The Dish by Darcie

If you’re a regular reader here at The Dish, you already know that I am against shock collars. I’ve written about it for almost 15 years. Here’s how the world is thinking about them.

If you’re squeamish, you may want to pass this post over for something more fun.

The use of shock collars and all electronic devices, including invisible fences, have been banned in Wales. Apparently the collars were being used on both cats and dogs. The ban went into effect March 24, 2010.

As of yet, this is a use ban, it does not ban the sale of electronic devices.

As you read through this, keep in mind that it’s been clearly proven that people who abuse animals also abuse people.

There are reports of people in the United States using shock collars on their children and some have gone to jail. A particular criminal case wasn’t in Wales, it was in Salem, Oregon, USA. According to the news of September 30, 2009, the father “got great entertainment from chasing his younger child, 3 years old, around the house with a dog collar to the point the child was crying and afraid the shock was going to come.” According to Police, he wasn’t disciplining the children, he thought it was funny. He was arrested on four counts of Criminal Mistreatment in the First Degree and was put into jail. The children were taken away from him at that time. He pleaded guilty and received 3 years probation and 60 days in jail for a restraining order violation.

A Utah man in 2006 was accused of shocking his 6 year old boys, when they got out of hand “he’d give them a jolt.” The children remain with their mother.

An Ohio man in 2007 was sentenced to 16 years in prison for abusing and torturing his children with a shock collar and some other pretty rotten stuff. He had previously, according to the news story, been convicted of burning his childrens’ feet with scalding water. His ex-wife went to court and asked for leniency for her husband saying that the kids didn’t want Daddy prosecuted. The Ohio man said to the judge at his sentencing and I quote, “I just want the opportunity to try and be a father. That’s what I was trying to do, be a loving father.”

In 2007, a Tennessee man was arrested for raping and abusing his children. The arrest report said the father “regularly” shocked some of his children with a dog shock collar that he used on his hunting dogs. His wife was also charged. The children were taken away.

CNN correspondent Randi Kaye wrote an article in 2006 about shock treatments for children who were experiencing violent episodes. The treatment was apparently, according to the article, successful in many of the cases. Quoting Randi here, “When I went to the center to interview Dr. Israel, I tried the aversion shock device to gauge its power. I put one electrode on my arm and shocked myself using a remote control. I had been told by the center’s employees that it feels like a bee sting or a pin prick. Let me tell you, it hurt far worse than that. Two seconds felt like two minutes. It was like a parade of pins stabbing me in the arm. I could see why students would alter their behavior after feeling that sensation.”

It’s a common quote of persons who used shock collars on their dogs, “It’s like a static shock or a vibration. It doesn’t hurt, like a bee sting.”

The use of shock collars has already been deemed inhumane to pets and banned in Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia, Austria and many parts of Australia. Ireland is working on it.

Sergeant Lou Castle, who works with police dogs, says not to call it a shock collar, that scares people. “Call it a remote training collar or even an electronic collar, it’s more acceptable. When I start with a dog, I find his level of stimulation by turning the Ecollar up slowly. Yes, we use high settings for high-energy jolts. Before everyone starts calling the Humane Society on me, the stimulation is no worse than walking across a carpet. Holding the button down until the dog responds, then release the button. Overwhelmingly the outdoor issues are solved by teaching the recall.”

I think I’ll call it what it is. It’s a shock collar. It’s an electronic collar which uses either batteries or live electricity in the case of some invisible fences linked to the household electricity to create a shock. Some collar’s shocks can reach up to 3 miles. PetCo, PetSmart, and many other pet supply companies sell shock collars. SitStay.com does not.

Cesar Millan is currently and most probably the most famous person using shock collars as of this writing. I’ll show you this video, it’s a past episode but Cesar is still using shock collars in this year’s season’s shows so I think it’s fair to show this. If he had quit, I wouldn’t share it with you. He hasn’t. I wonder, if the dog were truly aggressive, would he have bitten his owner just before he hid his head under the chair? See a video with shock collar in action.

Fred Hassel from Sit Means Sit Dog Training in video explains why he uses shock collars and although this is not a complete quote of the video, it’s still in context. I quote, “Why we prefer remote stimulation collars is, you cannot get lows and high with a stimulation collar. You can’t monitor in the dog training world what somebody thinks is the right setting, some think higher is better. It’s like one person’s definition of clean is different from someone else’s, it’s a perception and we can’t change that, it’s a fact with human beings. You have to have adjustability because you can’t make everybody happy. Some people say I can’t feel that so how will the dog feel it? If your dog is aggressing at another dog, you might want to go to a 4, someone else might only want to go to a 2. It’s not like it’s a Taser or anything so it maybe, maybe doesn’t affect the dog emotionally, who knows. It’s okay if you think this collar isn’t okay. I’m a professional dog trainer, that means professional equipment should be available.”

I liked this quote from an online chat room. There wasn’t a name attached to the quote. “I have 35 years of AKC and American Field Bird dog running, training and field trial judging experience with 5 years as a pro and am nationally known with well over 100 placements in the woods, in the WEST and all parts in between. I have owned 12 Labs and a too many to count of English setters, pointers and Brittneys. This includes walking AND horseback handled dogs. I have used a shock collar only twice during that period of time. Once was to break a dog from fighting with his bracemate and another time was to break a dog of deer chasing. Neither dog was owned by me. Amateur trainers in this day and age tend to demand an instantly trained dog in the shortest amount of time possible and are willing to reach in their wallets to buy a shock collar. I can do in 4 weeks 15 minutes a day with a 25 foot check cord what your guys are trying to do with a 300.00 E Collar. Spend 20.00 bucks on the Book, “Best way to Train your Gundog” by Bill Tarrant. Read it and then train your dog. There are no electronic short cuts in dog training. The good dogs everybody would die for have never been shocked to achieve canine perfection. If you would like to invest in a true electronic dog training tool, spend your dollars on Garmin’s new GPS dog locating/tracker collar.”

Shaeward in an online quote in a chat room: “I’ve used one but would never advise anyone to use one without the help of a very experienced trainer. You can easily ruin a dog with one. I’ve ruined a dog with an e-collar and about a yar later trained one very quickly with very limited use of the same collar. An e-collar (just like any other collar) should be used only with the intent to “wean” the dog from it. I’ve found if you rely on the e-collar very much or use it too long it’s very hard to have a reliable dog without the collar. Dogs can become “collar wise” easily and it doesn’t take them very long to figure out the unpleasant feeling is coming from the collar. Once they figure out the collar is what’s “getting” them it really does no good, imo. They’ll be perfect with it and no different from before without it…the collar then is simply a crutch and your dog still isn’t trained… I also think an e-collar should be ones last resort. Have you tried other methods to over come the training issues you’re having with your dog? If you haven’t already, seeing a trainer or taking classes might be all you need. BTW ~ I basically had to start training all over again with the dog I ruined. There was no way I was gonna get him weaned from the collar and from improper use, there was no way to get him to do much of anything with it (except be very tense and stick to me like glue). About a year or so ago I introduced a clicker to this same dog and found he responds very well to that type of training. What once was a very tense boy during training turned into a very relaxed boy who was actually happy to work.”

There is a video online of a dog chasing a small flock of sheep as if he was herding them. The dog screams, veers away from the sheep and turns back to his handler. “That’s how you teach them not to chase sheep”, he said, showing the remote control for the collar the dog was wearing.

Youtube.com is full of people shocking themselves and each other for fun and for a test to see what it feels like. Not many of them thought it didn’t hurt. One curled into a fetal ball when he got shocked at the number 6 setting of the collar.

Remember Sarah Palin’s brother in law, the officer who shocked his son with a Taser?

“These devices [shock collars and fences] can provide an excessive punishment to the point that the dog is terrorized. They can be ineffective because the amount of shock is too little (poor contact, too much hair, weak battery). They can be used out of context (remote control) because the owner is mad at the dog and “zaps” at an inappropriate time out of anger. It can also do significant psychological damage to a dog that does not connect the shock with the reason for the shock. The shock is generally considered to be inhumane.” Dr. Bonnie Beaver, veterinarian at Texas A&M

Victoria Stilwell of It’s Me or the Dog on TV is absolutely against shock collars. Ian Dunbar and Jean Donaldson are among some of the more famous who find shock collars aren’t necessary to train or change behavior. Understand your subject, the child or the dog, and make a difference without pain.

The fine for using a shock collar in Wales is now 20,000 pounds. That converts to US dollars as $29,326.80 as of the date of this writing. Or 6 months in prison. Serious stuff.

According to the BBC, the Electronic Collar Manufacturers’ Association fears the ban could lead to an influx of “unmanageable” pets into dog shelters. I quote Duncan McNair of the Association. “”It’s a bad idea because more dogs will die, more dogs will have to be re-homed and more owners will have to be distressed at having to give up their pets.” According to the article, McNair said there are around 500,000 shock collars used in the UK and a rough estimate of 20,000 in Wales alone. He went on to say, “”I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that people disobey the law, everybody will be making their own decision about what they do, but what I do think is that if a large number of people who use them stop using them, there will be an influx of dogs into dog shelters.”

Wales’ Rural Affairs Minister Elin Jones is quoted, “”I’m pleased that as a government, we are taking a proactive approach to promoting the welfare of animals by banning the use of such electronic training devices in Wales.”

Shock collars are used to cause pain, no matter how small, which in turn causes an animal to stop doing at that moment what people consider “bad” or “wrong” behavior. The dog doesn’t usually get a clear message of what they should be doing instead, only that stopping what they are doing will stop the shock. It’s been proven that shock collars create anxiety and confusion caused by repeated shocks which can lead to changes in heart and respiration. We also already know that the shocks can lead to severe anxiety and displaced aggression. That can mean, shock your dog and your dog bites someone. An animal who has been shocked has to do something with the feeling it causes, it’s usually not a good result. When someone hits you, you have to laugh shrugging it off, say something, hit back, or strike out with anger or physical abuse at someone else. It’s pretty rare that anyone can take abuse without responding in some way….whatever that way is. Dogs are the same. They have to do something with that pain, no matter how small, it has to go somewhere. Will it go into hiding or biting…or fear which can cause both of those?

According to a Canadian journalist Marth Jette, “The primary concern with shock collars is that they create a fear-based aggression in pets. In a study published in 2001, five dogs were subjected to shock collar containment systems. None of the dogs had a prior history of aggression yet they all later bit people who were not behaving in a threatening way toward them. It is believed that the dogs received shocks at the time and acted out by “repeatedly and uninhibitedly” biting, which resulted in serious bodily harm and of course, lawsuits. As well, using these collars can create a huge rift between owners and their dogs on an emotional level. Unless you want a cowering, emotionally traumatized pet, don’t use a shock collar!”

Perhaps people in Wales will begin to spend more time with dogs during early training so they don’t have to shock them into submission. According to some of the speakers during the Wales conversations in National Assembly for Wales referred to people who use electronic devices as “vile”, “lazy”, “wrong headed”, “do not understand dogs and how they think”, and “adverse reactions of the animals are not taken into account, worse things can happen after the shock.”

Veterinarians in the UK ended by saying that “the judgment comes down to the political arena” and collectively supported the ban according to the BBC.

I see an online petition started to ban electronic devices in Canada. I doubt it will ever happen in the US. We have the “right” to treat our animals any way we want. And there’s too much money in the selling of them for most stores to quit selling them. I’ll repeat. SitStay.com does not sell shock collars.

As you read this article, what are your feelings? We know that dogs reach a maturity level of about a 3 to 8 year old human child. We know that children and dogs can feel pain and that both can and do show us the consequences of that pain. How many times have we heard a child abuser say that he or she was abused as a child? How many dogs turn into biters when shock collars and pressure methods are used on them? To quote one of the shock collar users turned positive, “I’ve ruined a few dogs with shock collars.” I wonder how the kids in the cases above will turn out when they grow up and have children of their own? Have they been “ruined”, too?

Interesting, isn’t it, how things tend to turn out. Do unto others.

What are your thoughts? – Darcie

Hi Darcie: My hound is not a fan of thunderstorms, specifically thunder. She will find a spot that feels most secure to her–a corner, her pet porter, a walk-in closet–and sit or lay down until the storm passes. She may pace a little, but nothing extreme. This past Sunday night we had an average thunderstorm–lots of thunder, lightning, little rain. She began the usual sit in a corner routine. But then she started to bark each time it thundered, and then sat by our back door thumping her tail against it, and barking with the thunder. She wanted to sit in the backseat of my car, which we did for a bit, and no barking. The garage was too warm to stay out there for the duration of the storm. And frankly, completely indoors seemed safer than the garage. As the storm slowly blew over, she began to pace and pant a lot. No more barking. At the end of the storm, she flopped on the floor and slept like a rock. Any clues as to why this sudden barking during the storm and pacing? We’ve never seen her more aggravated than finding a secure place to sit or lay down. I was so surprised I didn’t quite know what to do to help her, but I did stay up with her and keep a light on as I didn’t want her to be alone–and bark more. Her health is good and she has no misalignments or conditions recently. When I gave her a few treats during the storm, she seemed to ignore the thunder. But I don’t think I can feed her during the duration of every storm this summer–she’ll become huge!
Thanks for any insight or advice! Amy

Dear Amy, I know that some dogs do start having more intense reactions as they grow older. But some dogs have less intense reactions to storms as they grow older. So, the answer you’ll get from me is…I don’t know why she acted like she did. Our storms around here seem to be more violent than they used to be. Perhaps your storms are changing, too. Dogs can detect those changes…I don’t know how they do it, but some of them seem to. Dancer was my dog who didn’t like thunderstorms, when we moved into the underground house, she must have felt and realized safety more…she calmed.

Because your girl sat at the back door to bark at what you thought was the thunder, maybe it was something other than that that started the barking. That was different, she wasn’t hiding, looking for a safe spot as she usually does.

The good news is that she took food and maybe you can change her fear to fun with clicker training…I’ll talk about that a little lower down this page. A highly anxious dog usually refuses to eat.

If you find that you need them, we have some really good anxiety relief products at SitStay.com, take a look at both pages of them here.

I know it’s tough to have a dog fearful of storms. Until we moved underground, my Dancer hated storms. She came by it honestly, it wasn’t something she was born with. When she was about 7 months old and we still lived in Lincoln, the day was lovely and sunny and blue. No storms on the horizon. We went to an afternoon movie downtown and halfway through the movie they moved us all into the basement. A super cell had popped up and a tornado was on it’s way. The storm cloud moved over the top of our neighborhood, lightning hit a tree in the park and split it into a million tiny pieces. The neighbors who were home that afternoon said that the sound was deafening. I sat in that basement and worried about our older dog, Kari, a Golden Retriever, and my poor little puppy. Dancer was in her crate, Kari had the run of the house. When we got home about twenty minutes after the lightning hit the tree, Dancer was still in a panic. Through her years, she was our weatherman. She knew within an hour when a storm would hit our area.

I don’t think anyone has yet to understand exactly why thunderstorms affect dogs the way they do. Some think it’s the static electricity, some the smell of the storm, some the sound and the wind, some believe the dog can hear the storm before we do (and the things that we can’t hear during storms), some think it affects dogs at a more cellular level…an instinctive thing. I wish I knew the truth and maybe some and all of this is true.

Try some different things to see what works best for your girl.

Some people say, I never did, that they have good luck playing a CD of thunderstorm noises, starting at a low noise level and turning it up over time. I did try this with Dancer and it sent her into fits of anxiety at the lowest level, she never calmed at all, her grief escalated. Her experience with the lightning was so extreme, that was not her cure. Pet Natural Calming might be your remedy. Or the Anxiety Wrap, that did wonders for my Dancer. HomeoPet TFLN Drops have helped many dogs.

When working with thunderphobia, I like to first see if I can find that dog’s particular button, the one that shuts off the fear before I start supplementing. Then go to the supplements that are more natural. Some dogs do seem to require prescription drugs…at least that’s what I’m told. I’ve never had a dog get that far gone that I’ve had to resort to the heavy duty stuff. I don’t like that stuff so I’m glad I haven’t had to go to that.

The very best thing we can do when we first get our dogs it to live as though storms are just a part of life. Treats or meals or games while the storm rolls in and does it’s thing creates an environment of safety and normalcy. So many of us rescue so we get what we get and all of their baggage from the past. That’s when we have to kick in our understanding of what caused what reaction and how best to change that behavior.

The training to change behavior can start with simple things, to get her to focus on something else instead of the storm. Lots of fun. The time can be filled with “what’s in this hand?” And “which cup is the really yummy treat under?”. And hide and seek and retrieving games. “Come find me!” Lots of laughter and genuine fun. The fear of the storm may become a thing of the past because you’re pairing it with fun and good energy.

I used clicker training with Dancer and although her brilliance was enhanced by it on good days, it did not work during storms for her. She was too anxious, she’d refuse food and games. But remember, she had a really terrific scare at an tender age. Because your dog does not refuse food, clicker training might be your ticket past this anxiety of storms. SitStay has several clicker training books and DVDs, here’s where you’ll find our SitStay’s Clicker Training Kit.

Being afraid of storms doesn’t have to last a lifetime. It all depends on the individual dog and what happened to cause them to be afraid. Let us know how it goes for you. Thanks. – Darcie