에드 프라울리의 원격 목줄 사용 10가지 규칙

If you're questioning how to do this, if you're a new dog trainer, new to dog training, and people ask, where do you want to start or where should I start? Start there. Start with the basic dog obedience, but start with how to form a relationship with your dog. So, rule number two. Never use a remote collar unless you've taken your dog through all of the training steps in remote collar training. And by that I mean there's a protocol on how to train a dog and how to introduce a dog to remote collars. Take your dog through that protocol before you plan on taking the dog out and using a remote collar for the recall when it really has never been exposed to the steps in how to get to that point. It's a huge mistake when pet owners, and quite frankly I do know some what I would call unethical so-called professional dog trainers, I won't call them professionals, who just get a dog and slap a remote collar on them and take them out and use their remote collar in the learning phase of learning new behaviors. And if again, if you're new to dog training, you know, when we want to teach a dog a new behavior, it goes through a learning phase, it goes through a distraction phase, and then it goes through a maintenance phase, and then it goes through a maintenance phase. The learning phase is when they learn what we mean and what we expect with a command. And we use rewards to teach that. We don't use a remote collar in a learning phase. We don't do that. That's our way of training. The third rule is I only use levels of stimulation that are high enough to get a behavior change. My feeling on corrections is that a correction is not meant to punish a dog. The purpose for a correction is to get a behavior change. I don't need to use the highest level of stimulation for every infraction that a dog does when I'm using a remote collar. I only use the highest level that I need to to get him to stop doing what he's doing and do what he knows he's already been trained to do. And that's a key point. We don't use it for a behavior unless the dog has already been trained to that behavior using rewards. But that's another subject too that we can go on and on and on and on with, but not here. So rule number four. I never use a remote unless the dog 100% understands the meaning of the command that I'm asking him to do. That's really important. If the dog doesn't understand what I'm asking him when I give him a command, then he's confused. If I use the remote when he's confused and he doesn't understand what I'm asking him to do, that's detrimental to my relationship with that dog.

The dog is frustrated. He looks at me like, why are you correcting me? I don't have a clue about what you're asking me to do. So that's key. For me, I never correct a dog unless that dog knows exactly what I'm asking him to do and he refuses to do it. Number five. Now this is my rule. Some people don't agree with it. My wife doesn't even do this, but it's what I've done forever and I'll stand by it. When I'm going to use a remote and the dog knows what I'm asking him to do and I'll use the example of Rosie who's laying at my feet. Rosie's my six pound Shih Tzu. And by the way, I've never stimulated Rosie. I've only used the vibration with her. It's all she needs. She has a soft temperament, but we live on 45 acres here in Wisconsin. We have a ton of deer and a ton of rabbits on our property all the time. Orders for Rosie are deer poop and rabbit poop. So she 100% understands the meaning of the word yuck. I never give Rosie the vibration button until, and she knows what that means, I never give her the vibration until I say no, yuck. Like she's sound asleep here and when I said no, she picked her head up. She's looking around like, wait a minute, wait a minute. There's no deer poop. There's no rabbit poop around here. Come back to sleep, Rosie. But that's an important part. In my thinking, and this is me, if I'm working with a dog, and let me use, you know, that's a perfect example, but there's any other examples too. If I ask a dog for me and when I was on the sheriff's department and I told my dog to out in training and he refused to out, I said no, out, and I would stimulate him. I'd give him that split second to back off and stop doing what they were doing. I'd give him, and that puts, and long term, that adds power to the no command. Okay? So that's rule number five. I never stimulate a dog unless I say no. I repeat the command and then I'll use stimulation to it. Number six. I would never, ever use a remote collar in a dog park. I also have to say, you will never catch me in a dog park unless I'm there with a video camera. You will never catch me in a dog park if I have my dog in there. You can go on Learburg.com and read the article I wrote, which has been shared all around the world by dog clubs, on why dog parks are the worst idea you can imagine. I understand there's a zillion million people out there that want to take their dog someplace for some exercise and they think a dog park is a great place to go.

We would disagree on that. Dog parks are dangerous places to go unless you know every single dog that's in that dog park or about to come to that dog park when you're there, and you know that all of the dogs that are in there get along, have no problem being together. How often does that happen? Not often. You never know when a dog reactive or aggressive dog is going to come through that gate, be unclipped, and then his owner is tossing a ball around. Bad deal. Do a search on dogs that were killed in dog parks through dog fights. You may change your mind about it. Okay. Rule number seven. Kind of can go into the dog park thing, but I would never use a remote collar if my dog was, in my opinion, about to get into a fight with another dog. I don't use a remote collar to prevent a dog fight. Here's why. You get two dogs that are posturing together and you stimulate them. Even if it's low level stimulation, that dog is going to think that the other dog did something to them and bam, they're on it and it goes down just like that. If you don't know how to break up a dog fight without getting hurt, you have some decisions to make when it's a dog fight. But if you cause that dog fight through the use of a remote collar, bad on you. Because you can go to Learburg.com and type in Learburg.com forward slash dog bite and look at some of the pictures that people have sent me. And there's a warning here. The pictures are hard to look at. They're nasty. Some of them are really nasty. Dog fights are nasty, nasty, dangerous situations. And unless you are trained and know how to break a dog fight up, and I have a free video on my website showing how to do that, then you shouldn't be doing it. And whatever you do, you shouldn't be causing it with a remote collar. So, number eight. If you train with a remote collar, don't ever assume that your dog is now fully trained and you no longer have to use or have your dog wear the remote collar. That's a bad idea. It is only a matter of time before the dog will revert back to his old ways when he doesn't think that that remote collar is on his neck. Don't kid yourself for one second, no matter who tells you what, that after going through your training program that your dog doesn't know there's a remote collar on his neck. They figure it out. They all figure it out. You can make a dog wear a remote collar and never teach it the vibration of the stimulation for four months. And think that that dog will never know when you start going through training where that collar came from or where that stimulation came from.

Eventually they all know. I was a canine handler for ten years. Every time I got called out, I put my remote collar on his neck. Every time. Every time. For the life of that dog when I was working with him, he would get the remote, I would wear the transmitter on my vest. And the kicker was that I seldom had to use it. I seldom had to stimulate the dog. Maybe one in 20 or 30 deployments would I ever even have to touch the button. But the dog knew the collar was on it. And when the collar goes on and the dog's been properly trained, they know that when you tell them to do something, you can back it up with that invisible leash you have. And they listen to that. So that's important. Once again, don't think your dog's always going to mind just because you did your foundation on the remote collar. Keep that collar with you for the life of your dog. You figure out how often you have to do it. But for me, if I have a dog that's trying to test me all the time, even if he only tests me once every couple of weeks, that's a dog that when I take him out, I put a collar on him. It may not have to be turned on even. But if the collar's on and it's on leash, don't kid yourself, the dog's going to be paying attention. So, number nine, never use a remote collar when you're mad. If you have something really bad going on and you're really pissed at your dog, that's not the time to use your remote collar because it will be ineffective. Your dog's going to know you're upset. You're going to use that collar at the wrong time. And all it's going to do is hurt your relationship with your dog. The best advice I can give, get a hold of your dog, even if you have to walk 200 yards and follow him, put him on a leash, take him home, put him in a crate. Leave him in a crate for 10 minutes until you calm down and then go out and do some simple training with the dog with food rewards. If you have to, use food rewards along with the remote collar, be it vibration or stimulation. Number 10, and this is a good one. I would never use one of these cheap collars that are sold in these big box stores like Walmart or Amazon or Menards or any of these places. They are garbage. They are absolute garbage. And here's why. Maybe I should say what I want in a dog collar. I want a dog collar that every time I use it, every time I push the button either to vibrate or to stimulate the dog, it's the exact same level. Every time, even when the battery is starting to wind down and need to be recharged. At the very end, I want the same level of stimulation as I had when I started.

That's so important to communicate with your dog. It's so important to be fair with your dog. Because if you think you're using, I don't care what level it is, 30, you know, a dog has between one and 127 levels. So let's say your dog needs level 30. And that's what he really needs when he needs to have a correction. But you've got one of these cheap collars and you give him what you think should be a level 30, whatever the level would be on this cheap collar. But the battery is running down. He's not going to get that. So you're not going to get the behavior change that you need at that point in time. Don't waste your money. If you can't afford a good collar, don't buy it. Just don't buy it. Keep your dog on leash. Learn how to train it with a prong collar, with a slip collar, whatever. But don't buy these cheap collars because they're going to fail you. And they're going to fail way quicker than a good collar. We only work with, there's only two or three brands that are worth anything. I personally and my wife, we use dog-to-collars. We sell the e-collar technology. It's not a bad collar. Garmin makes a good collar. They're expensive. I will say this. The very first collar that I ever bought back in 1978 or 79 was a Tritronics Pro 100. Tritronics got bought out by Garmin and went a long way to fix that brand of collar. And a little history here is I wasn't always a fan of remote collars. Back in 78, 79, I got the Pro 100. It only had five levels of stimulation. You had to change a plug in it to go from one level to another. And for me, they were too hot. And I used it for a little bit until I found out I don't like this. And I never used a remote collar for over 10 years. I just put them away until these new remote collars started to evolve. Where you have a vibration level. Where you have 127 levels of stimulation. And with that in mind, these new collars, the dog-to-collar, a human, when you get a collar, if you've not had a collar before, when you buy one, put it on you. Strap it on your leg if you're a chicken. Strap it on your neck if you've got some guts. Doesn't take guts because you're going to control the transmitter yourself. And start at level one. And then go to level two. And then go to level three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. You're not going to feel anything. Usually, a human cannot feel the level of stimulation on a dog-to-collar until level 20, 21, 22. And quite frankly, my dogs, my dogs, eventually would get to the point where they were, where I was using, using level 15, 16 for level, or for stimulation,

when I wasn't in the face of a strong distraction. And that goes back to my earlier rules that I was talking about, which was, only use the level of stimulation needed to get to a behavior change. As your distraction levels go up, usually your level for stimulation is going to have to go up, too. So you may have a dog with a dog-to-collar that works continuously, let's say at level 30. You can put a level 30 on and it's not bad. But all of a sudden, he's faced with this horrendous distraction and level 30 doesn't touch him. He totally ignores it. Keep in mind that these levels don't hurt the dog. They work like a TENS unit. If you don't know what a TENS unit is, go on YouTube and search on TENS unit because physical therapists use them all the time. In therapy, those are the things where they'll put a sticker here and a sticker there, and they stimulate it and it tightens the muscle. And I threw my legs out of joint a lot when I was a kid, so I know what TENS units are. I had them used a lot on me. But the fact is that's the similar concept on how most remote callers work. And back to the dog now that's in the face of a strong distraction, you're going to have to learn to adjust your levels of stimulation based on your dog's level of distraction and the environment that you're in. So just because you have a working level and you've decided where your working level is, that's not the same for every environment you put your dog in. And you need to know that if you've never used a remote collar again. So the reason I even bring that in is I've done a couple of videotapes over the years on remote collar training with pet owners. On the last one I did, I don't remember, 13 or 14 different dogs that we brought in and we used them to determine what level of stimulation to use on the dog. And we videotaped going up, up, up, up, up, up until we got our first nod or look around like, what was that? And that was where we started to determine where the working level was. But with that said, the next time around, with the same dog, and let's say, and in that video I think I had a couple of dogs that went to level 50 or 60, the first time we ever bumped it up a step, a step, a step at a time. But then the next time we had to put it on, and we did this intentionally, we didn't have to go to 50 or 60. The next time, oh, the dog felt, oh, okay. And they would react then at level 30 or 35. Or maybe dogs that reacted at 40, the next time around, they would react at 25. So there's a learning curve there. And that all goes into rule number three.

Only use the level of stimulation required to get a behavior change. And keep in mind, I'm going to say it again because it's important, a behavior change will be dependent on your environment you're in and the distractions in that environment. So you have to keep that in mind. Your working level is not set in stone. So those are my rules for using a remote collar. And once again, there's a lot of people out there, they're going to be naysayers and they're going to bad mouth this and bad mouth that. There's going to be people out there that says, hey, maybe this is my rule. Hey, I'll listen to that. I'm not going to listen to people that are saying, oh, remote collars are terrible. They are not terrible. If you agree with me, if you've trained with remote collars, if you're a pet owner that's had good result with remote collars, if you're a professional dog trainer that uses remote collars, we need to stop these people, these animal rights people, these animal rights so-called professional dog trainers that are telling you, I don't ever have to give my dog a correction. I'm an all positive dog trainer. Come on, give me a break. If you're saying that, you don't have very much experience. If you're saying that, you're working with a dog that has a very soft temperament, that's very compliant. Not every dog needs a remote collar. Rosie doesn't need it. She needs the vibration. She needs the vibration. Otherwise, she's going to be eating dog poop and, er, I mean, horse poop and, hey, she likes horse poop too. I forgot that. Back to it. So if you agree with where I'm coming from in all of this, I'm putting a link in this bottom description where we need people to sign a petition to stop these animal rights people. We don't want the government telling us how to train our dogs. That's crazy. It's happened in Australia. It's happened at some of the countries in Europe. And it happened because normal dog trainers didn't stand up and say, look it, these people are dead wrong. We don't need the government telling us how to train our dogs. It's not our fault that some of the tools, and that's all a remote collar is, some of the tools are abused. We don't agree with it. We don't train like that. We don't promote that kind of training. So help us, if you will, sign the petitions. What is this way? What is this way? What is this way? What is this way? What is this way?