I See Your True Collars

This article is based on the My Favorite Bitch podcast, S01E012.

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Let’s talk about dog collars. Oh, what a collar adventure I have been on with multiple dogs!

True to the core mission of the My Favorite Bitch program, I'm not coming to you from the perspective of some expert. I've not gone out and done tons of research; I don’t have hard statistics on collars. I’ll leave it up to you to go out and Google it, there is a lot of information out there. You can easily find the pros and cons of different types of collars from various perspectives.

So if you aren’t giving us your top 10 collars, then what are we going to talk about, Beth?

I'm going to talk to you with honesty about my collar experience. In this case, the slightly ugly side of trying to find the right collar for my multiple dogs over the years. 

Full disclosure right up front, my current dog Moxie uses a prong (pinch) collar when we walk. Now I'm hoping to change that because she is going to be sent in about a month to a board and train. She's actually a pretty good walker with the prong collar but I know with the board and train they're really going to get her into some serious loose leash or no leash type of walking.

But right now we use the prong collar and I have no guilt or shame about that.

I have a long history with dog collars which begins with my last two dogs, the late Ripley - the most awesome chocolate Labrador in the entire world - and Sammy - my good boy, the aloof but still lovable pit bull-shepherd—both of whom are now in that great farm in the sky.

My Collar Adventures

I’ve had a lot of trial and error with collars, mostly with Sammy. 

Ripley was instinctively a pretty good walker. After a few attempts at different collars with her when she was a pup, by the time she was walking any significant amount of distance we had settled on the Halti or the Gentle Leader.

The Gentle Leader is a harness-type collar. It goes over the dog’s nose (loosely…they can still eat, drink, bark, bite), then there's also an attached backup collar that goes around their neck and they're connected at the end. The nose part has a loop to which you connect the leash at the bottom of the chin. It tends to be pretty effective at keeping the dog from pulling.

Ripley used a halti and gentle leader the for about eight years.

However, getting her into the head harness—every single time without exception—was an exercise in patience. She did not want to go anywhere near it. 

We did all the right types of training with treats; we weaned her into it, and she knew that it was a good experience (the walk itself). But it didn't matter. Every time I pulled out the Halti she would go running. 

Sometimes it would take both me and my husband to get her cornered so I could get it on her. Once it was in place, she would sort of just drop her head and act like it was the most horrifying thing, like she was Cersei Lannister being walked down to the Red Keep. We called it the mask of shame or the halter of shame. 

But once she got out on her walk it was fine, she was fine. And it was effective at keeping her from pulling. 

Now, she wasn't a horrible puller; she was more of a socializer just like Moxie is. She instinctively walked pretty well. But Ripley wore this halter style for about eight years, so hold that thought because she lived well beyond eight years. 

Samson was my pit bull-Shepherd. Samson was the real challenge. Whereas Ripley was more social and didn't want to stray far from her humans, Samson had a very high prey drive.

Ripley, as with Moxie, could walk 10 feet away from a squirrel or a bunny and not even notice it.

Sammy, my mutt was always intensely on the lookout for a squirrel, a chipmunk, or a bird. Whatever it was he was, on the lookout, he was the protector. So it was a lot more challenging to find a collar that worked with Samson. Because he wanted to chase.

For the better part of an entire year, I went through multiple types of collars with Sammy.

Believe me, I didn't just try one once. I would try for weeks at a time.

We tried the traditional body harness. We tried the harness from the back, which just gave him more leverage. Harnesses are made for pulling, after all. We tried the harness that had the front attachment, which also didn’t work. The contraption just pulled to the side and shifted and wasn’t effective.

We used flat collars, but those were worthless as teats on a boar hog. I mean, he had the pit bull neck and he would strain if there was anything in the vicinity. It would actually scare me that he was going to hurt himself.

We tried the martingale. We tried a slip lead like Caesar Milan uses. It’s adjustable and slips over the head. Useless. 

We tried two different types of head halters—the Gentle Leader and the Halti. Sammy would go into an alligator roll multiple times every single time we went for a walk to try to get out of it and successfully did. Fortunately, they have a backup collar that prevents them from getting away if that happens.

But Sammy would get it off of his nose and we'd have to put it back every…single...time. Multiple times. 

Now you imagine trying to get a 50-60 pound dog up multiple times on a walk. The walks become not really walks.

We tried each of the halter-style collars over several weeks. They didn’t work so we tried the choke collar. 

The choke collar didn't work because it’s basically just a collar version of a slip lead, which we already know didn't work.

We tried multiple versions of each and I was at my wit's end. I was at a point where I really thought we're just not going to be able to walk…either that, or it's going to be a horrendous experience and it's not going to be fun…for the next 15 years!

So, I follow this website called Leerburg, which sells pet supplies and also has a lot of training videos. 

I ended up going there one day and I was watching a collar training video on how to use the pinch collar or the prong collar.

Now I know a lot of people out there have a knee-jerk reaction, thinking, Oh it's a prong collar, it's horrible, it's a torture device, and you should never use it! Would you ever wear one yourself? No, but, I also wouldn't eat food off the floor or sleep in a crate.

Admittedly, I had those same perceptions about the prong collar. I thought it was cruel.

But in truth, if you really look at the prong collar, it helps prevent trachea damage, and the correction is much more effective and less dangerous than a lot of other collars.

I watched a couple of these videos and where they used it and I thought, okay…I'm at my last choice. There are no other collars. Bear in mind, I was ready to give up walking and was very very frustrated.

I looked at the effectiveness of the prong collar as a training tool and I said, okay I just gotta suck it up. I don't have any other choice. 

So I got the prong collar and it worked like a dream. It only took a couple of days, a couple of times of doing a quick, very light corrections. 

It's not like you're poking holes in his neck, you do a very quick correction. They do feel it, it's just like when your kid tries to touch the stove and you slap their hand away, it doesn't really hurt them but they react to it.

Just like any collar, using a prong collar in the right way can be very effective and with Sammy, it worked beautifully. It took a couple of training sessions with some very quick and light corrections. I really only had to correct him maybe a handful of times over the next 12 years that he wore it.

He was about a year and a half when we finally settled on the prong collar and we used that his whole life. He never shied away from it…unlike Ripley with the “Gentle” Leader, who would go and hide under the table, under the chair, and in the corner whenever that thing came out.

Whenever I pulled the prong collar out Sammy was like YES! WE’RE GOING FOR A WALK! OMG LIFE IS GREAT! 

So here's the interesting thing about the prong collar. Sammy wore this thing for about 12 years. There came a point however with Ripley where I was just like, what in the hell is she doing, why is she running every time I pull out this halter?

So just for kicks and giggles, I decided to try Sammy’s prong collar one day when I took her out alone. She didn't shy away from it at all. We put it right on and it was very effective as it was with Sammy. I didn't even have to correct her, just having the thing on she was like Yeah, I got it, no problem! So I bought a second prong collar and I walked both of my dogs for about four years with them both wearing one.

Ripley did a 180 from her halter days. When the prong collar—the “torture device”—came out, she was wagging her tail right there with Sammy.

Moxie went through the same thing as Sammy.

She's pretty young and again, by nature, she is a pretty easy walker. But she does pull, and with the flat collar—especially if we meet another dog or another human—forget it. She's choking, literally choking when I take her to daycare.

So hopefully her board and train will help with that but when she's got the prong collar on she's much more manageable. We continue with training. A collar is but a tool so we still work on the training, but Moxie wears a prong collar. No shame

The prong collar works and that's what we use every single day. 

My thoughts on collars

So the thing about collars is, any collar can be misused. If you have a flat collar and you're avoiding other collars because you think the flat collar is the most humane, but your dog is pulling to the point where they're choking (which is what my dogs would do) that's not humane. 

It's not humane if you have a choke collar or a martingale and the same thing is happening. 

Training is important, but training is difficult right? It's hard and we're talking about average people here. Any collar can be misused and it's not humane if your dog is to the point of choking and you can't control it. 

Is it more humane if you have a choke collar or a flat collar and your dog’s trachea is being borderline crushed? Or that you have a collar with a little bit of evenly spaced poke, but they don't pull? They're not going to run out to the street and get hit by a car. They're not going to lunge at another dog or a small child or a cute bunny.

So which is more humane, that is the question I ask you. I say this because I have so many people in my life and people who put it out on social media I follow, who are very passionately against the prong collar or the pinch collar. But in truth, it's actually very humane and it's very effective in many cases.

The bottom line for you is, you need to find the collar that works for you.

Understand that other dogs aren't your dogs. So your dog might walk very effectively with a harness or with a halter. I see dogs all around my neighborhood and they've got the harness on and they seem fine. Great. Maybe we'll get there too. 

I also see a lot of dogs with prong collars on and a lot of retriever-type dogs and Labradors with prong collars. Why? because they're effective if you use them in the right way…just like any other collar.

Find the collar that's right for you, and continue with the training but don't be ashamed if you're using a collar that other people get pretty judgy about. Chances are 99% of them don't know what they're talking about. They're not really thinking about what's going on.

That’s my story about collars. I've gone through a lot with my three dogs in the past 15 years and we've settled on what works for now. We will continue to evolve and figure things out and work on training but right now this is what works for us.

I would love to hear from you about what collar you use and your experience with collars. Are you one of those people who thinks that prong collars are just hideous and hateful? I'd like to hear your perspective. Or, do you use a prong collar because it is effective for you?

What other collars have you tried and what kinds of successes or failures have you had? What kind of dog are you using those with?

Let me know.

Tell me about how it’s going, with that or anything else. Check out the My Favorite Bitch page for links to the podcast video and audio.