Attention Business Customers: please log into your account prior to adding items to your cart. The question of which tools are best to train dogs has been discussed among pet owners and dog trainers for decades. Nowadays, many trainers elect not to use a slip collar and instead opt for a body harness or head collar. Before we start, I want to talk briefly about training methods. There is a great deal of debate in the dog training world about when and how to use training tools.
This article is not about training philosophy; it is about the different tools available to pet owners to help them train their dogs. It is a guide that helps people understand how to modify behavior in the gentlest manner possible.
In the not-so-distant past, dog training typically involved teaching behaviors through punishment. An excellent example of this was teaching a dog to sit. Decades ago, a trainer would sharply pull up on the dog's collar, forcing the dog's rear to the ground, etc. After a while, the dog learned to avoid the punishment correction by performing the desired behavior. Unfortunately, while such methods could be effective, they also had negative consequences, and over time other techniques became more mainstream.
Traditional collars that fit around a dog's neck have been around for thousands of years. In the days before microchipping or tattoos, a tag or name engraved on a dog's collar might be the only way to identify a lost dog. Over time rings were added to collars allowing owners or handlers to attach a rope and, eventually, leashes to them. The training premise behind a traditional collar is simple enough. If you apply pressure to the collar, you can often get the dog to move in your desired direction.
Plus, when a dog pulls ahead of you, its pulling puts pressure on their throat and sometimes acts to check its forward momentum. Slip or chain collars are simply a variation in which the collar tightens when one of the rings on the collar is pulled. Some dogs were so strong and difficult to handle that even chain collars proved marginally effective. In the past this was commonly when pinch or prong collars were employed. A pinch collar operates similarly to a chain collar, but the collar has blunted prongs pointing toward the dog.
