The thing that really struck me was not so much the disagreements on how best to use them, but the insistence that everyone else was using it wrongly and in a cruel/abusive way. If users themselves can't agree on what is and isn't abusive, it's a pretty safe bet that those who are against physical aversives will universally agree that the things are just plain wrong and abusive no matter how they are used.

I can pretty much guarantee that anyone posting about pet keeping on an animal rights board would be pretty lucky have any kind of civil discourse. I can also pretty much guarantee that if an animal rights activist came on to this site and started a thread saying it's cruel to own dogs would also be pretty lucky to maintain any civil discourse for any length of time.

E-collars in the UK = explosive arguments. There's a strong movement to have them banned and some of the UK have already done so.

No matter the topic, I'm of the opinion that civil discussion is better than personal attack and although I'll argue strongly for what I believe, I would hope I'm always civil, but I'm getting on a bit so have learned over the years that you get a point across far more effectively when being polite

I agree, way too much room for misinterpretation of the typed word.

Not irrelevant at all, in part because it gave her the chance to make her choice. And I am glad to see you acknowledge that dogs do make wrong decisions, from what others have said I was beginning think that their training methods produced dogs that never did.

What I consider irrelevant is whether the shock or the whistle got the desired effect at that point; it was a correction for a poor choice. And, I was able to judge whether the correction got the desired effect based on my observation of her behavior during the rest of the hunt, which was exactly what I expected it to be, i.e., on the rest of the flushes that day, she planted her gorgeous butt and grew roots until sent, and it was a long time before did otherwise.

Ah, but because my dog was collar trained, I did have an option other than pray and hope (and at my age, probably also experience a coronary event). Can you guess what that option was?

Here we will have to disagree. Your dog received a command, albeit and environmental one, and ignored it. That command is now irrelevant to what happened subsequently as you did not shock for disobeying that command, you shocked to reinforce the next command you gave - the whistle.

The only relevance as to whether the shock or the whistle aided the second command is whether or not the shock was actually for your dog's sake or yours (ie it made you feel you were leaving your dog with less options). The default/emergency 'down' never failed with my collie without a physical aversive to reinforce it. Maybe I was lucky, maybe it was that a natural action for the dog was so well conditioned on command that he never thought to disobey it, much the same as I never think not to put on a seatbelt when I get in a car.

Zap again?

thats 3 times my question and facts from experts have been avoided about these barbaric so called training aids, and also the question as to are you a qualified trainer or behaviorist. that sums up everything

I think this sums up my problem with E-collars. How on earth does one know what their dog's pain threshold is? Even in humans pain is hard to measure and varies from one person to the next and from one moment to the next. I certainly know that depending on how I am feeling physically and emotionally and depending on the situation my own personal pain levels can change massively.
Unfortunately my dog cannot verbalise in English exactly how uncomfortable something like a shock is and since we have outlawed giving human beings any shock treatment without their approval I don't think it's acceptable to use it on an animal that has no choice.

here you go watch this and make up your own mind, there loads of vids testing all different ones out but still have the same effect, to say they dont cause any pain or discomfort of any sort is a blatant lie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leOjBPjftjc

Firstlight - You have previously admitted that you have not measured, or carried out any study on, the psychological or physiological effects of your e-collars on the dogs, yet you continue to use them regardless of the negative effects on the dogs, despite your experience.

The study I have quoted twice earlier in the thread found that:

"We concluded that shocks received during training are not only unpleasant but also painful and frightening. Furthermore, we found that shocked dogs are more stressful on the training grounds than controls, but also in a park. This implies, that whenever the handler is around, the dog seems to expect an aversive event to occur. A second unwanted association might be that the dogs have learned to associate a specific command with getting a shock. Apart from the acute pain and fear, these expectations may influence the dog’s well being in the long term in a negative way"

Is this really acceptable when training a dog?

Also, what health checks do you consider before you decided to shock a dog?

I watched Steve White's DVD set recently "Police K9 techniques for everyday use". Steve is a progressive trainer, but as you can imagine, has seen lots of forceful training techniques being a police dog trainer and handler for over 20 years.

He talks about the use of a shock collar having the capactiy to make a hanlder more effective by four fold. Which means , on a scale of one to ten, an e-collar can make a 2 handler into an 8. He qualifies that however, by saying that 0 isn't the baseline for dog trainers -10 is, which means if you are a -2, a shock collar can make you a -8. That's how powerful they are.

I can't stand them, there is no need to use them. I agree, without condoning their use, that they can be effective in the right hands. In the wrongs hands, they make things much, much worse. The good things about non aversive training tools are that idf you get a verbal marker wrong, the dog isn't harmed, you can;t say that with shock collars and many, many trainer/owners don't have the timing to use them.

As Ian Dunbar says, if we don't need to use aversive training tolls, morally should we be using them. It's an question for each person's conscience. It doens't sit well with me, and I've trained dozens of aggressive dogs with great results. we don't need to use them.

To the OP, you keep asking the question about people's personal experience with shock collars influencing their opinion. Many here don't have any, including myself, I'm glad of that. We can form opinions on many things without personally seeing or experiencing them, child rearing for example. We don't need to see that smacking a child for not learning something is wrong, we outlawed corporal punishment in schools in the 80s. It's time we did the same with dog training.

Never heard of him. Are you guys working on my family tree? LOL

You've never heard of the great Lou Castle??? You haven't lived