I have been involved in using one. And I would never use one again for that particular situation. It was messy.

However, his drive to eat the faeces is so salient that he is oblivious to nearly everything else.
But has to be properly done like using any equipment.

I can assure you that my male Labrador was exactly the same at that age. I could go to one of local fields, walk all the way around, and he would still be at the entrance stuffing his face full of poo. I would have had a walk and he would have consumed more calories than he burnt off. It was THAT bad.

But as I said in a previous post, he got MUCH better naturally with age. Granted, all the other various teenage 'puppy' issues (recall, disobedience in general, hyperness, etc.) probably made the poo issue eating worse. Therefore, having a good level of training overall makes managing this problem much easier to deal with. A decent level of training obviously comes with age (an 8 month old puppy obviously isn't going to be awarding winning at obedience!) and maturity.

For me, using spray collars would be a last resort, primarily because I don't think they work effectively anyway long-term, but also because of the timing issue. I think using one on a puppy is unfair as you have not explored all avenues yet, nor have you given the pup a chance to mature naturally. I was unfortunate that my Labrador never completely grew out of this behaviour, but MANY do, so don't write your pup off yet.

All vet nurses have a boss surely??? Maybe you're a vet now????!!!

No not always. But that doesn't mean its wrong fundamentally. Training a dog is not a "natural" thing to do at all, but yet we still feel it beneficial to the dog somehow and we do it.

Much as I hate to admit it, on this particular occasion, I have to agree with Adam

That doesn't make me believe in all Adams methods or approaches, certainly not, by the way, I just agree with him on this point.

How often have you used a collar Denise?

rune

I had no idea that you where considering using a collar in a crate!!!!!

I agree with other posters that if your dog is still spoiling in a crate overnight, then your toilet training management needs to change somehow.

I certainly would not be using a collar in a cage or indeed in Kennels. If the dog needs to toilet in a confined space then it NEEDS to toilet in a confined space - instinctively it would not! You can not, humanely, use an aversive there.

If you are talking citronella collars which I assume you are (?) then I have recommended them perhaps, (difficult to know for sure as I've never counted), but Id say 20 times (?). That's in all the dogs that CaDeLac has trained which is in excess I estimate of 10,000 dogs. So a pretty small percentage.

Personally used - once - and that was a poo eating problem which was cured in one spray.

The rest have been medical concern, diet(common), malnutrition, wait to see if he/she will grow out of it for a little while, or attention seeking mistraining, or failed leave mistraining, boredom (very common), innapropriate toilet training issues, poor garden poo management usually with boredom combined and the odd "freak" behaviour. All of these options are always considered/tried or ruled out before any aversion techniques are considered by CaDeLac.

To the best of my knowledge, a collar has never failed. But it is very rare that it ever has to be used either!!!!

Thanks for that.

rune