Selecting A Used Dog Training Collar

You can often find a used dog training collar online if you keep your eyes open. But before you bid or buy, there are some things that you should know about electronic dog training collars.

The way that these collars work is quite simple. They fasten around the dog's neck and can emit a small electric shock to the dog. The idea is that getting a shock each time he does something unwanted will teach the dog not to do that any more.

Strength Of Stimulation

The strength of the shock can vary and the first thing that you should do is consider whether you know what strength your dog will need.

Just about all professional dog trainers these days agree that the best way to train a dog is by rewards and reinforcing good behavior. Punishing a dog for bad behavior is not nearly so effective. Often it confuses the dog and just makes him scared of life, without changing his behavior at all. So it is very important that the training collar that you buy just gives the dog a slight buzz that he would prefer to avoid, not any kind of painful or frightening shock that could be considered a punishment.

Other things being equal, you would expect a large dog to require a stronger reminder than a small dog, but this is not necessarily the case. Some breeds and some individual dogs are more stubborn and harder to train than others. So it is a good idea if you are looking for one of these collars, to choose one that has a variable setting. Start with the lowest setting and see how your dog responds.

Owner-Controlled Collars

Collars vary in the type of control. Some collars are remote-operated by the owner and others are automatic.

With a remote-operated collar, you would only use the collar when you were actively training the dog. You would hold a small instrument like a pager and you would press a button on it when you wanted to control the dog.

Some people choose to train the dog this way because it seems like an easy option. Instead of spending hours playing and speaking to the dog, you can just press a button. However, people who use training collars this way do not find they work very well! Reinforcement is vital in dog training and even if you use a collar method, you should reward the dog for correct behavior at the same time.

Automatic Collars

Other collars are worn by the dog all of the time and will automatically give the electric shock reminder when the dog does a certain thing. These are most commonly used for 2 purposes:

1. Keep the dog within a certain area

These collars will activate when the dog crosses a perimeter boundary that you set up on your land. They work a little like an electric fence, but instead of a physical fence there is a sensor system.

This can be useful if you have an unfenced yard or if you want to restrict the dog to certain areas of your property. However, it is not effective on every individual dog and will work best on a dog who is new to your property.

If the dog has been allowed to go all over the property in the past and suddenly you try to restrict him with a collar, the reminder may not be enough to make him drop his habit of wandering. If he braves it once, he will find that after he is through the barrier, he is free. So an older dog may blast his way through - not every time perhaps, but enough to make the barrier unreliable.

2. Stop unwanted barking

The collar senses when the dog barks, and administers a shock. These collars are mostly used by people who have to leave their dog alone a lot and have neighbors complaining about the barking. They can be very effective in this situation.

Sensors can work either on sound, or on the vibration of the vocal chords, or both. The most reliable ones use both. An anti-barking collar that works on both sound and vocal chord vibration is probably the best use of an electronic dog training collar, because there is no other effective way to train a dog not to bark when you are not home to do it yourself.

For this to work as a training system it is vital that the sensor is accurate. If the dog receives random shocks when he didn't bark (e.g. because another dog barked on the street) he will not associate the shock with his own barking and will not learn to stop.

It is also important not to have this type of collar controlling the dog all of the time. You must allow the dog times when he can bark, because it is a natural function to him. So you can have him bark when you are home. But if you only put the collar on him when you are about to go out, he will associate it with you leaving, which could cause a problem in itself. So it is better if you can disable the sensor, or put the collar on him well ahead of time.

Electronic dog collars can cause lesions around the dog's neck because they are often heavy and need to be close-fitting for the electrodes to contact the skin. So if you do go ahead and buy a used dog training collar, check your dog regularly for sore spots.