Giz/Emma and everyones pets on the board

The only thing beating a dog is going to accomplish is to make them fearful of the person who beat them and maybe of people in general.

I use aversive (shock) training with my dogs, it’s a powerful tool that can be very effective when used properly. When I feel I need to administer a shock it is controlled by me, very sparingly and never as a punishment, only as an attention getter. I’d be very leery of an automated system like the Halo. Some dogs react very badly to shock. It is extremely important to test in a controlled environment and to determine the minimum amount of shock to elicit a response in the dog, every dog is different.

 

The halo has auditory, vibration and shock modes. You don’t have to use the shock mode if your dog responds to the other 2.

 

Personally I would be reluctant to use an invisible perimeter fence with a bird dog that is used for hunting. Lots of dogs have been seriously messed up and confused by being remotely corrected when there’s no human element involved. I’ve seen it personally at a dog training facility that I’ve used in the past. It can take a very long time to “uncondition” a dog to get them to hunt out and not be a “boot polisher” .. hopefully your experience will be different. If your wirehaired is even somewhat soft it could be a problem. Just my 2 cents

Edit: Was not any of the GSP that I owned that needed the retraining, it was other clients dogs..

 

Yeah! And don't spank your kids either!

 

My intent on suggesting the Halo was just to say that it worked for us when other methods didn’t. Our stubborn Lab “boot polisher” was intent on visiting his girlfriend across the street. The collar sends us a message when he gets a warning if he is close to the perimeter and a message when a correction has been administered because he was too close to the perimeter. Because we both have full time jobs and have 2 young kids standing out and monitoring really wasn’t an option. We have had it a few months, he has learned the perimeter and the warning the collar provides so we have turned off the corrective action. We did use the shock function as it was the only thing that worked for him. I haven’t seen any adverse effects from it. I did say it’s not for every dog/situation. Our two neighbors have the collar and like the way it has worked with their “boot polishers” as well. Halo offers a 60 day return policy if for whatever reason you decide it’s not for you. I would think if a dog was trained well enough to hunt running off wouldn’t be an issue but I don’t have any experience with that.

Bottom line for me is that it stopped my dog that I like more than most people from being in the street where he could be hit by a vehicle.

 

He still seems to like me dispite it.

 

My reply was just to make people aware that these containment systems can have unintended consequences especially for hunting dogs.It’s by no means breed specific. Our GSP’s were also family house members and treated better than some peoples children. We miss ours every day. I hope everything works out well for y’all.

On the “problem neighbor dog” , I had to have a very serious discussion with one guy up the road who had mostly well behaved Rottweilers over the years. One was particularly fond of coming under our electric fence when he would walk him. This dog would terrorize our small livestock (sheep) and if not caught in time I’m quite sure he would have killed one or more. One morning I caught the dog in our front pasture and the owner was on the road. I fired one pistol shot in a safe direction to get everyone’s attention. Then told him that I didn’t want to shoot his dog but would be forced to if he couldn’t keep his dog out of our pasture. He completely understood as he also has livestock. We are not buddies but still wave to each other and speak. Long winded, sorry! As others said, it’s really not a dog problem but a dog owner problem.

 

Just be careful when and where the dog experiences a shock for the first time and start with the lowest possible setting. Some dogs will bolt, just run off, maybe have the dog on a leash.

I have used aversive training on 5 of my dogs. The Garmin system I use has 18 levels of stimulus as well as tone and vibrate. One of the first things I did was to determine for each dog what the lowest setting is that will elicit a response. The 80lb hound mix in my avatar would respond on a 2, my 20lb jack/beagle doesn’t respond till level 4, one of my other hounds needs a 9. I have shocked myself on all settings, I can’t feel anything until a 4 and 18 was quite unpleasant. I have trained my dogs to recall to the tone. Occasionally if they are distracted by a scent/critter etc and they don’t respond to the recall tone, then I use vibrate to get their attention and repeat the tone, if they are highly distracted and the vibrate didn’t get their attention then I’ll give them a very brief, less than a second, shock on the lowest setting that elicits a response from them, wait a few seconds and then re-tone for recall.

A wet dog seems to intensify the shock.

The collar needs to be fairly tight to make sure the prongs get good contact and if the dog spends a lot of time in the collar you’ll want to adjust how you put the collar on so the prongs don’t cause irritation to the same spot all the time.

I have a spare Garmin system, older model, that I keep for a back up. If you find the Halo doesn’t work well for you and you want to try a different system I’d be happy to send it to you to try out. The Garmin system works anywhere, just needs GPS signal.

 

I would only add that the ecollar should only be used to reinforce a lesson that the dog has previously learned through training. The dog needs to fully understand why the correction is being made or it’s just perceived as punishment.

 

OR......the best approach to training and preventing bad unwanted behavior is:

While standing, say in a firm voice while holding your index finger up "Don't!"


Repeat "Don't!" one more time while trying to be firm.


Footnote: Must have a backup plan when this fails.

 

I run sport dog brand on both my boys. My bigger respond to the 4 setting. Little Bill, my orange and white needs high voltage at times. He can probably be in the next county in under 20 minutes.

 

Weasel hound.







The I want shredded cheese pose.

 

That weasel hound is pretty darn special

 

Yeah buddy.