eCollars Save Lives

[unlitmikey]

Dogs are not robots, they're not perfect, they make mistakes. Sometimes they can make fatal mistakes. That's why tools such as the eCollar, Prong Collar, or Gentle Leaders exist. They exist to guide and assist our dogs by associating aversive corrections to understand real world consequences. They exist to keep them safe and secure. The dog is not going to understand the legal consequence of biting a neighbor or the fatal consequence of getting run over by a car. Just like in nature, all animals including humans and dogs understand consequences to some degree. However, humans understand consequences better than dogs do. Positive Only training has Limitations. The Premack Principle has Limitations. Some people need to spend a week out in nature with a gallon jug of water, a tarp and a pocket knife. Then come back and tell us how nature doesn't use aversion. Nature is beautiful but cruel and unforgiving. We know Aversiveness exists in nature. It's should be our responsibility as dog owners to tap into what we know if it can prevent fatal accidents. I don't ever want my pets to have to suffer what nature would do to them if they didn't get to live under human rules. Having your recall 100% effective in a controlled familiar environment is still not a reliable recall. A reliable recall is when your dog accidentally gets loose in an unfamiliar environment with tons of high value distractions, some being potentially dangerous distractions, and your recall still takes precedence over high value distractions. That's a reliable recall. Balanced methods and aversive tools exist to successfully encounter unpredictable circumstances and come out with your dog alive, safe, and the safety of others. Perhaps the reason a lot of us do not want beneficial safety tools to be banned is out of "Compassion" for dogs. If these tools are banned, I expect to see...

1. Less shelter dogs getting adopted
2. More dogs getting surrendered to Shelters
3. Increase in population of shelter dogs
4. Increase in "Humane Behavioral Euthanasia's"
5. Increase in dog bites
6. Breed Specific Legislations and banning of certain breeds
   
   As they're already done in Europe countries where these tools are banned
7. The decline of high energy working breeds
8. Banning of protection and competition sports
   
   As Germany is actively working on legislation to ban sports similar to Schutzhund

Robert Cabral once said...

"Let me tell you something about Compassion and respect for dogs. For a dog to end up on a shelter, to live on a concrete floor, walk through his own feces and urine, to be spinning around in that kennel, screaming and howling and being isolated or put in a kennel with another dog they don't know or are fearful of...Is one of the most traumatic things you can do to a sentient being. It is one the cruelest things when a family abandons a dog at the front door of a shelter and that dog is walked into the back by a shelter employee Put in a cage that he's never seen before and to never be seen once again from his family that he loved. If we're talking about sentient beings AVSAB and "Positive Only" people, we need to talk about the compassion we show to these sentient beings And locking them up in a kennel, with a steel door, cold wet floors, hot sticky nights, is not Compassion

If a pop on an prong collar, eCollar, or choke chain can solve that problem, then that dog should never end up there.

How compassionate are we for not giving that a try?

Honestly..."

Additionally, there are many peer reviewed studies that don't match up to the survey oriented misleading, biased, and poorly conducted studies that organizations such as AVSAB support and condone.

eCollar Ban Proposal San Francisco Committee & Ivan Balabanov

For some reason these biased organizations are choosing to ignore the other scientific studies. Funny how they're discarded...

go figure.....

Here's a Few

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159117300746

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159106002462

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1558787817301351

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6223971/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11278032/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12839065/

https://pubag.nal.usda.gov/catalog/6913428

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18056019/

https://elib.tiho-hannover.de/dissertations/salgirliy_ws08

https://www4.uwsp.edu/psych/dog/LA/DrPForceFree.htm

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2752/089279302786992685

https://www.researchgate.net/public..._deterred_with_electronic_dog-training_collar

https://www.researchgate.net/public...second-year_confrontation_with_domestic_sheep

https://www.researchgate.net/public...itting_signal_in_Belgian_Malinois_Police_Dogs

https://www.researchgate.net/public...g_behavior_using_reinforcement_and_punishment

https://www.academia.edu/2263843/Co...ining_collar_pinch_collar_and_quitting_signal

https://aiam.org.au/resources/Documents/2000 UAM/PUB_Pro00_TaniaColeman_RichardMurray.pdf

Please follow me for more updates and content combating the non sense force free ideologists. To them, it's not about the dog in front of them, it's about themselves, their beliefs and the way they view the world.

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[leafar]

@unlitmikey I’ll preface this with saying I don’t believe in e-collar bans.

This is a disingenuous argument.

Dogs blow through e-collar stims all the time, they’re not some magical failsafe that removes all risk.

They also need to be on the dog to work. Your “dog gets loose in an unfamiliar environment with tons of high value distractions” scenario - why are they likely to be wearing an e collar and you have the remote but somehow you couldn’t hold onto a leash?

There’s nothing about the tool that’s magic. Good training works, regardless of method. Most people do not train their dogs well and that’s when accidents happen.

 

[tke129]

@leafar This. I love ecollar for my dog. But it is just a tool. It does not stop him it stims him. He still needs to stop and I need to understand the limits, risks and benefits of using this tool and taking him off leash. I need to assume those risks as his handler. This tool works for us but it is just a tool, not a magic safety solution

 

[princesstatyanna]

@leafar The studies are not what OP thinks they are either. I'm struggling to find one that compares two grouos of dogs. Sure punishment works. I'm not sure anyone ever says that it doesn't. The question is does it work faster and better. This study that compares both methods showed positive reinforcement working faster and better. There's people in this very thread suggesting that you can't train recall without an e collar? Like, really? Is this all this sub is, complaining about the other sub?

 

[clintpauljohnson]

@princesstatyanna

Three groups of dogs (63 dogs in total) were trained over 5 days.

So...the trainers I know that use e collars wouldn't even start with the e collar in the first five days. Nor would I. that would be all positive reinforcement.

I wonder how the results would change given a sane amount of training time.

 

[joed]

@princesstatyanna What is the other sub you're referencing?

 

[lindakrivera36]

@princesstatyanna E collar/ prong/ choke are only tools. Of course the efficiency of said tool is directly related to the user/trainer. There is nothing here that say these tool are absolutely needed, just that it works in the right hands.

Imagine banning a hammer becuase someone use it to kill a person and than denying it’s usefulness in construction. Than imagine twisting this argument even further by saying the hammer is an unnecessary tool because you have only ever needed a screwdriver you entire life.

Banning a tool denies the tool being use by EVERYONE regardless if they need it or not.

 

[thibodeaux]

@unlitmikey I agree with the top post; this is pretty disingenuous. Like, I feel like a proponent of force fee methods could come along and rewrite this using half of the same arguments in favour their methodology, link to a bunch of research, and title it "R+ Saves Lives."

Some people need to spend a week out in nature with a gallon jug of water, a tarp and a pocket knife. Then come back and tell us how nature doesn't use aversion.

Er, what? I'm outdoorsy; I learned most of my survival skills from my parents... and they didn't have to hold a match to my fingers to teach me about fire safety. Sure, nature can be adversive, but both humans and dogs are more than capable of learning by other means.

If these tools are banned, I expect to see...
1. Less shelter dogs getting adopted
2. More dogs getting surrendered to Shelters
3. Increase in population of shelter dogs
4. Increase in "Humane Behavioral Euthanasia's"
5. Increase in dog bites
6. Breed Specific Legislations and banning of certain breeds

There is literally zero evidence to suggest any of this would happen, and especially no reason to believe that ecollar use would reduce the frequency of dog- or human-directed aggression, a common factor in all of the above. There is maybe some research around use for prey drive in hunting/herding dogs but nothing to indicate it is more effective than other methods for, well, anything. Certainly there are lots of anecdotes in this sub about ecollars being useful for their situation, but there are also anecdotes elsewhere of the opposite (regular posts on other dog subs where owners have tried "everything" including adversive methods where it's clear the use they're describing has made things worse) and also plenty of anecdotes about effective force free training - so there is bias no matter where you look.

I don't believe there is any link between ecollars and Breed Specific Legislation; this is probably more related to the culture of an area overall or the effectiveness of local lobbying/advocacy groups.

We know BSL isn't particularly effective, so perhaps it is true that e-collar bans wouldn't really accomplish much, but I think it is difficult to argue that a ban would be harmful to the extent your examples suggest and I don't think they are as life-changing as you claim. They're a tool, not a panacea.

FWIW, city of Calgary is an interesting case study of a location that reduced dog-related incidents without BSL - but they did it with stricter licensing laws/higher fines, and early intervention even for minor/close-call cases, e.g. by requiring muzzling, leashing, extra training, etc (and they can enforce it because they have better traceability through licensing).

 

[deryon]

@unlitmikey I was an emergency vet tech at a huge 24-hour pet hospital for 10 years.

The worst emergency I ever saw was the result of a 7-month-old black Lab puppy whose recall failed. I will not describe it here, but it stuck with me - can you imagine how his owners felt? One mistake - one little training slip - and that puppy is gone forever, in a horrible way.

If he had been wearing an e-collar, they could have stopped him. I don't care if they had had to turn it up to 11 and drop his ass to the ground to stop him, he would still be alive.

 

[christian_violet]

@deryon

If he had been wearing an e-collar, they could have stopped him.

Eh, I've been out in the field with many people who use ecollars the appropriate way, and I've still seen more than one well trained dog run through ecollar stims. A friend's five-year-old Toller ran through and ended up chasing a train, which went about as well as you can imagine.

Sometimes accidents will happen regardless of which training philosophy, tool, or method.

 

[deryon]

@christian_violet You're right, of course. But I'm still okay with using an e-collar as an additional reinforcement for recall. When my own black Lab puppy was 7 months old I was able to use mine to stop him from chasing a coyote. The only reason he was wearing it was the memory of the other Lab puppy who hadn't been wearing one.

 

[godly_wife]

@deryon Collars fail.
Dogs blow through the stim.

Ecollars are not a fail safe.

 

[deryon]

@godly_wife Yeah, it's true - maybe he would have blown right through it. We'll never know. I bet his owners wish they'd had another tool in the kit that night.

 

[godly_wife]

@deryon Maybe they did.

Unless you know them and their lives personally and all the tools they did or didn’t use, it’s pretty gross to come on here and say something could have saved their dogs life.

Dogs blow tools all the time. Tools fail.

 

[deryon]

@godly_wife I was pretty familiar with the situation.

 

[godly_wife]

@deryon Great. Then it’s pretty gross of you to be on here shaming clients.

 

[deryon]

@godly_wife You seem pretty mad about a situation I haven't shared much detail about. Is that really what you're upset about?

 

[godly_wife]

@deryon I just think it’s gross that vet med professional would used a clients death like this. To promote the use of a method or a tool.

 

[deryon]

@godly_wife Okay. But I've shared very few details, in the interest of privacy as well as my own reluctance to relive the situation.

Our perspectives are shaped by our experiences. My willingness to accept an aversive tool has been shaped by my experience with cleaning up after a situation that I believe could have been prevented with the use of more tools, and whose consequences seem worse to me than the brief discomfort caused by an e-collar.

You're allowed to disagree with me or dislike what I said; I'm allowed to discuss my perspective and how I arrived here.

Also, I shared no client details, nor did the client die - it was the patient whose death shaped my perspective.

 

[princesstatyanna]

@deryon So the idea behind what you're saying is that the dog needs an e collar on at all times, right?