Training Tools

Hi. My name is Gwen Shope. I’m here with Highland Canine Training and today, I’m going to go over some training tools with you.

[Flat Collar]

We’re going to start off with a flat collar. The flat collar is made basically just to have an attachment point for the leash. So, on this one in particular, the leash would clip on right here.

With this collar, you want to have one or two fingers with room around the collar just enough so that the collar cannot slip off over the dog’s ears. This collar is great. It can be worn all day every day. It is great for all different types of sizes and breeds. You can get some personality with it, with different materials and sizes.

The pros are that it’s great for all day use, right? And the cons are that if this is improperly fitted, the dog could actually pull out of this collar, if it’s too loose around the neck and it’s not ideal for correcting behaviors. So, it’s not super suitable for all types of training.

[Martingale Collar]

The next collar we’re going to go over is the Martingale Collar. This collar is designed to prevent escape. So, when fitted on the dog, half of the collar will tighten to prevent it from slipping off over the dog’s head. The pros to this collar is that it’s good for training. It can be gentler on the sensitive structures of the neck such as the trachea, the larynx, and the thyroid gland. It can be used with different materials. This one has a chain. Same concept. Half of the collar is going to tighten and then release. Either the dog or the handler will release that pressure and the only cons for this collar is that it is not super suitable for toy or small-breed dogs.

[Prong Collar]

The next collar we’re going to go over is the prong collar. The main purpose for the prong collar is to evenly distribute pressure along the dog’s neck in order for an even correction. There are many different types of prong collar. There are different materials such as plastic. You can have one that has a buckle on it instead of taking off the prong links and there are different sizes as well, different sizes.

So, it goes as small as a micro prong, very tiny. We have a small prong collar. There’s also a medium prong collar and there’s also a large prong collar. The size is not necessarily based off of the size of the dog. It’s actually the level of correction that you want to apply.

So, even though this collar looks smaller than this one, this is going to apply more pressure because there’s more points than this collar has. So, the large prong collar is actually going to have the lowest amount of pressure applied and the small is going to have the highest amount of pressure applied.

So now I will go over a little bit of the anatomy of the collar. So, in the front here, we have this trachea plate. This is a divider plate that keeps the prongs even on each side and it’s also meant to sit at the base of the trachea and it’s helping to evenly distribute that pressure across the neck, right?

On the sides, you have your links which have the prongs on them. They have a nice rounded edge to them so that they’re not sharp. Just clips in and out like that. I use my thumb and my forefinger to squeeze the prong back into place. This is how we want to take the collar off and on. We never want to just shove the collar over the dog’s head, right?

We’re always going to be taking it off, putting it on and I will demonstrate that in a second. At the base of the collar here, we have at the top a D-ring. So, you can see it’s kind of shaped like a D and then not to be confused with the O-ring.

The O-ring, we want flat against the dog’s neck and the D-ring is where we clip the leash to. So, when we apply pressure, the O-ring is sitting flat and the D-ring will constrict the collar on the dog’s neck. This is simulating a corrective nip that a mother dog or another dog might give a dog to tell them that they’re being inappropriate.

So, when we fit the collar on the dog, what we want to do is take a link, disconnect it, and I’m going to demonstrate on this dog right here. Ideally the collar is going to sit high up on the neck and it’s going to be tight. So, this is actually going to be too loose of a fit.

So this collar is not going to give a very effective correction, right? So what I’m going to do is I’m going to take one of these links, take it out like that, save it in case I need it for later and I’m going to go back, have this up here, squeeze just like that. You can see that the O-ring is sitting flat and it’s prepared for us to give that correction, right?

That way, we’re being very consistent and direct with the dog. If the collar is loose, they might not feel the correction in the way that we want them to. So, this is just going to give us the most effective way to talk to them.

So, the prong collar is great for correcting behaviors. You can see virtually immediate results with it when used properly. The downside to the prong collar is that it can be easy to over-correct a dog and apply too much pressure to them, if the dog is too soft. So that’s the only downside to it.

The most important thing to know about the prong collar is the safety rules that you have to adhere to. So, we never want to leave this collar on the dog unattended. This is only for active training time. All right?

We never want to put the collar on over the dog’s head. We are always going to be taking the link apart, putting it on and reattaching it.

[Choke Chain]

The next collar we’re going to go over is called a choke chain. The main purpose of a choke chain is to squeeze the brachial nerve on the dog’s neck. There are different sizes. You could have a choke chain as small as this or as large as this.

When we’re putting this on the dog, what I’m going to do is take one of these rings and take the chain and thread it through and then put it over the dog’s head and the pressure will be applied like that, right?

So, the handler will apply pressure and then it will be released. So, this is used in order to correct the dog. The downside to the choke chain is that it can damage the more sensitive structures in the throat such as the larynx, the trachea or the thyroid gland when used improperly. But the choke chain can be used for training.

[Slip Lead]

The next tool we’re going to go over is called a slip lead. A slip lead allows for more immediate control of the dog and also a gentler correction. It’s going to slip over the dog’s head just like that and then you will apply pressure. You want it to be sitting up high on the neck and then the pressure will be applied by the handler and the slip lead will tighten on the dog’s neck.

So, this is really good for again immediate control of the dog, a gentler correction when applied properly. The cons to this is that if you apply a pretty harsh correction, there is potential to damage sensitive structures in the neck, like the larynx, the trachea and the thyroid gland. But this is a really, really great tool for the shelter setting to use for dogs that we might be unsure about. We don’t have that much information on. We can basically kind of loop the dog through the slip lead and have immediate control of them. So, this is a really, really great tool for that type of context.