People love to slag on prong collars, or any other device they perceive as capable of inflicting physical discomfort.
Well, here’s two facts I guarantee are going to pull the shriekers out of the woodwork-
1) Discomfort is a fact of life. Even when we don’t actively seek it, we experience it, in a variety of ways. Fair-skinned vampires such as myself are prone to avoid the sun when we can, but have to endure it when we have to. That wild carnivore assumes serious risks every time it hunts game bigger than itself. Prong collars are designed to distribute pressure over a large surface area to endow the handler with more physical control, not as the torture device some folks believe them to be.
2) Prong collars enhance training efforts, they don’t actually do the training, they facilitate it, and when the handler weighs less than their animal, or they own a dog that can easily overwhelm them physically, it makes sense to leverage their odds of success by applying tools like prong collars, which will enable them to communicate effectively with their dog.
The hairless monkey at the other end of the leash is the one responsible for using the tool the way it was designed to work, not amplify it with more force than is necessary to establish communication, cooperation and acceptance.
I like prong collars. The Kimberland Prong Collars are smartly designed, have been modified to accommodate more coat types, dog sizes and needs, and really levels the playing field for folks that want large dogs, but are not physically equipped to handle them. They even have a line of designer colors for the fashion forward dog owner!
And before anybody gets their panties in a twist, the reality is, folks DON’T train their dogs when they are puppies, and often leveraging devices are absolutely necessary to assist in the training process. To think otherwise is dangerous and delusional.
Anyway, I hope folks get the benefit of the message. I am a dog trainer, not a moviemaker, so the image quality and sound are great, the content is decent, but there aren’t flashy production values and high drama.
We’ll save that for the next video, on how to use a prong collar effectively.
Enjoy!
