You probably need a change of equipment.

Labs have strong enough necks to brace aginst a head collar and pull through it as you have found.

I would recomend a prong collar as a good opyion for him, he won't pull/lunge as much in one anyway and your corrections will get his attention instead of winding him up.

If he is also bad off lead I would look at doing some recall training with an e collar as well as this will give you the chance to exercise him properly.

An e collar on its own could also be used to teach him to walk to heel and ignore distractions.

Adam

Yes and an ecollar and prong collar will actually make him associate all those scary things with...pain...great idea...as then he will be more scared and more determined to fight as soon as he isn't wearing the equipment. Good plan....NOT.



Tell me Adam Palmer, do ecollars change the thickness of the neck skin and alter the texture of the hair in the neck area?

You would!

E-collars & prong collars = brutal
but lets not get into a discussion on how you have no ability to train dogs without hurting them or losing their trust

Umm they don't, I've put e collars on plenty of dogs and the skin and hair remains the same.

Re Dexter, atm the owner has little/no control, the dog is also practising the wrong behaviour and very dangerouse behaviour.

By using prong/e collar the owner will be able to control him, stop him practising the wrong behaviour and create rewardable behaviour. In a very short period of time.

Adam

He will associate the pain with whatever he sees when it happens.... not good if it is something he is already frightened of.

Is there not a whole line of working Labs whose neck skin ahs become so thickened that they have no sensitivity to a shock collar..or so I heard...perhaps an urban myth huh?

But not only is it uncomfortable for both dog and human and non rewarding for the dog it is also a very boring way to train a dog. And doesn't build up any trust... And from what we've all seen how well your dogs are trained and how happy they all look

If you use the collar as an interupter combined with a leave/no command and then make an effort to reward the none reactive state he won't.

If you use the collar to train/enforce heel and recall he won't have any association with it with his distration.

Believe me I've done this with plenty of dogs and they have never associated the collar with the thing they dislike.
In fact use of the collar allows you to suppress reactive behaviour long enough to create a positive association.

I think the skin thing is urban myth tbh, never heard of it and have plenty of e collar contacts.

Adam

http://maryshouse.us/A_Word_about_Shock_Collars.htm
http://www.apbc.org.uk/articles/shockcollars

How do you know what they associated the collar with?

IMHO I think claires idea of the 'body block' and 'watch me' along with heavy reinforcement (as, when and if possible) would be best - youve had some great advice here by several people and I agree with most of it so dont have too much to add just now! You should find the Dogmatic really good too - keep using it, if its whats needed to set you up for success then go with it!