By Stephen lyndsay a respected behaviourist in the states, who is also I believe coming to the uk this weekend for a seminar, I believe he was invited by proffessor Mills who is conducted a study into e collars for defra. I believe Mills invited him because he has found nothing wrong with e collars so far.

There's alot of chat about scientific evidence to suggest e collars are bad.
However my experience has been the opposite.


http://co104w.col104.mail.live.com/default.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0

By Stephen lyndsay a respected behaviourist in the states, who is also I believe coming to the uk this weekend for a seminar, I believe he was invited by proffessor Mills who is conducted a study into e collars for defra. I believe Mills invited him because he has found nothing wrong with e collars so far.

This page

http://smartdogs.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/see-no-evil-read-no-evil-cite-no-evil/

Also discusses the scientific studies in depth and discusses a very interesting study in the early 1980s.

I've copied it over in case anyone (like me) has trouble following links on this forum

Given the widespread references /cites to studies that support the idea that e-collars are not only cruel and abusive, but that they can also elicit aggressive behavior — imagine my surprise when I came across an article providing strong evidence that e-collars were astonishingly effective in rehabilitating aggression in dogs.

Daniel F. Tortora’s study, titled “Safety Training: The Elimination of Avoidance-Motivated Aggression in Dogs,” was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General in 1983. The article is only available by purchase but is well worth $11.95 if you have an interest in this area. (Note: the article was also published in Australian Veterinary Practitioner in 1984, 14 (2), 70–74.)

Tortora took an elegantly simple approach to treating what he referred to as “avoidance-motivated aggression”. He proposed that because avoidance-motivated aggression is learned and maintained as an avoidance response, the most effective way to counter-condition it would be to teach the dogs nonaggressive avoidance responses.

Tortora defines avoidance-motivated aggression as “a form of instrumental aggression that involves attacks or threats of attack directed toward one or more of the dog’s human caretakers”. Avoidance aggression typically starts out as aggressive avoidance responses to things like physical discomfort (such as from grooming), intrusions on areas that the dog views as his territory and commands he doesn’t want to comply with. According to Tortora, these dogs usually suffer from a lack of training and predictability in their lives and therefore feel like they lack control over their environment. They behave like they expect bad things to happen and the only way to prevent the bad things is through aggression. When their frustrated owners resort to after-the-fact punishment, the dog’s expectations are reinforced, a feedback loop is created and the dog’s aggression escalates.

Tortora’s proposed remedy for this common, dangerous and difficult to remedy form of aggression consisted of teaching the dogs “nonaggressive, prosocial habits” such as AKC’s CDX level obedience exercises. He predicted that the probability of post-training aggressive behavior would be inversely proportional to the number of obedience exercises a dog gained proficiency in. The program also included teaching the dogs a conditioned safety signal that was used to reinforce good behavior and build the dogs’ confidence.

All exercises were introduced with the slip collar, then e-collar training was overlayed onto the introductory work. The e-collars used could emit two different tones, and tones and stimulation could be delivered separately or in conjunction with each other. The dogs were trained to perform 15 different commands at increasing levels of difficulty. These included: stand, down, come, go, hold, drop, sit, off, place, fetch, in, stay, play, no, heel, and hup. As commands were mastered, they were practiced in environments of increasing distraction. The dogs were initially trained by experienced trainers (Tortora doesn’t describe their qualifications but all were apparently able to train the dogs to a minimum of CDX level around significant distractions) in a board and train environment. Once the dogs were able to consistently perform the exercises under distraction without the e-collar, training was transferred to their owners, who used the e-collar only as needed to proof exercises.

Tortora stated that the dogs could be safely returned to their owners because: “Safety training with companion dogs, however, produces changes of long duration, perhaps even permanent changes. These changes in behavior readily transfer readily from the trainer to the dog’s owners and others.”

Many people are concerned that the stress of e-collar training will make dogs fearful or aggressive. While the dogs developed an initial conditioned anticipatory fear reaction during the escape training portion of Tortora’s program, their fear was extinguished during the subsequent avoidance and proofing stages. Upon reviewing these results, Tortora stated “It seems that the impact of safety reinforcement is to make the dog less fearful generally and better able to withstand trauma.”

How effective was this work? Well, in the abstract Tortora states that the program:

… resulted in complete and permanent elimination of aggression in all of the 36 dogs tested. In addition, it produced extremely extinction-resistant prosocial avoidance responses, significant increases in the dogs’ emotional stability, an avoidance-learning and safety acquisition response set, and improvements in measures of the dogs’ “carriage

Can't get the link to this to work. What exactly does Lindsay say? I'd be very surprised if Danny Mills had commented on the ongoing research being conducted at Lincoln. Commenting prior to research being completed is a big no no and Danny is far too professional to compromise a major research project.

Have just checked out the Tortora study (1983) and it's highly controversial

Both low and high (painful) levels of electric shock were used, and dogs were obedience trained, then tested using maximum stressful situations.

One example is being roughly handled and beaten about the body with a newspaper or switch, failure to comply with obedience command would be a high level electric shock

Lindsay admits in volume 3 that this raises serious welfare concerns. So much for Tortora.

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Scientific? You're 'avin' a laugh, yeah?

Tortora acted as a consultant for Tri-Tronics (manufacturers of e-collars), didn't he?

Absolutely - I suspect this is a rumour being circulated by certain people

Yes I believe he did .



Adam I do believe I see a grubby hand on your shoulder, my word your mentor has been busy today, first the video and now the study

You can produce a 100 studies and it won't change my opinion on the use of e collars or the confused and frightened behaviour of your poor little terrier in the video you made.

Absolutely - I suspect this is a rumour being circulated by certain people

(not you Adam).

(hallo Brierley! )

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