prong.

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The problem with this is that because dogs are contextual learners your dog would probably learn not to eat the hot dogs when you were present but when you weren't he'd do as he pleased. If you're training this just for food refusal at competition then the leash and collar method would work just fine since you're going to be present during that competition.

If you're doing this for the purpose of poison proofing I'll suggest that in reality there's little need for it and it's quite hard to train and just as hard to maintain.

I would put the ecollar on my dog and release him into my back yard. I would discreetly watch him, hidden behind a window in my house. I'm guessing he would approach the hot dog cautiously to investigate further. And when he got to within a few feet I would zap :idea: the crapola out of him! :mrgreen:

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You could do it this way but you might get some fallout. He might become afraid of the back yard. If a butterfly happened to flit into his field of view, he might become afraid of butterflies.

I'd suggest that you first train the dog, usually two behaviors are all that's necessary with the Ecollar. The \"how to\" is on my website in the articles section. This uses low level stim where the dog first feels it. It teaches the dog that when the stim starts he's wrong (in the sense that what he's doing isn't correct) and that when it stops, he's done the right thing.

When this is clear to the dog you can use it at just slightly higher levels to train him to stay away from the hot dogs. Then you can proof at higher levels without fear of fallout.

Lou, I know grapes are bad, which is why it might have been nice if that cute little moron wouldn't eat every dang thing someone gave him. I asked her how many he had and she swore he only had 2, so I took my chances and he's fine. I told the kids not to feed them just about every toxic or potentially harmful thing I could think of, and they really mean well, so I don't worry too much. It's a lost cause to get them not to do it at all, so I thought if I'd just tell them what they COULD feed them it'd be my best bet. I guess they're not strangers though, are they? :| Overall, I'm lucky to live near the neighbors that I do. They look out for me and my pets, and NOTHING goes unnoticed...so I feel a little better about not checking my yard every time I come home. Those kids see EVERYTHING and report it to EVERYONE. It' s not the street for someone having an affair :lol: . I do know one psycho who would try to poison my dogs if he knew where I lived, so I never leave them unattended for more than a few minutes while I go inside. Am I understanding that poison proofing sounds much better in theory?

Jenni Williams said:

.......Those kids see EVERYTHING and report it to EVERYONE. ......

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I have been involved in two extensive searches for missing dogs -- one stolen from the yard and one slipped out and picked up by someone (and essentially then stolen).

BOTH were recovered during door-to-door searches, both several days aftre the loss, by neighborhood kids "squealing" on the people who had the dog when the searchers were canvassing.

One case: This one was the dog who slipped out an opened gate and was "adopted" by a family several blocks away -- maybe 1/2 mile -- who didn't want to give him up. The search-team member had been to the house where the dog was and been lied to, and when she headed to the next house, the neighborhood kids told her the dog "was so there."

The other one (stolen) was found out when neighborhood kids biked over to the owner's house (from the fliers), en masse, to tell him that their neighbor had barking going on in the back yard "and didn't have a dog."

So you are so right about that! Never underestimate the observation powers of kids! :lol: