Selling Vindication: How eCollars Became Popular

As anyone who reads this blog knows by now, I like to use force-free and positive training methods. One of the topics I don't ever want to write a blog about is why positive reinforcement works better than other methods. I won't do that for three reasons. 1) So many other people have written about it. 2) If you're reading my blog, you already believe in how what I do works. 3) The people who don't believe it will only become more entrenched in their positions. See how religion, politics, and even food choices work when you challenge what someone believes to be the right way of doing things. They'll generally become more confident that their belief is correct.

I'm not here to change to minds.

With that said, the actual topic at hand. Today, one of the rescues I'm working with gave me an ecollar that was donated to them. The first thing I looked for was if it was a shock or vibration collar. I love vibration collars for off leash training and for training deaf dogs. Though when I looked at the packaging this is what I found:

Does this shock my dog?

I have 1-60 levels. But do I shock my dog?

No where on the packaging does it say anything about the actual sensation being delivered to my dog. It says "proprietary 'blunt' stimulation" and and it has "1-100" levels of it. But blunt isn't shock. Blunt really just means force applied with a flat object. "Blunt force trauma" for example, like being hit with a baseball bat. Blunt definitely sounds better than shocked, right?

My next qualm is the implication that a shock collar and the dog's IQ are related with the dog studying from the book and the actual question "what's your dog's IQ?" In terms of tools of communication, how does the shock collar more effectively communicate anything that the clicker cannot? The problem with relating a dog's response to a shock to its IQ is that a response to pain is instinctual. IQ and instinct are not even related. The only thing this collar is testing is your dog's pain tolerance. It's not teaching anything.

After the packaging, here's some pages from the instruction manual:

The first page says two things. One, the word "conditioning" is in parenthesis. This is because this is not real conditioning. They are implying that you need a certain level of intensity to condition the dog. The issue here is that, once again, it's simply finding out what your dog's pain tolerance is. 

My second issue with the first page is that it says "...some dogs are more stubborn and require more stimulation." A dog whose pain tolerance is high is now considered stubborn. The implication is that a dog will stop being stubborn if you shock it more. Pain tolerance is conflated with stubbornness. 

The second page is just silly. It says, "for example, if you want your dog to come to you and heel, you can hold the button down [for continuous shock] until your dog comes and heels..." If your dog does not know how to come and heel, why would shocking it for 30 seconds train that? In the alternate scenario, the one in which your dog does know come and heel, why would shocking him be the best method of reinforcing it? It seems like a lazy way to train. If your dog is not coming when called in all situations, perhaps spending some time proofing the behavior is what you need. 

What upsets me most about shock collars is that it is a cheap way of feeling vindicated when your dog does something you perceive to be wrong. It's this attitude that makes it hard to get rid of corrective training. When a handler hits or punishes a dog, it is rewarding to the handler to keep doing it. It's hard to get someone to stop doing something that's so rewarding. Try telling a small child he can't have soda. It's rewarding to drink soda so naturally he's going to be upset when he can't have it.

That's how I think these collars became popular. Not because they're effective at training dogs, but because their effective at relieving stress in people.

Today's blog is more of a rant than anything training related. It just really upsets me that these shock collars are touted as humane or even "stimulation" collars. They're lazy and painful. No words or marketing can change that.

If you have any questions or comments feel free to email me at Michael@concentricdog.com or find me on Facebook.