Prong collars and why I don't recommend them.

Recently I have had an increase in clients asking me if they should get a prong collar to have their dogs walk better on leash. While in some extremecases a prong collar may be necessary, I do not recommend them for inexperienced owners. I personally get a more efficient result from a simple slip or martingale collar with tags on them.

Prong collars were designed to mimic a dogs mouth. The theory is: it is like having teeth around their neck, like an alpha dog would do for a correction. Problem here is an alpha does not bite a pack member on the neck for any minor mishap. This makes your dog lose respect for their leader. Just about every client I have been to who has a prong collar, has had it so tight the dog was getting a constant correction. It bites all the time. I have seen quite a few dogs become handler aggressive when receiving a correction from a prong collar, when they get that severe bite from the collar, they quickly turn and retaliate against you. I recently went on a call where the owner had been using a prong collar on a dog-dog aggressive dog. This dog was high energy, and horrible on leash (even with a prong collar). The owner had told me a trainer before was shocked that the dog could take a such a harsh correction with the prong collar and not respond. Needless to say, this dog was becoming increasingly aggressive towards her own pack. Causing such extreme bites, the owner now has to keep her completely separated. This dog has completely lost her bite inhibition. She has been “bitten” so hard by the prong collar that it is perfectly normal for her to inflict the same intensity in her bite to another dog. With one proper correction with a slip collar the dog responded and completely avoided her main target in her house, a nervous male. This is the same dog that literally bent the prongs on her prong collar from being corrected so hard.

There is alot of contraversay about slip collars and how they damage a dogs neck. My question to you is if your dog is on a regular flat buckle collar and continuously pulling, aren’t they choking? How can this not cause damage to your dog’s neck? I have been on some calls where a dog will literally turn themselves purple, and be gagging from being choked with a flat collar. With one or two proper corrections of a slip or martingale collar with tags, they respond and the leash is loose. The sound of the “pop” is what they respond to. I would rather give my dog one good correction then nag them 1000 times or bite them constantly with a prong collar. If you need help leash walking your dog correctly please contact us.

Tara, Brandie & the “pack”