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  1. #11
    Real Retriever twocrazylabs's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Moby and Barley's Mom View Post
    I am using a sort of prong collar - the Star Mark training collar. It is plastic and does not look as scary as the metal prong. It is a LOT better - but not perfect for sure. I may advance to the next stage and get a prong collar but you have to keep reinforcing the training as well. I will try to stop whenever he pulls and start over - it helps - but again is not perfect. You need to get one - I was at my wit's end with Barley.
    Thank you!

    I looked at this one; it looks like a decent priced starter collar. I may think about starting with this and see how it goes; although I'm sure it won't be enough for Finnegan's strength.

  2. #12
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    Classes, or a personal trainer and a prong. Unfortunately, the dog has you trained right now. A properly fitted prong will not hurt the dog, it will allow you to apply pressure, and make corrections as needed. From the sound of it, he's going to need a lot of correcting. At this point these least of your worries is him becoming collar smart. You need to get him under control. I know what you are going through, Sophie was a puppy from hell, and I had to be extremely strict with her at a young age. Constant repetitive corrections. She finally got it that I wasn't going to let her have her way, and even at 3 1/2 she will still test me at times. She struggles greatly when meeting people, wants to jump on everyone when greeting. If her paws come off the ground even the slightest bit, it's a leash check and we turn away, then repeat, until she can do it calmly. Sometimes, she doesn't get to greet someone because she won't cooperate. So I make here sit quietly while Bruce gets loved on because he's not jumping.

    While I don't agree with Ceaser Milan on a lot of things, I do agree 100% that you have to set rules, boundaries, and limitations, and exercise, discipline, and affection in that order. You will not hurt his feelings by correcting him, you will be actually teaching him what is expected of him in a given situation.

    I'd also recommend NILF. Nothing In Life is Free. He has to earn everything. He doesn't eat until you say so. He doesn't go through a door until you say so. No treat until he does something to earn it.

    You may have to correct him once to get it, you may have to correct him 5000 times. The key is to make the correction in a consistent and timely manner, and one day, hopefully he'll get it. But, you never, ever stop trying.

  3. #13
    Real Retriever twocrazylabs's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by CraftHer View Post
    Another vote for prong collar with training. The with training part is very important. Mocha was nearly pulling me over and I would have red "leash marks" on my hands. I just could not control him. So our trainer recommended and trained us on the prong collar. We call it power steering! "Leave it" is another strong command to teach them on a walk.

    Good luck!
    If I walked him, I would have the red marks too! You're right, "Leave it" is a great command and we're going to start reinforcing that while walking too.

  4. #14
    Real Retriever twocrazylabs's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by barry581 View Post
    Classes, or a personal trainer and a prong. Unfortunately, the dog has you trained right now. A properly fitted prong will not hurt the dog, it will allow you to apply pressure, and make corrections as needed. From the sound of it, he's going to need a lot of correcting. At this point these least of your worries is him becoming collar smart. You need to get him under control. I know what you are going through, Sophie was a puppy from hell, and I had to be extremely strict with her at a young age. Constant repetitive corrections. She finally got it that I wasn't going to let her have her way, and even at 3 1/2 she will still test me at times. She struggles greatly when meeting people, wants to jump on everyone when greeting. If her paws come off the ground even the slightest bit, it's a leash check and we turn away, then repeat, until she can do it calmly. Sometimes, she doesn't get to greet someone because she won't cooperate. So I make here sit quietly while Bruce gets loved on because he's not jumping.

    While I don't agree with Ceaser Milan on a lot of things, I do agree 100% that you have to set rules, boundaries, and limitations, and exercise, discipline, and affection in that order. You will not hurt his feelings by correcting him, you will be actually teaching him what is expected of him in a given situation.

    I'd also recommend NILF. Nothing In Life is Free. He has to earn everything. He doesn't eat until you say so. He doesn't go through a door until you say so. No treat until he does something to earn it.

    You may have to correct him once to get it, you may have to correct him 5000 times. The key is to make the correction in a consistent and timely manner, and one day, hopefully he'll get it. But, you never, ever stop trying.
    Thank you so much for this. He really is a smart dog; he sits and waits for meals EVERY time, and will not even flinch until I say "free"... he just stares at me waiting for the magic word, he sits and waits patiently to enter/exit a doorway, and he's pretty close to learning "roll over".

    I will check out NILF; sounds very interesting.

  5. #15
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    I just wanted to chime in on the collar smart side.

    I have a dog who we used a prong collar to walk when we first started training with him. The trainer worked with us to try to help us wean away from the prong because rather than stopping after the basic manners class, we wanted to move on to other, more advanced, and eventually competition classes. We couldn't rely on the prong collar if we wanted to advance. We tried a bunch of ways of phasing out the prong collar, and while he still walked better without the prong collar on than he had before we trained with the prong collar, it was still not good at all.

    What our next set of trainers, who did not use prong collars told us was that by using the prong collar we never taught our dog to think for himself; that using a prong collar conditioned him to think that if he isn't getting a physical correction, he can continue to do what he's doing, and our commands that we taught with the collar didn't carry as much weight because there was no benefit in his mind to follow them. But, having never used prong collars, they really couldn't help us wean from the prong collar either.

    What ended up happening is that I had to start at the very beginning, and teach loose leash walking with positive reinforcement, and no training collars from the ground up.

    To make my life easier... I continued to use the prong collar for a morning walk so that he'd get a good walk in for exercise purposes every day. In the evening, I would load up my pocket with treats, and became a pez dispenser rewarding for him being in the correct place.

    Over time, I relied less and less on treats, and our evening walks could be longer and longer. When that started happening, I stopped using the prong collar altogether, and started just using the treats. Now I pretty much have phased out treats, and we just put on a leash and collar, and go for a walk.

    With my second dog, I skipped the prong collar (although, she was much less of a puller anyway, and doesn't act crazy without a good long walk in the morning). I taught her how to walk with treats like I did the first dog, and once treats were phased out, and both dogs were walking reliably, I started walking both together. It took a little fine tuning, but now they both walk great!

    Good luck with Finnegan!

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