In today's video we're going to talk about
e-collars. We're going to talk about are they good? Are they bad? And when should you
use them and, of course, when should you not use them? So let me start by saying I'm not a
huge e-collar trainer. There’s some trainers out there that put an e-collar on every single
dog. I don't train like that, and I don't, I just don't see the use case, so and, I'm also
going to, let me back up a little bit. Years ago, I mean, I've been training dogs since '06, and
years ago I hated e-collars with a passion. So, when I first started training, I saw e-collar,
I thought they were, I thought they were bad, right? I thought they were absolutely cruel. I
thought they were used because people were lazy, and because people didn't have the dog's welfare
in mind, and they just wanted kind of the easy button. So I stayed away from them completely, and
years went by, and I don't know how many years, but years later I had a mastiff mix we rescued. He
was big, like 150 lbs or so, and he was a really good dog, always listened, and we were hiking on
a farm in central Iowa, and it was windy that day. Like, if you've been on a farm in, you know, farm
country in the middle of a windy day, you know what it's like. If you haven't, it's crazy. The
wind whips. It is so hard it'll carry your voice to where you can't hear someone 20 feet from you.
I learned this lesson the hard way. My dog was running, just being a dog, having fun, and all
of a sudden he saw a deer and he took off after it. You know, he's a dog, right? That’s what they
do. And I called him, and if he could hear me, the dog would listen no matter what, but he couldn't
hear me. So he took off running after the dog, or after the deer, full speed. He’s running and I'm,
like, chasing after him, looking like a maniac, right? I'm like, you know, his name was Smalls,
and I'm like “Smalls! Smalls!” I'm screaming, and I became scared, right? Because I love
that dog, and I was worried about losing him, right? Him getting too far away. Him getting hit
by a car. Who knows what. And finally, I don't know how long it had been, felt like forever,
he turned for whatever reason, and I'm like way behind him because he's way faster. I'm like, I
don't know, half a mile? Maybe not half a mile, quarter mile back, whatever. Really long way.
And I'm like waving like a maniac, and he turns, and he sees me, and he freezes. And so I gave him
his signal for come, and he turned and started coming to me, because he was a good dog, right? He
always listened, and he got about halfway and then he stopped and he laid down. I could see he was in
pain. So I got up to him and he’d hurt his leg. So I picked him up. You can see l, I'm not this like
huge powerful person, right? I picked him up, and I carried him back, and it sucked, right? Um, you
know, he couldn't walk. It was, it was horrible, right? It was a lot of dog for me to carry. I
got him back there. He ended up being okay. No permanent damage to the leg, but that was an eye
opener to me, and it really showed me that “hey there's got to be a better way”, right? Otherwise
I just can't trust a dog who's that far away, and that really restricts their ability to be a dog,
right? He was only started maybe 50 yards from me, right? Not that far away, but it was just a windy
day. So I thought there's got to be another way, and I started looking more into e-collars, and
what I did is, as I looked more into e-collars, I learned a lot, and my previous association
with e-collars, and I'd seen some bad e-collar trainers out there, and by bad what I mean
is, they were what I said earlier: kind of lazy and used it as the easy button. They put it
on and just corrected dogs. But I took the time, and I watched some good e-collar trainers, and
it just like it blew my mind, because I realized they were not being harsh, they weren't yelling,
they weren't like cranking these things up high, and like really correcting the dogs. The dogs
were happy. The dogs were training, and they were enjoying it, and I was like, it blew my mind,
absolutely. And I was an experienced dog trainer already, right? I had just stayed away from these
tools. And I saw it and it changed everything. So I started using e-collars more and I realized they
are not the tool that some people make them out to be. Now could they be used that way? Yes, they
could, right? They could be used in a bad way, but so could many other things. So this e-collar,
and I'm going to put this on in just a minute, and show you how it works and show you what
the corrections look like. But the e-collar is what people will call an aversive, meaning the
dog doesn't enjoy it, right? It's meant to be, you know, a correction, you know, just a quick
snap, right? To catch their attention. People will tell you aversives are bad, right? And aversives
could be bad, right? But think about what an aversive is. It's something the dog doesn't like.
So could a cloth collar be an aversive? Yes, right? If your dog is pulling on-leash and
you use pressure to bring, to stop them, and bring them back, that cloth collar is an
aversive. Can a Gentle Leader, which is built as like the ultimate, like, you know, PC dog
training tool could that be aversive? Yeah! Why do you think dogs stop pulling, right? They
put it on, they pull, and it turns their head, and they're like “oh that wasn't very comfortable”
so they stop pulling as much when it's on, right? It was an aversive. If it wasn't, if they
loved it, they'd quit, they would keep pulling, right? If they thought “wow this feels good when
I pull” it would encourage them to do it more. Uh, the word “no” is an aversive, right? If you
tell your dog “no” in a stern manner to try to stop them from doing something, that's an
aversive. So the idea that an e-collar is bad, like, de facto bad, because it's an aversive,
is just silly, because humans, you know, use aversives with each other, and with dogs, all the
time. So it's really about the level of aversive, right? Is it, like, is it very cruel? Is it
intense? Is it mean-spirited? Those are problems, right? But just because it's meant to not be
a great thing for the dog doesn't make it bad, because that's what correction is about,
right? There has to be a way to, kind of, break their focus and correct them. So let's let's
talk about what the e-collar is like, because I know in your mind right now, if you've never
seen one before, you're thinking “shock collar”, right? And I can tell you I absolutely hate that
term, and I probably used that back in 2006, 7, 8, maybe even 2009, because in my mind that's what
they did. They shocked dogs, right? This is not a shocking tool. It doesn't have that kind of power.
So let me show you what it does. Let me turn it on here. This is a Dogtra. It's a great unit. Okay,
so first you can, I don't know if you can hear it, but you can certainly see it bouncing across
the desk there. That's the vibrate function. The vibrate function, or the pager, is awesome. That
could have let me call that mastiff from 50 yards away. I'd push it, he'd feel it, if I trained him
properly, which I would have, he would know that meant come, and we wouldn't have had a problem.
He actually went deaf. He lived to be a great age for a mastiff. He went deaf when he was older. I
had him trained on an e-collar. It was awesome! He could be outside being a dog, and I could push the
pager. He knew it meant to check in for me, and then I could call him inside. So pager function
is absolutely awesome! Now e-collars also have a correction function, right? So let's talk about
what that's like. So e-collars, a good e-collar, has many different levels. Now you can see this
is snug on me. You have to make good e-contact, or I'm sorry good contact, with an e-collar. That's
one of the biggest issues is when people have them on too loose, but so it's nice and snug, so it's
making contact. This goes from 0 to 127. Zero, cannot feel; 127 very unpleasant; and everything
in between. So I'm going to start this at a one. So you can see there's a dial there, in the little
screen. So it's at a one, and I'm going to push this button on the side, and do a one. Now I can't
feel a thing whatsoever. So I'm going to do a two: nothing. And I do this, we find the right working
level for a dog, we, uh, work with the client. I'm at a three: still nothing. You know, and we start
very low with the dog. Four nothing. Five nothing. Okay, seven, first one I felt just, just like a
little tingle. So certainly doesn't hurt, not even the same level as a pinch, just a tingle. Okay,
eight, I can feel. Definitely doesn't hurt. So, here, eight. I don't know if you can see a little
flex there. I go to the chiropractor; I've got a bum shoulder just from life, I guess, and they use
a TENS unit on me. The TENS unit is, I don't know, a lot more powerful than this. So when I have
the TENS unit on, it'll like kind of twitch my shoulder, and supposedly it's good for me, relaxes
the muscles. I don't really know how that works, but supposedly it's great, right? And every time
they do it, it's like that. This eight right here is just like a, I don't know, much less than that.
It's just very much like a little tingle. This is a working level for many dogs: eight, and, you
know, and even dogs that you'd picture as like tough dogs like German shepherds, you know, German
shepherds are not big, bulletproof, super tough dogs. A lot of times they're very sensitive. A lot
of German shepherds are working on a seven, eight, nine. So you need to dial on the working level
and understand how it works. And you also need to feel it on yourself, right? You cannot put this
on your dog without putting it on yourself first. Now the pager function, right now, I can feel it,
right? Super easy to feel. So the beauty of it is: picture your dog is running outside. When you've
trained him properly, you push this, and they're like “what? What do you need?” And they're
conditioned that they look for you, and they get a ton of praise as they come over! So this pager
function is awesome. To the dog it means “yes, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to come to you,
you're going to praise me, and I'm going to get a reward for that.” So that's how we start finding
a working level. And I, let me turn this off so I don't drain the battery for no reason. So that's
how we start finding the working level with an e-collar. And I always like clients to feel it
themself and then we start finding the level for the dog. Now the level of contact matters. You
know, you can see I'm not a dog, right? I don't have really thick fur all over me. And, you know,
even a lot of dogs, I mean, some have very thin coats, like, you know, picture a pit or American
bulldog or something. Some have very, you know, very thin coats like those two, but some have
very thick coats like a German shepherd an akita, whatever. You have to make good contact. You have
to spend some time. So the number one problem I see with e-collars is, people not making good
contact, and it's sporadic. So I could feel the eight. It was the same every time. If I had really
thick fur, and it was just barely making contact, what could happen is, it's on an eight, I feel
nothing. I feel nothing. You turn it up to a 10. I feel nothing. I move, it shifts, and now you're
at a 12, and I'm like “whoa that that was much different than, you know, what happened earlier.”
That's a problem. So if you use an e-collar, you need, you need to really make sure that you
have good contact there. I'm going to put some links in the description for some better contact
points, than these, that really help with that. Some of the downsides to e-collars is: one they
have to be really tight in order to work. So the extensions that we're going to show you, we'll put
in the description, help a lot because then you can put it on looser. Now let's talk about, kind
of, some worries with an e-collar. So I know I've heard people say, like, you know, “I don't want to
electrocute my dog.” I don't want to electrocute your dog either, right? Nobody does. Well, no one
who's not a monster, I guess. So an e-collar does not electrocute your dog. It does not have that
level of power. Nowhere close to that. You cannot hurt your dog on an e-collar. Now, can you scare
them? Yes, absolutely you can scare the dog on an e-collar, but you can scare your dog accidentally
many ways, right? If you have an eight week old dog, and they pee in the house, and you scream,
you know “no! Bad dog!” You're going to terrify them, right? You, so you can scare the dog
with, you know, voice. You could scare them with a e-collar. You could scare them on a cloth
collar, for sure. Dog pulls, you yank really hard, you could scare them on that. So you need to make
sure you're not scaring a dog with it. They need acclimated properly, but you cannot hurt your dog
with it. The only, you know, real issue to worry about with an e-collar is: if you leave it on too
long it's not great for the skin, kind of like a pressure sore, especially if you have it cranked
tight, and especially if their skin is wet, and it, like if they're swimming, and it's just
sitting there for hours, it can leave like little sores. I've never had that happen to a dog in my
care, but I've seen pictures. So, you know, it is true. Easy to prevent. I mean, first of all, I
never have any collar on dogs for hours, so that's why I've never had it happen to a dog in my care.
If you're, like, boating with your dog, or hiking, and you have it on for 12 hours, just adjust it.
You know, every couple hours just move it an inch, and you're never going to have an issue. But know
why you're using an e-collar, right? So I said at the start, I don't use an e-collar with every dog.
So now let's talk about how we use an e-collar. And I want to be clear here, and I want you to
really think through something: I never ever, ever, ever teach with an e-collar. So think about
that. I don't ever teach with an e-collar. That, to me, is a huge distinction. So if you call me
over, and you say “Matt I need help with my dog”, and I get to your house, and your dog's, like,
a lunatic, right? Running around the house, barking and jumping and stealing stuff off the
counter, and leaping at me, and crazy on-leash, you know what I'm not going to say? “Hey, let's
get your dog out an e-collar.” Not a chance, absolute 0% chance, I'm going to say that what
we're going to do is we're going to teach. We have to teach right from wrong. We have to adjust
the lifestyle. If your dog's not getting the right amount of exercise, and the right amount of, you
know, training on a daily basis, why would we put an e-collar on him? That makes no sense, and
that's not fair. So we're going to teach your dog heel. We're going to teach him out or drop it,
if that's a problem. We're going to teach them not to jump, not to bark. We're going to do all of
that with a leash and collar. Once we've done all of that, if you still have problems, you know, in
the house, could we use an e-collar there? Yeah, we could, right? But that's pretty uncommon. Most
of the time we don't need it. Generally speaking, I'm using an e-collar for come, and once again,
I'm not coming to your house and you say “hey Matt, my dog doesn't come when called” and I'm
like, “Awesome! Let's get an e-collar on him, and we'll fix it right now!” That's not how it
works. We're going to go out with a long line, and we're going to train your dog on a long line,
and we're going to work on come that way first. And years ago, that's all I did. That's the only
way I trained dogs on come, was with a, you know, a leash at first, and then a long drag leash in
the yard. And it worked really well, but what I did see is: people don't love long lines, and for
good reasons. So there's some downsides to long lines for come. One is: it's dragging through the
yard. It's pretty much a guarantee it's going to get covered in dog poop, right? At some point
in time, it's going to go through it, you're going to pick it up, and it's nasty, and you're
going to think “I hate this long line”, right? Or it's going to be wet, and we all know why it's
wet, because it went through a puddle of pee. So long lines have their downside. They also have a
danger component to them, you know, if your dog is running full speed, and they do loops, you know, a
couple loops around a tree, and take off the other way, that long line is now attached to the tree.
If they hit the end as hard as they can, that's dangerous. And I don't just mean, like dangerous
like, they could, you know, get a little scrape. Like, they could legitimately hurt themselves.
It's a big problem. So with a long line you have to use it, you know, carefully and safely. So we
start with the long line, but what I saw over the years is: my long line clients were like, I don't
know, let's say roughly 80% successful at true, off-leash come, to where they could go, you know,
to a field and trust their dog off-leash. And it wasn't because the method didn't work. It's
because they didn't enjoy the long line, right? It wasn't a fun process. It got covered in poop.
They didn't have a long enough one. Like if your dog's going to be 100 yards away, your long line
needs to be more than 100 yards, right? Because if it's a foot away from you, and your dog's running,
it's useless, right? You need to be able to reach it. So you would need a very long line, or a giant
fenced-in area, which most people don't have. So when I moved to e-collar training, what I saw is
my clients became 99.9%. And I'm just making up that number. I don't remember really ever having
a client that worked with an e-collar and couldn't get off-leash come, when they put the effort
in, right? Not everyone put the effort in, and actually finishes training, but anyone who does,
and actually works on it, gets their dog trained off-leash. That's the goal of this, and that's
the beauty. That's what an e-collar is all about, right? An e-collar is about that off-leash freedom
for a dog to be a dog. For your dog to get the chance to run and to be a dog. So now if you came
to me and said “I will never ever, ever have my dog outside of this fenced-in yard, off leash, do
I need an e-collar?” I would say “no”, right? Now if you have time, and you have the money, it'd be
a good idea to train him on one. Why not, right? Because what if his leash pops off one day, right?
Or what if someone leaves the front door open and your dog hasn't learned, you know, manners at
the door. So there's still some use, cases there, but it's not, you know, it's not needed in that
scenario, right? I think it's better, but it's not needed. To me these become really needed when you
want your dog truly off-leash. And in my opinion you should want that for your dog, right? That,
I mean, that is like the absolute most, you know, joyful a dog can be, right? Running free, having
fun, getting the chance to be a dog. And this can allow you to do it. Now as you watch this video,
your, your takeaway should not be Matt Covey said get an e-collar. That, I don't want that to be
the takeaway, right? You need to think about, does it make sense for your dog? Does your dog
have the baseline of training to even be ready for an e-collar? And are you going to use it properly?
And by “use it properly”, you need to learn, right? You either need to work with a good trainer
who can help you with it or watch some really good YouTube video. Someone showing you how to use
this, because it's not just put it on and correct the dog. If you do that, they're not going to
understand it. They're going to be scared by it, and there's a lot of things that could go wrong.
Picture your dog is you know 20 feet from you, you say “come”, they don't do it, and you're like “oh,
okay, I'm going to push this button now. I'm going to correct them”, and they happen to be standing
by their ball, and maybe they were going for it, and you push that button. Even if it doesn't hurt
a lot, even if it's just uncomfortable, they might think “oh, that ball's kind of scary”, right? And
they might walk away from the ball. And you might think “hey! job well done!” And the next day your
dog doesn't go near the ball. You're like “what's going on?” That could be the problem, right? So
you need to think about your method for how you use this. If you're working with a trainer, and
their answer to everything is “turn the e-collar up really high”, that's a huge red flag. Your
dog should not be scared of this tool. When I get this out with my dogs, or when I get this out
with a client's dog, they're like, you know, like, that wiggle, like, “yes! I know what this means!
I get to go train!” And we've already done so much training that when we start working with this
our corrections are very few and far between, and they're not a, they're not a correction
at 70, 80, 90, 127. They're at like 10, 12, maybe 20. They're enough to be just like a pinch
to the neck, to really get the dog's attention, for them to look at me, and I can say “hey,
come” and now they actually do it. So that's what this is all about. If you decide to use an
e-collar, do your research. Try it on yourself first. If you have questions, let us know. We
would absolutely love to help you with your dog!
