Don't be facaeciuos, you know fine well that there is a significant risk of the RSPCA removing a dog from a cruel owner and the dog being PTS

I'm beginning to wonder if you are just arguing every little point for the sake of it

Look - do you not understand simple english? I said that I was being generous when I said around 5 - I did not want to lie in my favour in other words.

Whoever said I had a vet referral. I most certainly did not - the 3 people we met were personal recommendations. I am not made of money - I dread to think how much a vet referral would cost.

I was going to say the same thing about you!

The law in Wales as I understand is that the owner is fined around £2k for using an e collar on their dog.

Why would the RSPCA remove a dog from their owner and then put the dog to sleep? What an extraordinary thing to do, to punish the poor dog.

Referral to a behaviorist from a vet is usually covered by insurance. If you can afford an electric collar you can afford your insurance excess

If you did not see an appropriately qualified behaviorist then you cannot state that you have reasonably followed all possible, reasonable and appropriate avenues. Therefore I can only conclude that you used an eclectic collar where it was unnecessary to do so.

It cost us the consultation fee at the time that was £22.50 then we just paid the behaviourist which you would have to do anyway if you engaged one from personal recommendation. So hardly a fortune.

And 5 is ever so close to half a dozen so why the outrage about half a dozen ?

We do not have the boys insured now - it is too expensive. We bought the dogtra second hand off our neighbour, the dog insurance was £20 per month - after just one year of insurance, we would have paid out more than double what we paid for the dogtra.

I can state what I jolly well want!!

What part of the following paragraph do you not understand ....

After just ONE zap we obtained a perfect recall from Ben. Since then, he has around or less than 5 zaps in over a year. I would state that this has been an out and out success, wouldn't you?

After one zap you didn't achieve perfect recall because you had to do it another 4 times in the following year.

Perfect recall means returns to you every time with no fails.

It was to us - we paid out around two hundred pounds over a period of several months.

O - so everyone else is allowed to be pedantic, but not me. I see

Well I am not sure what you were paying out for but for us despite being on low wages the vet fee was worth it to us as Duncan was our priority at the time. Sadly gone now still really missed the little monster.

I cannot believe I have just read this.

So you are telling me that with a wolf cross like Ben - a dog who has either been abused, or people have been frightened of him and let him do what he wants - you are saying that with reward training, or clicker training for instance you would only EVER have to give ONE treat to train a perfect recall, or use a rattle bottle or a clicker just ONCE to train a perfect recall?

Ben NOW has a perfect recall. Between that first perfect recall, when he was zapped once, and he came straight to us, he has had one or two mishaps - one which involved a deer. He and Tai were well on the hunt, and both dogs ignored the "Come". It was repeated, and Tai stopped and came back, but Ben didn't so he had to have a zap. he stopped instantly and came back. I do not call that a fail.

Clearly YOU know nothing about dogs or dog training