September 30, 2024 · 50 min
What happens when you publish a paper showing e-collars can be effective? Anamarie replies to negative feedback to her study. Plus: Annie tries to buy one.
Anamarie and I recorded this episode separately because we had different things we wanted to communicate in a format that wasn't really right for conversation.
Me first: What if you're someone who has strong feelings about putting dogs in shock collars and... one of your friends publishes a paper on research she did that involved putting shock collars on dogs?
What if that person is your podcast host?
Hi, I'm Annie, and this is my life.
The day after I publish a book that is essentially a paean to Positive Reinforcement dog training rooted in science and research, a major journal publishes a paper (rooted in science and research!) that says that using a shock collar may be more effective when teaching a dog to stop chasing than reward-based training would be in the same period of time. Anamarie was one of the authors.
Do you hop on the bandwagon and hate on this person?
Do you yell at the angry mob -- which contains many of your colleagues -- to stop hating on her because she is someone you respect and love?
Do you hit your desk on the head several times because you know that 99.9 percent of US dog owners don't care about the studies or the ethics and will never consult with experts but are going to use these things anyway because THEY'RE COMPLETELY LEGAL?
Do you... buy a shock collar?
Join me as I confirm all my worst fears during a series of phone calls with shock collar retailers.
In the 2nd part of the episode, Anamarie responds to attacks on the study that has been the source of so much criticism in the Positive Reinforcement dog training community over the last few weeks.
More
Testing dog shock collars on young humans Youtube compilation by me (from 2011)
Add link to study
Add link to the study about no one using trainers
Other links?
How big of a money making market the ecollar industry is
Transcript
This transcript was made automatically from the audio, so it may contain small errors.
Hello, humans and dogs who are in earshot. Annie Grossman here. As you learned in our last episode, I have a new co-host. Anamarie Johnson is her name. For reasons I will get to in a minute, she and I have decided to record this episode in two parts.
And boy, oh boy, do I have a lot to say. So my part is first. My book came out on September 10th. It felt like a monumental day in my life. I swear, I just spent most of the day walking around in tears.
I worked on this thing. For so long, it has so much of me and my life inside of it. I was in such a state the whole day. It's just a really big achievement in my life and for my family, too. My husband, we clinked champagne at dinner that he started crying, too.
It's been quite a journey to get to this point. That day I did a photo shoot for the New York Post at School For The Dogs. They absolutely wanted to shoot me with my dog Poppy, who really doesn't ever want to do a whole lot more than hang out on the couch, so I brought her to School For The Dogs. She looks a little stressed in some of these photos, I gotta say, but she was getting lots of American cheese. And then they didn't even name her.
They didn't even name her in the article. And they got the name of the business wrong. But still, I was happy to have the book showcased in the article. The very next day, I was on all of it with Allison Stewart, actually a School For The Dogs client with her late dog, Rocco. All of it's on WNYC, which is really thrilling to me because I listened to WNYC.
So that was so much fun. And then on Friday, Mark Bekoff... Ran an interview with me in psychology today, which was also really thrilling. So it was just a super exciting week. And then adding to the craziness was that the day the book came out was the day of the presidential debate and Donald Trump talking about illegal immigrants stealing people's pets and eating them.
I mean, what the... I did not... Anticipate a conversation about animal welfare would come up during the presidential debate, and I kept thinking, there are so many things... I mean, in my opinion, if you are a cat or a dog in America in 2025, there are a lot of things you should worry about. But being eaten by an illegal immigrant is not one of those things.
Of course, this is just not... But this led to a lot of conversations in my personal life with people because the truth is, while I don't think anybody should be stealing anyone's cat, I think there's a really good case out there for eating pets. Hear me out. I do not suggest you eat your pet. Or your neighbor's cat, as yummy as he may look.
I do not plan to eat pets, but I recently gave up meat. And reason number one why was because it just seems really hypocritical to me that we raise these animals and then when there's too many of them and we put them down... They just get incinerated and meanwhile we're raising all these animals for slaughter. It just doesn't make any sense to me and I had thought I was maybe the only pet lover thinking deeply about this. I don't know what to call it.
Ethical conundrum. Until I discovered the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer a few years ago, in which he has a whole chapter just on this topic. Anyway, the next week I went to the Association for Professional Dog Trainers conference in... Riverside, California. I had a booth there to promote the book, and it was just so much fun to sit there at a booth and have all these interesting people come by from all over the country.
And... You know, I went to my first APDT conference in Atlanta in 2010. It was right after I graduated Karen Pryor Academy. And I mean, my KPA class had two other people in it. And I had hardly ever met any other dog trainers.
And going to APDT that year was just really transformative, just being around. So many people who were passionate about dogs, so many people who were doing fascinating things. And I remember thinking very clearly, I want to write about this. This is what I want to do because there's so much wonder here. There's so much interesting science.
There's so many personalities. There's such great stories in this world of dog training, a world that most people don't think twice about. Maybe I can help bring more people to this world and help them see how interesting the science of behavior can be and how we can kind of experiment with our abilities at changing behavior using positive reinforcement with these very forgiving. Beings that we love so much. And that really just came together for me, my mission.
14 years later, I was back with my own booth and this book that I first conceived of then. And while I was sitting there, I realized that 14 years ago, Temple Grandin was the person who gave the keynote. Now there I am with a book with Temple Grandin's name on the cover. She generously gave really amazing advance praise, and the publisher put it right there, top center of the book. This is the perfect book for people who want to learn positive dog training methods.
The science is explained in an easy-to-understand way. M-Dash, Temple Grandin, New York Times bestseller of Animals Make Us Human. So it was really kind of mind-blowing to realize that. And then I realized that the keynote speaker at this year's APDT was Ken Ramirez. And Ken is not only mentioned in the book, but he also gave some wonderful advance praise that is in the first couple of pages of the book.
Now, somewhere in between when the book came out and this last weekend when I got back from APDT, something really crazy happened, which actually relates to what we talked about in the last episode about how professional dog trainers are all mad at each other. Like, there's like all these crazy... Feuds going on, they certainly did not anticipate that the drama would hit so close to home so soon. In the weeks since our last episode, Anamarie has, I don't know what you say, Anamarie has been canceled, has had her name drag through the mud, has been the victim of hate from many people on the internet. Many of them Behaving in a way that I would call troll-ish.
Now, if you had asked me three weeks ago to guess which one of us would face a kind of public shaming before the end of the month, I would have said probably me. I tend to speak my mind. I just put out a book that has some 80,000 words in it that probably could be taken out of context. And in this day and age, I think when you put yourself out there, you can't help but feel worried that you are inadvertently going to offend someone and suffer their wrath, whether or not you deserve it. I write in the book about Cesar Millan, and I know from the past when I've written about Cesar on my blog or when I've done podcast episodes about him, if I've said anything other than very nice things about him, which I haven't, I've gotten a lot of feedback, let's call it.
There's a whole section where I talk about one episode of The Dog Whisperer where Cesar Millan gets bit, the Holly episode. And in describing the scene, I said something about how his hair was gelled up, which it's like totally gelled up. I don't know how you could get that hair without gel. But they asked me to remove it because it could be seen as anti-Hispanic, I guess, which I thought was a little weird because people of every ethnicity use hair gel. I don't have evidence to support that claim, but I'm pretty sure it's true.
And I have many issues with Cesar Millan, but none of them have to do with it. My point is, I feel like if someone was going to come after one of us, it would be me. Whereas Anamarie, if we were both paintings, Anamarie would be like a paint-by-number painting where everything had its exact spot and its perfect color and was very neat and tidy and all the paint was in little jars. And I would be like the Jackson Pollock person. Like, that's the difference between us.
But she ended up coming under fire along with her advisor at ASU, Clive Wynn, for an article that was published in the journal Animals called Comparison of the Efficacy and Welfare of Different Training Methods in Stopping Chasing Behavior in... And rather than trying to explain the study, I'm just going to read the summary in the abstract here. The use of electric shock collars, or e-collars, is one of the most controversial topics in dog training. In this study, we compared e-collars to methods relying entirely on food rewards in order to stop dogs running after a lure. We found that dogs receiving shocks from e-collar stopped chasing a lure within two sessions of 10 minutes of lure running per session.
These dogs also refrained from chasing the lure in three out of four test sessions. Two groups of dogs trained with food reward. Did not refrain from chasing the lure across five training sessions and failed all four test sessions. Aside from presumably pain-induced yelps in the dogs with e-collars when they received shocks, none of the dogs in any groups showed any signs of stress or de-stress. e-collars may be an appropriate tool in the hands of expert trainers training behaviors that have important welfare impact.
Such as running after cars or other animals. Future studies should investigate the levels of expertise needed to use e-collars effectively, the kinds of behavioral problems for which they are best suited, and the longer-term implications of their use. This is the abstract. Controversy surrounds the efficacy and welfare implications of different forms of dog training, with several studies asserting that electronic shock collars have negative welfare impacts while not being more effective than non-aversive methods. However, these studies did not specify the schedule and intensity of punishment used or the effectiveness of the training method.
In the current study, we attempted to train dogs across six sessions to desist from chasing a fast-moving lure in one of three randomly assigned conditions and then tested for retention and generalization in four further test trials. Group A... was trained with e-collars. Group B was trained with non-aversive methods and the lure moving as with Group A. And Group C was trained as for Group B, but with the lure initially moving slowly before its speed was progressively increased.
All dogs in Group A stopped running towards the lure after one or two sessions and none chased the lure in the first three tests. 67% of these dogs chased the lure in the final test in a novel arena. None of the dogs in the Group B or C Successfully refrained from chasing the moving lure in training or any test. Video behavior coding indicated few stress-related behaviors across the training groups. Now, I'll be honest, this stuff makes my brain hurt.
I just don't have training as a researcher, and I don't feel like I'm really good at... Critically evaluating studies. But I do think I'm pretty good at seeing sort of the big picture. So let me give you the big picture translation here is that they... Used electric collars to shock dogs when they were chasing something, and they also tried to stop the chasing with food rewards, and the shock collars worked better, which I don't think is surprising.
I don't really understand the argument that we shouldn't use shock collars because they don't work. Of course they work, but they also cause collateral damage that may be very hard to, in a longitudinal way, in a real-world setting because Outside of the lab, you can't control for everything that impacts the dog's behavior. By definition, if a behavior is punished, the behavior should not keep happening. And it doesn't surprise me that these shock hollers are punishing to the dogs. This is one of the criticisms that this paper has gotten.
It has also gotten a huge number of other criticisms, which I don't want to take on, mostly because I love Anna Marie. I've literally had lifelong relationships and because certain people I love insist on using shell collars on their days. And that's actually another reason why I recently gave up meat. I felt like it's hypocritical to be so upset about dogs who are probably generally living really wonderful lives, but occasionally getting electrocuted when I am eating meat, which comes from other sentient beings. Domesticated mammals who may never have had a nice day in their lives.
But beyond loving Anna Marie, I trust Anna Marie as a researcher, and I certainly trust Clive Wynn, who also is in the first pages of my book with advanced praise. He's one of the top behavior scientists. The study was approved by Arizona State University's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, which answers to the National Institute of Health. Veterinarians and researchers and members of the community, and they review every study when it's proposed, if there are animals involved. And it was peer-reviewed and published in a highly respected journal.
So I'm not saying that this was the most trustworthy study in the world, but those are some indicators to me that it was at least conducted properly. So for those reasons alone, I trust that it was done in a way that adhered to whatever ethics there are in the world of research of that kind. The criticism that I understand the most is from trainers who have said, this study shouldn't have been done at all because wouldn't one assume that punishment of this kind would work? And all this has done is throw kindling on the fire for trainers who use these tools to be able to say, this study proves that shock collars work better than treats. Of course, this study doesn't prove anything that broad.
It proves that the collars worked with those dogs in that situation. It doesn't prove that you can't stop chasing with reward-based training. Of course you can. But it's going to take longer. And the study wasn't that long.
A lot of professionals in the industry have had a lot to say about this issue to the point where at his speech at APDT last week, Ken Ramirez, the chief training officer of Karen Pryor Clicker Training and former podcast guest, talked about it and gave some suggestions on how we can live... In a world that is possibly too connected, where everyone's opinion can somehow carry equal weight and we can all get lost in the dopamine hits of commenting in a way that is not necessarily productive. And he gave the advice that before entering the conversation, think carefully about what you have to add to the discussion, with I think the implication being if you don't have anything to add to the discussion, maybe don't enter the fray. And I've been thinking really hard about this over the last couple days because I don't think what I have to add to the discussion is leave my friend alone because I love her. I don't think what I have to add to the discussion is we shouldn't use shock collars for reasons having to do with ethics, not with efficacy, or that any trainer who is using this study to quote-unquote prove their methods work are worth the time of day.
But here is something that... I haven't heard people say about this study, which is that the reason it shouldn't have been done is that these collars should be illegal. The fact is, not only are these colors legal, but they are completely unregulated and available to anyone. You could literally send your kid to the store with their allowance and they could buy one of these things. And there's no regulation of the voltage.
People who promote these collars refer to them as feeling kind of like a TENS unit. But the truth is we have no way of knowing that because unless you want to get a voltage meter and measure the output yourself, you have no way of knowing how much voltage is going into your dog. And even if you try it on yourself... You have no way of knowing that your nerves are experiencing it in the same way your dog is. You also have the benefit of knowing that the shock is going to come.
Anyway, that's the problem with this study. Given that these things are out there, are readily available for sale, and are sold in stores, and being recommended for use by so-called professionals, and I think maybe there should be more research on them. But frankly, before that happens, I would hope that they would become illegal. I sometimes think that dog training truly is... An anti-progressive field, but maybe it's American dog training.
Because shot callers have been banned in other parts of the world for a long time. They're banned in Quebec, Switzerland, Slovenia, Portugal, Finland, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Wales, and Scotland. And earlier this year, they were banned in England. France is in the process of implementing a legal ban. They're regulated in Australia and New Zealand, but here in the U.S., anybody can get their hands on one of these things.
And in the show notes, I am going to put a video that I did several years ago that's just a compilation of kids on YouTube. Wearing shock hollers. Why? Because kids are idiots and are going to put on the shock hollers in their parents' houses. I did this when I was a kid.
I bet you know someone who did this when they were a kid. And that's crazy to me. It's crazy to me that we have these painful devices in our homes that our kids can access. And in some of these videos, it's the parents who are putting it on their kids as like a laugh, which makes me think, of course, if this is happening for a laugh on YouTube, it's happening in situations that aren't so funny too. If you don't believe me, all you need to do is go to Google News and put in shock collars and kids, and you will see story after story.
When Ken suggested we think about what we can add to the conversation, I also thought there was something that I could do that probably not a whole lot of... Other people who are passionate about this are going to do, which is to find out what happens when you actually try and buy one of these things. So I reached out to a few different stores and just asked questions as if I was trying to deal with my dog's problems. The reason I reached out to stores and not to trainers... It's because, as Annemarie's previous research has showed, most people don't go to trainers.
They're getting information from whatever comes in the box, from the person they're buying the device from. And from the internet. You'll hear me ask some questions about voltage during these calls. After I did these calls, I went down kind of a rabbit hole trying to find out what kind of output these devices actually have. I learned that they're measured in milliamps, not voltage, but I also learned that there really is very little information out there.
The manufacturers don't make this stuff public. As I mentioned, you would have to have A voltmeter in order to figure it out yourself. A lot of people compare the sensation to using a TENS unit, one of those things that has the little pads that you put on one of your muscles when they're sore. And I found that they usually have a maximum output of something like 80 milliamps. Some people, though, apparently only have a pain tolerance to be able to take one of these units going up to like Shock collars, on the other hand, may go up to 80 milliamps, but I also saw information online estimating that they could go up to 400 milliamps.
And again, they are completely unregulated, and as you will see, the people who are selling them themselves... Don't know. To put this in perspective, a cattle prod outputs like 10 milliamps, and 6 to 30 milliamps is what OSHA has found causes people pain and produces involuntary reactions. I called one local store that is a big box chain store. I called one large online retailer and then two smaller online retailers.
I have taken out the details about each retailer because I did not disclose that I was doing this in the... Name of journalism, I tried to ask questions that I thought your average person might ask. I picked places based on what came up on the first page of Google. I'm not going to comment on these conversations because I think they pretty much speak for themselves and they certainly helped. Underscore my feeling that we need more information about these tools if they are going to be recommended for use by professionals, let alone for use laymen.
I think doing studies of aversive tools is unfortunately necessary if they are going to be legal and recommended. I oppose their use for ethical And I'm sure a lot of researchers do as well, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they shouldn't be looking at the science. In my book, I talk about the work of psychologist Martin E.P. Seligman in the 1960s. He did studies where he found that dogs who suffered shocks that they could not escape Ended up basically depressed.
He called it learned helplessness, the kind of shutdown that happens when you can't make any choices to get yourself out of a bad situation. And it led him ultimately to try and cure depression in people. He's the founder of the School of Positive Psychology. I don't think we necessarily need studies That are indicating whether or not they work. To me, efficacy in the short term is not surprising.
But I think fear these studies because we fear what will happen if science shows that these... Tools stop behavior might also quash studies that could give real meaningful information to people about how these tools work, how operant conditioning works, and how we can be better dog owners overall.
Hi, I was looking at buying a collar and I was just looking for some more information. Definitely. Are you interested in learning about any specific systems or... Well, my dog, she jumps like when people come in. So like, what would you suggest for that?
Okay. So our most popular system is the ET300. It has a waterproof remote and collar receiver. The remote will even float in water and it comes in... A variety of colors.
And then it does have half mile range. So the dog can be half a mile away from you and still get that stimulation. What exactly does it do? How does it work? So it is, instead of like a shock, it is a stimulation collar.
It's got a hundred levels of that stimulation, either a momentary, which is just a really quick stimulation. Or you can use continuous up to 10 seconds. As a stimulation, that means it doesn't like hurt them? It's similar to like a tense unit. So it pulls their muscle instead of delivering like an erratic shot.
So it's not really like punishment. Exactly. And so we do suggest finding like a trainer. On our website, if you go under the About tab... You can click on trainers near you.
Okay. Are there any like certain qualifications I should look for? Yep. We've all vetted them. The system itself, it does come with an owner's guide to get you started.
And then if you look on YouTube, I'm going to be on hundreds of training videos that you can follow as well. Will it also stop like the barking? If it's barking when you're there, you can use that... You can use that system to help. What, and then just like stimulate her every time she barks?
You would probably want to mark the behavior. Okay. So like tell her no and then do it? That's what most people will, like instead of using the word no, they will like use the place command. So instead of like her barking at the window or jumping at people, they will...
Like use the place command so that she will or the dog will come back to you and sit in place. And then I stimulate it? Yeah. Yeah. So when you would give the place command, you would use that stimulation almost like a tap on the shoulder.
You would use your command along with that stimulation and then you would train the dog so the dog knows what behavior they're supposed to do. Like what does it feel like? Is it a certain amount of voltage? There's a hundred levels. I don't have like the voltage, but it feels like pins and needles.
Almost just like a tap at lower level. So how do you figure it out? You just like test it on yourself till it hurts? Well, even at like a level five, it doesn't really hurt. It's just your muscle contract.
But you would start at the lower level. On your dog, like a one or two and keep on going up until your dog lets you know that they can feel that. And a lot of times they'll look at you, they'll scratch at the collar. Sometimes they get up because you're going to want to do it when they're calm so that you do know the lowest level they feel that at. So I start out with her just calm.
Okay. So if it's too high, what does that mean it feels like? So the higher the level, the stronger the pull. And so... It's going to contract that muscle pretty hard.
It just pulls the muscle, just like a tense unit. Like if you've ever been to a chiropractor, it just sends stimulation to pull the muscle. It's just like pins and needles. My daughter's really interested in training. Can I use this with her?
Yeah, definitely. I know like when we were training, like my daughter was eight at the time and she was helping us train. Awesome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
I'll take a look on your site.
Thank you for calling. For remote traders or bark control callers, please press 1. Mike? Hello. Hi.
I'm trying to figure out if one of these callers might be right for me and my dog. Okay. What breed of dog do you have? Like a Chihuahua Pitbull Mutt type of dog. Like 30 pounds.
And what were you looking to do as far as training? She jumps, she barks, she could just be kind of annoying. Got it. So you just want the 280X, the model that's ideal for you. It's just released in August.
It's enough power for your dog. Like, what does the collar do? So when I say power, it's associated to the stimulation, right? It all depends on how you want to train your dog. It'll give you power for stimulation if you need it.
Your dog is a 30-pound dog. This... 80X unit. It's good for dogs as small as 10 pounds. I don't really understand how it works.
It's static energy. So it's powered by a battery and the contact points release a static energy. It's not a shock. More or less a massage. Kind of like, hey, you know, and obviously you can turn up the stimulation, you can turn up the level.
It can be a more significant sensation or static energy. So it's like a massage. It's not shocking, the dog. Shocking is a completely different thing altogether. This is not shocking.
So this is different than the collars that do shock a dog? Well, I don't know what other companies sell as far as e-collars go, but we don't sell shock collars. We sell collars that provide stimulation. What the collar does, it gives you, it kind of reinforces your voice or your command. Does that make sense?
First and foremost, you have to train your dog with command before you actually apply the e-collar system. If you apply the e-collar system without training your dog, you may scare your dog. And it's not going to like having a collar on because you're providing stimulation without any... So before you train your dog with the collar, you have to train your dog? You have to train your dog with your command before applying the collar.
I have a little kid. What happens if my little kid picks it up? It's not going to hurt her? And that's something that you're going to have to kind of figure out, you know, because you have a baby, you said. Obviously, you don't want to be stimulating the collar when your baby is holding on to the dog or holding on to the collar while she's standing next to the dog or something.
You know, that's something that you're going to have to figure out. But, I mean, it wouldn't even really hurt anyway, I guess, because you said it was just like... It's just like a massage. Well, it depends on the levels, right? So there's different levels.
With all of our system, there's different levels of stimulation. But how do I figure out which level is right? That's something that you would have to figure out on your own. What's the difference between the mild and stubborn temperaments? The mild and stubborn.
So the 280X versus the 1900 series, it's a medium to high power output. And so because your dog is about 30 pounds in the temperament, what breed is your dog again? It's like a Chihuahua pit. Chihuahua pit. So she has a little pit in her, which is pits tend to be a little more persistent, a little more adamant about getting what they want or whatever.
They're more high energy than a chihuahua, right? But it sounds like your dog's a little bit of both. It all depends on the temperament of the dog. If the temperament of the dog is high energy, you may want to go with a high power system. Which is the 1900 series.
Because he has a little pit in there. And because your dog is mixed, you know, that's something that you would have to kind of read into and kind of look at your dog to see what temperament she is because she's a mix. Got it. Thank you very much. Sure.
Of course, if you have any other questions, just give us a call. Also, thank you. You're welcome.
Thank you for calling your neighborhood store for customer service. Remain on the line for assistance. Wait while I transfer your phone. I was looking at your electronic callers, and I just had some questions about them. The problem is that we don't sell them here.
Oh, you have them on the website? Yeah. Oh, okay. The thing is that we don't recommend callers anywhere like that. They're on the website.
Yeah, we still sell them online, but in school, we don't recommend it. That's why we stopped selling them in school. It's a negative reinforcement, that's why. Okay. And here we recommend positive training.
But I can get it on the website? Yes, you can, because there's some stuff outside the clinic that still has no problem with that. Negative reinforcement. It's the same rule, that's why. It's all depending on where you're at.
Okay, thank you. Okay, you're welcome.
My name is Elizabeth. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with today? Annie, I was looking at some of your electric callers and just had some questions about which one might work for my dog. I have a Chihuahua Pitbull mix. She's like 30 pounds and she's just like really annoying.
I would go with the Pat-Pet. I mean, the sport dog is good. It's just really pricey. But for, you know, 30 pounds, I would go with the Pat-Pet. My dogs are...
When they were younger, they wouldn't stop. So I tried out a few of them. The best one for me was the Pat Pet. It's Pat Pet P320. It's a thousand feet remote dog training shop collar.
Is that what you're looking for, right? How did you use it? How did I use it? I just put it on them. I mean, it was just barking.
If it wasn't barking, it was them running out the line. They would just run and run. If I didn't keep them in a surrounding area, like in a fenced area, oh man, they were gone. I used two of them. The pet I use, it controls them up to 300 yards.
So it's for noise, remote training, it has a vibration. So if you don't really want to shock them, you can just vibrate. It's 30 pounds, not that big. What is the shock? Is it like a certain amount of voltage?
It'll shock them. You can control it. This one is for 20 to 90 pounds, six months and up, with a remote control. Will it also do it if she barks? Yes.
So it'll do both those? Yeah, see, I learned my lesson because it's the type of dog you have. My dog, it just, you know, it didn't, there was a few of them that didn't work for me because their neck is like designed, like a lot of pit bulls have the type of strong neck, their skin, and it doesn't affect them whatsoever. But my dog, it's, you know, it was like, whatever, nothing's on me. But this collar actually worked, this pat pad.
I didn't have to use it that long. I got the picture. Does it hurt them? No, it's just the vibration. It just lets them know, you know?
It's like a prick of a finger. Like if somebody just pricks your finger but in a vibration mode, I don't think it hurts them. They're not yelping and screaming in pain, no. Do you know, is there a certain number of voltage it puts out? This one is... Let me see.
There was a few of them. Let me take a look at this one, this other one here. Okay. Can't exceed six hours a day. Adjust the position of the receiver every one hour to avoid the skin of possibly being touched by the conductive screws, which I did.
I used to do it all the time. I used to adjust it. We suggest you to test the shock intensity first with your hand so you can see what intensity that you want it to be. That's what I did. And it's just like a vibration.
It's just letting them know, no, don't do that. I mean, she'll get the picture. This is probably the best one for her. This is what I use. My dog set the picture.
As soon as I bought it, I probably had to use it when I needed to, especially when I left the house. Apparently, when I left the house, it was like no holds barred. They were just barking and, you know, making the whole neighborhood know I'm here. It's like they were saying, somebody help, save me, you know, like my girl, whenever I left the house, it was like screaming like damsel in distress, you know, like just barking. She would bark and put a camera in.
She barked and barked and barked. She would stop barking. But so then like just a little bit of a shock made the difference. Yeah, when I got the caller. Because before that, I had the camera running.
I mean, she barked like six hours straight. I was like, what are you doing? Yeah. Like, who are you barking at? I mean, it felt like they would break all my blinds back then.
You know, just looking out the window, a leaf flies by. Oh, alert, intruder. Yeah. First time. And all it took was the caller and then it got better?
That's it. That's it. It was only the caller. I put the caller on. Honestly, I didn't have to use it long.
Yeah. Honestly, I would say it was only the times that I was concerned when I went to work. So I put the collar on them. I probably did it for three weeks and didn't need it anymore. They got the picture.
The barking stopped. They only barked when they were supposed to. So yeah, this would work. I mean, it's really economical right now. It was $39.99.
It's 50% off. So this one's $19.99. It's the Pat-Pet. You just have to reposition every two hours. But don't use it for more than 12 hours a day.
Okay. Is it okay for my daughter to do training with it? She's really interested. Yeah, of course. Absolutely.
Okay. So it's not like there's an age requirement? No, no, no. I mean, you could do it with your daughter. You both should be able to learn.
You both should be able to learn how to do it. Is there any danger having one of these around kids? No, just make sure what I do. And I tell everyone, how old is your daughter? Five.
Oh, no, no, no. No, there's no danger to having a rounder. When I had mine with my dog, my daughter was six and my boy was seven. So, yeah, and I taught them. I taught them how to use it.
You should just read the information. I mean, it's just the collar. You put the collar on, you have the remote, and you just have to teach them how to use it. The remote is like, let's say you're in the house and, you know, Poppy's barking and barking and you want to, you know, no, don't bark. And she continues to bark and she doesn't listen to your command, then yes, then you shock.
That's what the remote is for. If she's not, you know, if she's not listening to you, that's how I treated my dog. There's another one. It's the Pet Diary, the T200, remote dog collar. Now, this one's $49.99, but this one's really good.
Makes it so good. This one's really, really good. Yeah, it's just, it's more effective. It's more effective. I didn't use this.
My sisters did. And they used both. I gave them mine when I didn't need it anymore. And they said that this one was much better. For them, at least.
They had smaller dogs. They thought it was really effective. And they were able to train their dogs faster than me. Even one of my sisters had an older dog that she rescued and was just a little bit out of control. And she used the pet diary and it worked.
And do you know what the voltage is on those or what the range is for how low I am? One is... A thousand feet. She has three types of stimulation. So there's three voltages.
It doesn't tell me the exact voltage. It just tells me that there's three types of stimulation. Sound, vibration, static, multiple strength. You get a mild correction. That's what my sisters were saying.
They did just the mild correction. So the dogs are really minded. It's not like punishment. No, no. It's just training.
This is training. And the training is easier. It's a little faster with this one. My sisters really like this one. And when you're done with them, you can put them on your husband's.
Right? I hear you. Well, I hope it works out. If you need anything, give us a call, okay? All right.
Thank you so much. You're welcome. Have a great day. Bye. Let's live with dogs in harmony.
Good dog training is the key. You don't need to cause pain if you use your brain. Train your dog with love and science. Hey everyone, it is Anamarie. I am doing a very short and sweet solo recording today.
Annie and I did do a recording this past Thursday, September 12th, which was the day after my study, mine and my advisors, Dr. Clive Wynn's study came out on a comparison of e-callers versus non-aversive methods came out. And... It's been hard. I'll be totally honest.
I anticipated that things would be hard when I went into this a year and a half ago, almost two years at this point, and it has confirmed that. So I did not want to put myself on the sword any... So I decided, and I spoke to Annie about it, that we weren't going to release the other recorded podcast just so we didn't add any more fuel to the fire. But I do want to just address the situation in general. A lot of people on both sides have a lot of issues.
And science is hard. And I know that sounds really reductionist to people who have been criticizing and working off the limitations that have been provided. And funding is hard. And having money and abundance amounts of free time when you're either a working trainer or you're a working grad student or you're a working professor or you're any of the number of participants that had jobs. So there's only so many hours in a day and how many things that we can go through within a study and nothing would ever hit ideal.
Two, if you don't like the non-aversive and can pinpoint the limitations and where you would go differently, do it. I absolutely welcome a replication of this study. Now, of course, that comes with other issues in terms of what people are critiquing and that the dogs were exposed to the shock collars at all. I totally agree. But if you really want an answer to the questions that you have, we need more science.
And maybe you go forward and you decide to replicate the study that gives you the ideal non-aversive paradigm. That's great. We need that, right? We need that in our world so that we can provide some guidance to people. And maybe it doesn't have a whole bunch of things, but it can provide some more insight for people to try, again, to replicate.
So that's where... I fall on this broad discussion. I think more science, again, needs to be done. And if that's just a bunch of non-aversive studies, that's great too. I would caution you from a personal perspective that I do think you'll also receive critiques because again, not every study is perfect.
Every study is going to have limitations and those limitations do need to be open to critiques, which is fine. But there's a difference between critiques and And not critiques. I'll leave it at that. And again, this is just one, and it's a small sample size, which was indicated in the conclusions. But I felt it needed to be done.
And again, it could have been done better. But I think for myself, I need to learn more. And I hope you guys do too. I hope you take the critical eyes that you had for this, the limitations of the study and continue to look at other studies and say, okay, I'm going to take this information from that study and that information from that study and let's put it together and let's see if we can find Some more information that we want going forward and provide better boundaries for the current free for all that is dog training and what people can do with dogs in their current lives. So I'll leave you guys with that.
I do have upcoming things coming forward that I feel like... Probably will also be discussed. It's a great event and hopefully I feel comfortable at that point just from a personal perspective of what I'm willing to accept and bring into my personal bandwidth, my emotional regulation. Moving forward, Annie and I are really excited to be doing this podcast together and discuss more and discuss dog training broadly and how ultimately dog training and our relationship with dogs relates to how we relate to each other and humans. Thanks so much.
Bye. Thanks so much for listening. You can learn more about Anamarie at accessstobehaviorconsulting.com and you can learn more about me at anniegrossman.com. You can also find my new book there. If you believe in good dog training and have ethics that align with mine, please go ahead and sign the Good Dog Training Pledge.
You can find it at schoolforthedogs.com slash pudge.
