August 18th, 2010
As should be abundantly clear by now, The Positively Well-Behaved Dog is all about training using positive reinforcement. I favor giving dogs rewards for what they do right, rather than using anything aversive, much less painful, to stop dogs from doing something wrong.
Unfortunately, not everyone feels that way. Many people still believe that “correcting” a dog using aversive tools helps a dog to learn. That’s why I’ve joined a number of other dog bloggers to launch an 8-week campaign called “Never Shock a Puppy,” which aims to raiseg public awareness of humane alternatives to one group of such tools: pain-based dog collars, including shock collars.
Shock collars aim to correct behavior such as nuisance barking or wandering by delivering a shock that ranges in intensity. Prong collars and choke collars aim to alleviate leash pulling by, respectively, pinching the dog’s neck or giving a squeeze to the dog’s neck. A very effective commercial (in my opinion) to combat shock collars was aired by Doritos earlier this year.
The campaign is honchoed by K9Cuisine.com’s very own dog food blogger, Roxanne Hawn, who’s also a very knowledgeable enthusiast about other aspects of dog care, including training. Her blog about her work with her challenging but endearing Border Collie, Lilly, is must reading for any and all dog lovers.
The campaign starts officially on September 1, and will include not only blog posts, but also social media promotions, and a boatload of great prizes. Those prizes include:
- Halti head collars or harnesses, courtesy of Best Friends General Store and The Company of Animals;
- Dog training referrals to trainers in the No Shock Collar Coalition and Truly Dog Friendly, sponsored by K9Cuisine.com;
- Collar charms from Fearfuldogs.com;
- $25 gift cards from K9Cuisine.com;
- One free autographed copy of my book, Housetraining For Dummies, Second Edition; and one free autographed copy of Edie Jarolim’s wonderful book, Am I Boring My Dog?
In the process the campaign aims to raise $2,500 for the Humane Society of Boulder Valley Colorado’s No-Choke Challenge, which will include lots of media outreach and other events in which the group will give away humane dog training tools to people in the Boulder area who relinquish their choke, prong or shock collars. The money will enable the organization to buy about 165 of those humane training tools.
Check out the Never Shock a Puppy website for more info starting September 1!
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Posted in K9 Care, K9 News, K9 Training | 6 Comments »
6 Responses to “New No-Shock Collar Effort”
Susan McCullough has been a professional writer for 30-plus years, but didn't start focusing on dogs until 1996, when an overzealous Sheltie attacked and shredded a message that had been faxed to Susan's office. Instead of merely telling the sender "My dog ate your fax," Susan decided to see seek expert advice about how to share an office with one's animal companion. She turned that advice into an article for a national pet magazine, and she's been writing about dog behavior and care ever since.
An excellent initiative!
Thanks! The bulk of the credit should go to Roxanne.
Thanks, Susan, for the mention. Lilly and I appreciate your support.
This is a great idea! Positive reinforcement seems like a no brainer to be (you know the whole honey vs vinegar thing) so it really maddens and saddens me that people still go the shock collar/negative route.
Amen to that!
The following time I read a blog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as much as this one. I imply, I do know it was my option to learn, but I really thought youd have something attention-grabbing to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something that you could fix in the event you werent too busy searching for attention.