Collars

I have seen this topic come up a lot recently. The question I have seen is why do you have 3 or 4 collars on your dog. This applies to HIGH DRIVE WORKING dogs. I have trained with dogs that have an electric collar on, a prong collar on, a choke chain on, and a flat collar on. This does not mean the dog is going to be shocked, pronged, and choked into submission. In fact hurting the dog would be counterproductive and handlers do not want to hurt their dogs. Most of the time these multi collars are in place just in case. When training bite work, the dog is very excited and very aroused, so some collars are needed to change the "channel" in the dog; for example, get the dog to let go of the bite. For another example; you are working on a recall and the dog does not recall, now you put an e collar on the dog you have just conditioned the dog to be collar wise because it already got away with not recalling and noticed you put the collar on. Dogs are smart and will occasionally try to cheat to get their reward! These multi collars can be used to get the dog in and stay in the right position for sport dogs. As your training progresses, collars come off but there are always still a few on for those "just in case times". An accidental bite from these dogs can be very bad. If one collar fails, it is always good to have another on so nothing bad happens to a person, your dog, or another dog. So if you see a dog with multi collars on, it does not mean the handler is looking to inflict pain on the dog, it means the exact opposite and the handler truly cares for the dog!