How Training Dog Collars Can Be Counterproductive Sometimes

If you're not a professional dog trainer, you might confuse control with dog training. It's not the same thing. When you pair a human with a dog, the human will always want to have the control. That's usually OK, unless the human over does it, abusing the control he has over the dog.

You can get that control with dogs by using dog training collars. The intention behind it is a good one. By using it you can remove the dog behaviors that you don't want him to have. But, even with a good intention, the training process can be abusive or done incorrectly sometimes.

Something that most people forget is that dogs have their own individualities. While some can give you joy and comfort, others can be hard to control or aggressive, or they can refuse going through training because they're more laid back. In some cases they will learn slow, in others they will learn fast.

You can use training collars to control dogs better, but some people don't respect the basic ways on how they can use them. The first tools of this type that were made to control dogs better were chain or choke collars.

Plenty of dog owners either misuse or overuse choke collars, and if they're not careful they can hurt the dogs. Dogs can choke to death or get neck damages if the owners are too harsh with these collars. It's both counter-productive and dangerous using such collars.

In other cases, owners don't know enough about how to use a collar with their dogs. A lot of people buy electronic dog collars, which will allow them to train their dogs at all times. These collars come with remote access, which allows for training even if the handler is not present. It might be a popular choice these days, but people don't understand what disadvantages this method has.

The reasons why collars can be counterproductive are not out of the ordinary. Sometimes, people don't bother to see if the collar fits correctly. If it doesn't fit right, collars can cause burning spots by pinching the skin of the dog.

Skin irritations can be as annoying for dogs as they would be for humans. If you want your dog to have a collar that fits well, you should choose one that keeps a few inches free between the neck and the collar.

There is another possible reason why it can be counterproductive to use dog collars. Their basic principle is fear and pain. For example, an electronic training collar can prevent a dog from barking by send unpleasant sounds, or it can send electric shocks to the dog.

Even if the collar has the desired effect and the dog stops barking, it will also make him lose confidence, so it's not that great.

It might be tempting to use collars to quickly modify the behavior of the dog, but the ultimate result is not actual training, but dependence on the tool. The dog doesn't truly learn this way.