pup collar training?

[dave5050]

i have been working with a 3 month old pup in the yard for about 3 weeks on the come command with a check cord.she responds well about 95%.then i try it without the cord and it drops to about 60-70%.i want to bring in the ecollar,but i'm wondering how old she should be.of course it will be a low nick,and not a hard shock.
thanks
dave

[BriarCreekBeagles]

I have a 7month old pup that fully understands that when the collar beeps he better hook it back to me
I started him on an e-collar when he was about 2.5 months old, never did the check cord thing and all i did was let him run around and then I would call him in and beep him with collar if he didn't pay any attention I gave a little nick on #1. It only took about two or three days at about 15 or 20 min a day and he got it now all I have to do when running is call him in and about 50 of the time I don't have to beep him and very seldom do I have to nick him with the collar. I always give him plenty of praise and affection when he does what I want him too and he has been doing great. On a side not he is heavy branko bred and people say they are stubborn, not from what I've seen here with Mr. Breeze . Very eager to please and is rabbit crazy, 7 months old and jumps and runs his own rabbit plus listens real good.
Good luck, Kris

[rubline]

My pup is a little over 4 month and she also runs flat out to me when I tone her. It only took about 3 days and about 6 nicks on #1 and she learned. I first got her coming to me in the house before i moved it outside due to all the distractions outdoors. Keep working with that pup and you"ll be fine. 3 months old is about when i started mine with the collar.

[S.R.Patch]

These are babies!
Sometimes these threads break my heart...

[rubline]

I don't feel like I've done anything mean to my pup. There is no differnce in the training collar verses the invisible fence. Puppies at that age are most receptive to learning. I would never do anything ever, I felt was cruel to an animal. IMO, a 3-4 month old dog is the same as a 2 year old kid. When my kids did something wrong or didn't obey me they got the swat on the behind. From what I've read, there's an awful lot of professional dog trainers out there that tend to agree. My vet has bird dogs and even uses them.

Too each his own but I think they are a valuable training tool.

[S.R.Patch]

I don't mean that folks are purposely mistreating their pups.
You put your 2 year old child out in the middle of the floor with toys al'round. Now, call him to you every time he gets interested in playing and everytime he doesn't come, you whip his butt. Now I think your gona have a very confused upset little boy. Can you see how the puppy might become confused and afraid to leave your feet? he might not even like you any more if he figures you have anything to do with the pain.
I would rather obedience come from "want to please" and positive enforcement, force breaking is always left as a last resort after your sure they know what it is you expect from them. Puppies, like children have short attention spans and tire quickly. I just won't put a shock collar on a pup that falls off when it puts it's head down...

ps...one of my best friends handled pointers, the control he required over his dogs was far greater than that of beagles and shouldn't be used as an example of comparison of what we want to do with our hounds. A beagles independence to go hunting and their desire to please is a trait we never want to loose in our hounds. Force breaking is just what it is, making the hound ignore what's in it's nature.

[rubline]

This something we could go back and forth on for along time. All I know is when I train her praise is always used when she obeys and when she's out running around and I hit the tone signal she comes running, not with her tail between her legs but happy as always. She knowns that that tone means "I better go she what daddy wants because he's calling me"

Sometimes I think I should of used it on my kids. Maybe we would not have to yell at them when it's time to come in for the night. LOL.

[S.R.Patch]

Yeah, we could have trained them to sit in front of the computer all day... make out of them ...

[BriarCreekBeagles]

Well from my earlier post you can see that I am not against a shock collar for training But I will have to say that that I work without one on my pups until they are big enough to handle packing it around on them. I would have to sayThat I agrre with about everybody that has posted on this to some point and would say that the best thing to do is use common sense with you collar and don't over do it cause I'm sure you could ruin a pup in a hurry if you did.
Just my 2 cents

[S.R.Patch]

Kris, i think the collar is a great tool also, I can't run them down anymore...
I lost a good friend cause his temper made him a idiot with the collars, "the teacher has to be smarter than the student"...and this is where the trouble comes in. He had brought down 5 new young hounds, they all were started running, problem was, he had only had them a short time and they hadn't hunted together much. Well, he turned them loose on the coal mine and shortly we had 5 races going in different directions. He started shocking them trying to catch and get them together but they were young full of fire and ready to go. It was chaos and the madder he got the more the lightening struck. He started grabbing hounds and launching them into the dogbox and that's where we parted ways. It was a set-up for disaster, the collar couldn't fix what the master should have known better.Now, had we put down a couple of the old hounds first and let them circle a rabbit first and cleared out the area a little bit, then added the young hounds one at a time, things may have not scattered to the four winds so bad or as we added hounds and saw many splits, was could have run fewer hounds or moved to a less dense rabbit spot.
The problem with the collar is it's so handy, one almost believes it can fix anything we mess up...

[dave5050]

s. r. patch, or anybody else with input
do use collars at all, if so when do you incorporate them in your training.i'm just trying to learn everything i can on this.do most guys use them before they run in the wild?one would think if you are going to use a training collar on the pup when it becomes an adult, you would want them to have training at a younger age and before running in the wild for obedience in the field?just my whey of thinking,anybody feel free to give me their input.
thanks
dave

[marr24]

I do not use training collars on pups until they are ready to train in the wild and already know the "here" command quite well. For me, this isn't until at least 6 months and normally I won't put a collar on them until they are already started. It's been my experience that they are pretty easy to catch until they start really running rabbits, then they go through a stubborn phase and the e-collars are nice to have. I personally would not put a collar on a young pup, but I also don't try to start young pups either. I feel that letting them be a pup is important but to each his own, if it works for you go for it.

[DIXIEDOG]

I do not use training collars on pups until they are ready to train in the wild and already know the "here" command quite well. For me, this isn't until at least 6 months and normally I won't put a collar on them until they are already started. It's been my experience that they are pretty easy to catch until they start really running rabbits, then they go through a stubborn phase and the e-collars are nice to have. I personally would not put a collar on a young pup, but I also don't try to start young pups either. I feel that letting them be a pup is important but to each his own, if it works for you go for it.

Same here, 6 months before they get the E-collar and then they just wear it when hunting to get used to it. After a few trips they get all excited when they see the collar come out because they know they are going hunting, they won't get shocked for at least a month after they wear the collar every hunting trip. I think alot of dogs get ruined by lazy trainers, how often do you see a post where someone says how great their dog started a 4 or 5 months old and lost it's hunt after a year. You can only shock a dog so many times before it is going to hand around your feet so it doesn't get shocked by hunting too hard when it's owner calls for it to come. I'm not knocking anybody for how they train but I have seen examples that make you want to strap the collar on the owner and feed him some vitamin "E"