The Right Way to Start E-Collar Training

Hello, dog peeps. Jack here. Just a quick one before we get into this episode. You may or may not be aware that when I'm not talking dog stuff with Max, I in fact interview people who are incarcerated in prisons across the United States on a show called One Minute Remaining Stories from the Inmates. And that show has been nominated for an award in America. And I would love your support if you've got 60 seconds to click the link in the show notes of this episode and just vote for my show. That would be amazing if you could. Thank you very much indeed. Oh, and don't forget to verify your email address. Otherwise, the vote does not count. Thank you. The new Red Bull Dragonberry Energizer is now at McDonald's. Made to lock in.

It's purple.

It's teal.

It's your new favorite flavor at McDonald's for real. Blue raspberry syrup topped off with freeze-dried dragon fruit, which is especially fire with some fries. Get the new Red Bull Dragonberry Energizer only at McDonald's. Energizers contain caffeine. Bada baka.

Hey, dog peeps. Before we get into this episode, longer one than normal, much longer in fact, uh, but that's because we are covering an extensive topic. We're gonna talk through how to introduce, uh, your dog to the e-collar. Now, before we get into this, I just want to stress that this is general advice only. Just because we're talking about this does not mean your dog, number one, needs to be on an e-collar, or number two, you should be the one to train your dog on the e-collar. So please always seek professional help. before using this tool. It's the Dog People Podcast with your host Jack Lawrence. Secretly, I decided to start this podcast for some free dog training advice. You know, Malinois seem to be like the dog at the moment. Like, I think people see them on Instagram doing these incredible things. Yeah, go, oh my God, that's awesome. And then they get one like, oh my God, what the fuck?

And Max O'Neill, you would You would not believe how many people I meet and I go, what made you want to get, say, an Aussie Shepherd? They go, I don't know. I go, had you met one before? They go, no. If you want to ask me how often I walk my own dog a week, it's only twice a week.

It's the Dog People Podcast, the podcast hopefully giving you a no-nonsense approach to dog training so you never have to shout. It's okay, it's friendly. My name is Jack Lawrence. Max O'Neill, Down Under Dog Trainer. Max, we're continuing on with our e-collar conversation.

Obviously we started it recently.

Just giving everyone basically an overview of the e-collar because as we know, when it comes to dog training, it's probably up there as I would suggest the most, say, controversial tool to use. Although, as we've mentioned in previous episodes, actually, in fact, it feels like the tides are kind of turning, which is great because we are both very much of the opinion that they are a fantastic tool, can give you and your dog an incredible freedom. And yeah, used properly. They are fantastic. And that is sort of the subject matter of today's conversation, using them and using them properly.

Yeah, we want to give you guys a bit of an overview and we should hopefully, if you're pretty confident with your dog and training, that you should hear this and go, oh cool, like I've listened to the first couple of e-collar episodes. I maybe was not super keen, but now I'm a bit more interested and understand them better. And hopefully after today's episode, if you did want to implement them, we've hopefully given you enough knowledge to know how to correctly do so. So we'll get quite detailed, but Um, I mean, you dog people, I think you'll probably enjoy this, and I can give you my 4-step system that I use with my in-person clients, what I use with my own dog. And, uh, I would, yeah, give to anyone if they wanted to know how to use an e-collar, uh, in a way that gets a really strong response from our dog, but they also love it. I know for both of our dogs is every time we pull out the e-collar, Nelson shoves his head through that collar because he loves wearing it.

Mm-hmm.

So do all my clients. Like, we want our dogs to enjoy wearing this new addition. this new piece of equipment and not fear it at all. And if we follow these steps, we'll absolutely get there.

Yes. And as we learned in many other episodes, my dog just latches onto anything that she perceives with good stuff. And that includes the e-collar. She sees it, she's like, we're going out, let's go.

Yeah. So when we teach the e-collar, the way I teach it and the way, for that matter, like a lot of people will teach something fairly similar to this, is I like to go through 4 key phases for our dogs to pick this up. Phase 1, which lasts maybe about a week, is our conditioning and preparation stage. Phase 2 is what we call our pairing phase. Phase 3 is what we call our nagging phase. And phase 4 is what we call our aversive stage. So we'll break down each of those and talk about what they are, what they entail, when you know to move on, etc., and give you all the ins and outs so you know how to e-collar train your dog. So phase 1, our conditioning and preparation phase. Is in that week, what we're going to mainly focus on is a couple of key things. Number one, you want to have your dog taking the collar on and off multiple times throughout the day. You also want them to see you carrying around the remote, pressing it multiple times a day, but not necessarily with a stim. Because we want to make sure that like initially our dog's not hyper-aware of this collar, this remote, all meaning this. Over time they'll pick it up, but I've just seen that especially initially if we went experimenting, maybe we get our levels wrong or we've got a bit of a The suspicious dog or superstitious dog is sometimes this can create some issues. So in the first week, I like to allow dogs just to wear it, get used to putting it on, putting it off, et cetera. Second thing we want to do in this stage is we want to make sure our dog's motivation, either for a food or a toy, is sky high.

Hmm.

At the moment we start putting more pressure upon them to do their job, if we're not going to pay them for that and not motivate them, then pretty quickly we can really flatten them out. Imagine being at your own job and they suddenly massively increase your workload and responsibilities. And now there's deadlines, there's more pressure, there's a heap more accountability, but you don't necessarily get paid anymore. You go, oh, like work kind of sucks at the moment.

I think we can all relate to that one.

I'm not really looking forward to going. Yeah, exactly. And that, and that's it. So we want to make sure that we're like going, hey, like I'm going to now be asking more of you. There's now a higher level of accountability, like for Kira's recall, like how you I'm not asking you a favour. I'm giving you a command. You need to do this. But on the other side of it, there's some super strong reinforcers. There's this game or this toy or this food. So this week you need to work on massively increasing that. If you're unsure how to do so, hit the back button, scroll down. We did an episode on dog currency, of finding your dog's currency and building their motivation. Go listen to that. We'll talk you through it.

Again, the e-collar is not here as a, you know, a fixing tool that's going to, you know, your dog has to already have these things in place before using the e-collar, which again, going back to people say e-collars for lazy people. It ain't.

It ain't.

It is certainly not.

You'll listen to this and go, oh shit, that's, that's a lot of work. And that's the point is we, I go through this with clients early because I'm like, if you're not prepared to do this, then we're not doing it. I'm not going to show you how. Like Jack said, it's not for lazy people. It's actually a lot of work to install it properly, but the benefit being on the other side of it is so much more freedom and clarity. So you want to have all this stuff done first as well. If you try and skip to step 2, 3, or even 4 first, which a lot of people do, And a lot of shitty trainers though, I might add, is your dog will just crumble. So that's your second step, is skyrocketing motivation. Your third step for this week is to really tidy up and make sure your dog is really confident and really understands a few basic cues. The ones we like to do is lead walking, recall, sit down, and like a place or on your bed command. Now you might go, oh, my dog knows it really well, but they just don't always do it. That's fine. The e-collar will help create the compliance and the I'll do it. As long as your dog really understands these few things well, sit, down, recall, place, and I guess lead walking if you want. Your dog needs to understand those. Reason being is as we start to get into our next phases, if your dog doesn't fully understand the job you're assigning them, go to your bed, lay down, and we start layering an e-collar over the top, they might start to go, hang on, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to make this stop, and kind of freak out, and you can make things worse. So you want to make sure those commands are solid. And this is one of those ones where If you were training with me in person and I gave you this pre-prep homework, before I even start doing phase 2, 3, 4 with you, I'd ask you to send me videos and go, show me your dog's down, show me their sit, show me their place, etc. If your dog's not confident and I can see they don't actually know those things, then we can't layer an e-collar over. The e-collar is not going to, you know, teach them to do these things. Instead, it's just going to make those things happen more reliably. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. Yeah, 100%. Again, it's not a silver bullet. You have to, you have to put in the work.

Exactly. So there's your first 3 things. Okay. Condition them to it. Wear them every day. Take it on and off, put it on and do something fun. Pop it on, then take them for a walk. Pop them on, then play with it. Pop them on, then feed them. We want your dog wanting to shove their head through that collar because by the end of the week they go, hang on, there's that magic necklace. That means we always go and do cool shit. Phase 2, skyrocket their motivation. We did an episode on this. Phase 3, tidy up some known commands.

Cool.

That's phase 1 complete. That should last you about a week. If you've done all those things and you go, dog's motivation's high, they love putting on the e-collar, my dog knows those few things really well. Perfect. You're ready for phase 2. If you get to the end of that week and they're still kind of, what's this collar? Still needing motivation. They're still not really downing, sitting, placing, et cetera. Just spend another week there.

It's all good.

You can easily do a couple of weeks. That makes sense?

Yeah, perfect. Cool. Fantastic.

So phase 2 is where we move into our pairing level, where we start to pair the stimulation of the e-collar with, uh, you know, known behaviours to our dog— sit, down, place, etc. So the whole point of an e-collar is we teach our dog that certain things turn it on, you know, things we don't like, or, you know, when we give them a job, for example. And then performing a task that we assign to them is the thing that turns it off. So we did a whole episode earlier on negative reinforcement. Again, if this is a concept you're not fully understanding, it might be worth scrolling down and listening to that episode or listening to it again. But negative reinforcement is that feeling of relief, oh, when something uncomfortable is removed. For example, you step in the sun, it's really bright and glary and hot. You step into the shade, that, that comfortable feeling, that's negative reinforcement. Uh, the jump in the car, it beeps at you, you're clipping your seatbelt, that, oh, that noise is gone, that's negative reinforcement. That's essentially what an e-collar does. We make an uncomfortable feeling for our dog that goes away when they do the right thing. Simple as that. And then over time, just like when we get in the car, if I get in the car and put my seatbelt on quick enough, I can avoid the discomfort altogether. And that's what we'll eventually aim towards. So that's how an e-collar works. So with our pairing phase, phase 2, is what we want to start to do is make our dog aware of a pattern. Hey, I'm going to give you a command. The e-collar is going to start to stimulate. You're going to start to feel it. And then you're going to notice that that stimulation, that tap, tap, tap, tap of the collar will go when you finish the command, when you get to your bed, when you lay down, when you come to me, et cetera. So for our pairing phase, we actually don't want the e-collar to be high enough that our dog perceives it as uncomfortable. They just want to be aware of it. So when we think of using the e-collar and the levels our dogs can experience, we can think of it as they can experience it in a few different ways. We might say, let's say on a typical e-collar that goes 0 to 100, 0 to 10, your dog might not feel at all. You could tap them, tap, tap, level 1, tap, tap, level 2, tap, tap, level 10. Yeah, it's zero. Yeah. And she might not have any clue at all and could not feel it. Think of it like a fly landing on our skin. We can feel a fly landing on an elephant. They might have no clue it's there. Okay. So that generally like 0 to 5 or 0 to 10, your dog probably won't feel at all. The next sort of sensation up from that is we get like a, what I call a what was that response, where you might turn it to 11 or 12 and you click tap tap on the collar and your dog might do a bit of a, hey, what was that? Not in a, oh, that, I didn't like that.

No, just sort of like a head tilt.

Yeah.

An ear flicker. Yeah. Just something where they go, hold on a second, what was that?

Exactly.

Yeah. I mean, that's what I did with Curio. I started at 1 and just gradually went up. Nothing, nothing, nothing. And eventually I Hit it. I think it was, I think it was about 11 or 12. And she suddenly was like, her head just went sort of a slight move. I'm like, bang.

Yeah.

Right. She's feeling something.

That's what you're looking for. And the way it should look is like, imagine if your dog was looking out the window and you kind of snuck up on them and just like kind of touched them on the bum and they went, oh, I didn't see you there. What was that? That's how it should look like. Jack said a quick little, oh, and that's all it should be. So how we find this is we pop the e-collar on our dog. We start off at level 1.

Tap, tap.

We should see nothing. That's normal. Go up by 1 or 2 levels. Tap, tap. We go up 1 or 2 levels. Tap, tap. And we want to do this kind of while our dog's maybe slightly distracted, not in the middle of play, just kind of wandering around the house looking at stuff. And when we know we're getting there is we do a little tap, tap and they turn and look. And if we can get that response, you know, 3 to 4 times out of 5, we know, okay, cool. Like my dog's definitely feeling that. So we go up until we find that. Okay, we just again this shouldn't be uncomfortable for our dog. This is just enough that they're aware of it and they can notice it because now once we've found that level, our pairing level, this isn't their working level or their aversive level or anything. Once we've found that pairing level, we now start to overlay it with commands. So I'm going to stimulate the collar or press the button and ask my dog to sit or down. That stimulus is going to continue. It's it's going to keep. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tapping on our dog until they perform a task. If I ask my dog to sit, once their bum hits the ground, I stop tapping. I pause for a moment so they can process that and feel it. And then I'll mark and reward. Yes. And that's where our motivation comes in. We want a lot of food to go like, hey, how cool is this? When you feel that tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, if you do your job, when you feel that tap, tap, tap, you'll be paid really well. So your dog's like, hey, this is awesome. I like this.

And this is like with everything with dogs, timing is really important. Really important that again, It's no different with your markers and your rewards. Your timing has to be, you know, on point. You know, they say as soon as that bum hits the ground, bang, you're stopping instantly. And then as Max said, you give it a hold and then, you know, mark and reward.

Yeah, that's it. If you're too fast, too slow, your dog might not see the pattern. They go, hey, that thing stopped, but I don't know why. We want your dog going, ah, I get the point.

A clear correlation between it being on, doing the thing, completing what you're asking them, and it stopping.

Spot on. Exactly. So your dog's able to form a pattern really quickly and accurately.

And they will.

Yeah, they will. It's so clear to our dogs. You'll be amazed. And we could do a whole episode on the science behind why, but you'd be amazed how quickly your dog understands that. And then from there, like Jack said, we pause a second, we wait. If we do it all at once, they sit, we stop, we mark, we reward. If that all happens in the frame of a second, it's a lot for our dog to process. So once they finish the job, we stop tapping.

Pause.

Yes. And then reward, just so they can really notice that sensation's gone. Now, for all those behaviours, our recall, sit, down, place, we want to do, say, I like to say for my clients, 3 sessions per behaviour where you're doing 10 reps. If you can go, all right, we did session 1, let's say today just 10 reps of recall.

Okay.

If your dog comfortably does that, they go, they did their recall, And it didn't interrupt their thinking. They're able to focus and they did their thing.

Cool.

Big green tick. If you can do 2 or 3 of those, you're sorted. You're ready to move up. Your dog has had enough repetitions where they understand, okay, when this thing is on, if I complete the task, it goes away. Simple as that. Now, again, you might go, oh, I asked my dog to come back and they didn't today. It's really important to do it, to know and be aware of a couple of things is One, again, the e-collar right now is not going to make them do anything. It's not motivating in the slightest. It's just something they're aware of. Okay. And number 2 is we want to make sure our dog is on a leash so they can't really blow us off for these sessions because we don't want to be tapping our dog. They walk off to another room and then we go, oh, all right, we stop tapping and dog goes, oh, okay, if I wander away from my owner, that turns off the e-collar.

Yeah.

That'll really create some problems down the line, which we'll get to. So dog on a leash for these sessions.

Again, it's no different to how we just would train recall normally. You have them on a long line so they realize, oh, there's no negotiation here really. I have to do this. So again, and then you tap, tap, tap, they're not coming back. You pull them back and once they start coming back to you, you can release the tapping. So again, they're still, oh, right. Okay. I get it. That tapping's going to stop when I do as I'm told and I'm coming back. Spot on. But again, they have to know these things. Recall has to be, you can't, I would, I mean, you made I wouldn't say this is wrong, but I wouldn't suggest you can— you could take a dog that's never known to learn recall, chuck a collar on them and, you know, start training recall just straight away over the collar. Surely. Like, I mean, I mean, maybe you can in certain circumstances.

If you're really good with any collar, you can teach, teach it using negative reinforcement, but it's a lot more effective if you teach it first and then lay negative reinforcement over the top. Yeah, absolutely. Just because the risk of I'm starting to nag on that collar and my dog's got no clue what to do and they have to figure it out. Like, I can tell you, I've tried that type of learning on myself with a group of other trainers where they're going to go, hey, we're going to put the collar on and we're just going to tap the collar until you get it right. Yeah, I'm walking around a room for 2 minutes going, I don't know what to do. Yeah, it's kind of getting over it.

Yeah.

Game day always tastes like a win with crave-worthy seafood from Gorton's. From beer-battered fish to coconut shrimp to new taco tenders, Gorton's has been making seafood worth celebrating for over 175 years. Straight from the freezer to the air fryer or oven, it's the easy and reliable to keep everyone fed without missing a minute of the action. Because when the snacks are this good, everybody wins. Visit gorton's.com to find more restaurant-quality recipes.

I'm Livvy Dunne, All-American gymnast and Vuori athlete. When you travel and train as much as I do, you find happiness where you are. On the mat or on the sand, movement and comfort are essential. That's why I live in performance joggers by Vuori. Made from DreamKnit fabric that's made of 89% recycled materials. Effortlessly soft and made to move as much as I do. My happiness starts here in the softest joggers on the planet. Get 20% off your first purchase at vuori.com/livy. That's vuori.com/livy. Exclusions apply. Not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but enjoy free shipping on US orders over $75 and free returns. Go to vuori.com/livy and discover the full versatility of Vuori clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.

I don't know about you, but I get pretty excited when football season rolls around. That's why I always make a stop at Total Wine& More before kickoff. Whether it's craft bourbon, cold beer, or ready-to-drink cocktails, it's easy to build a lineup that keeps everyone happy. And when I'm getting everything ready for game day, it's nice knowing I'm getting the lowest prices. Make Total Wine& More part of your game day tradition. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. Be 21.

There's that. Once you've done your 3 sessions per behaviour, and look, in one session you can work on all 4 or 5 of those things. 10 reps of this, 10 reps of that, 10 reps of that. And as long as your dog is like, okay, this isn't affecting my dog's performance, they're able to think clearly and still do the task, perfect. You can move on. Our goal for this is we should be able to, if we could sit down and talk to our dog and be like, hey, tell me what you know of that sensation. They go, when dad or mum gives me a command, That thing starts, that tap, tap, tap, and that thing stops when I finish a job. That's what your dog needs to know. And that's really important to end in phase 2 with our pairing phase, because next week we're now going to go to our nagging phase, which is now when we turn the e-collar up enough that our dog does go, oh, that's annoying. Luckily, I know how to make it stop. Okay.

Mm-hmm.

So think of it this way, right? Let's just say that you open your fridge. And it starts beeping and it's got a really quiet beep and you go, I know how this works. If I don't, if I don't close the door, the fridge will beep at me until I shut it. I get it. It makes sense. But also there's no urgency to shut the fridge. It's not that bloody loud. We kind of crack on and make out for a bit.

My wife does leave the fridge beeping, but, and I'm the personality, it drives me insane and I have to shut the door. But sometimes there's dogs like my wife and there's sometimes a dog like me.

That's it. So let's, let's, let's use your wife, for example. Right. So the fridge will beep. And for her, that's her pairing. She goes, oh, I know how this works. But the beep isn't loud enough that it bothers me. Therefore, I'm just going to crack on and do my thing. I know how to shut it, but it's not motivating.

I'm going to finish what I'm doing over here and then I'll shut it.

Cool. So Becky's in the pairing phase.

I hope she doesn't listen to this.

So let's just say if all of a sudden there's a button on the fridge where you go, oh, I didn't know we could turn this right up. And now when you turn it up, it's as loud as a smoke alarm. Guarantee ya.

She's running there to shut it.

Well, think of this way. When our smoke alarms go off, we run straight over and fan them. We don't dick about and get on with our day. We go, hey, I know there's not a fire.

I've got to stop this now.

I've got to stop that. If your fridge sounded like your smoke alarm, we'd want to turn it off quick smart.

Now there's an idea.

Now, LG, reach out. So this is what phase 3, or our nagging phase, looks like for our dog. It's finding that level they find uncomfortable where they go, oh, I know how to turn this off, and I actually really want to because I'm really uncomfortable. I want to get through this as quick as possible. So how we generally find this is a rule of thumb. Whatever your So if your pairing phase was, let's say you're at a level 10, that's what your dog could feel and go, hey, what was that? We typically go up anywhere from 20 to 30%, so 12 to 13, but sometimes it's more like 50%. So you might now go to a 15. What this should look like is you should see on your dog when you give them the command and start tapping, we should see them do a bit of a, oh geez, like they should look a little bit uncomfortable.

Hmm.

It should maybe look like they You know, maybe you've poked them in the side or maybe you've stood on their paw or maybe they've walked on a bindi. Like, again, not in pain, far from it. But we just want our dog to go, oh, I don't like that. That's kind of the point. We don't want them to go, hey, this is awesome. We want them to go, oh, I do want to turn this off. That's the whole point of, you know, negative reinforcement is running away from discomfort and running towards pleasure, which is you with the reinforcer.

Yeah. I mean, Kira, where we are now with Kira, with the situation, like we'll be out training and, you know, if we're doing some training and I say sit and she Doesn't look, doesn't sit. I'm like, I know, you know, sit. And I know you're just now, you're just ignoring me. I'll give her a tap on the thing and she, it's not an ear flicker now. It's more of a, like a whole head sort of like, oi. And then she'll just, and bang, the bum goes on the floor. But again, not yelping. She's not in pain. She's not in fear. It's just like almost like a flick, give her a little flick and say, hey, come on, listen. I've told you to sit down.

It just allows us to remotely do what we do with a leash, but from—

Yeah. Instead of popping with a leash, you'd be popping with the collar, the e-collar.

Yeah. So same, like if Nelson gets a bit distracted when he's on a leash, I'll just kind of give him a tap, tap, tap. Like it's almost like a kid pulling at your shorts or tapping. It's a bit annoying. You're like, hey, can you stop doing that? And we'd tap on someone's shoulder until they turn and look. The kid might pull on your shorts until you give them attention. This is the same thing.

This isn't about pain. This isn't about any of that stuff.

If we were to ask our dog, be like, hey, Kira, how is that? She goes, oh, so annoying.

Annoying. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm glad. Yeah. So, and the reason we do our pairing phase, our dog goes, hey, this uncomfortable sensation. It's now louder or more, you know, I feel it more. I know how to make it stop, just like our fridge example. So same thing again, we want to do is, you know, 3 sessions, 10 reps per behaviour where we can see our dog complete the task. It's really important. Again, our timing here is so critical that when our dog completes the task, that's when the button stops. The other thing we can do is we progress through these sessions. So maybe by the second or third session, if you're like, Hey, my dog's acing their recall. I call them, I start tap, tap, tap, tap, tapping. I can see by the time they're halfway back to me, they're definitely going to finish the behaviour. We can already take our thumb off the button at that point. The moment we see, you know, we start off by going, you need to complete the job to have the collar turned off. But by second, third session of those 10 reps, if your dog's acing it, if you're like, hey, I can see them gonna complete this recall, I can see they're definitely going to their bed. I can see they're definitely going to sit. You can take your thumb off the button and start tapping the moment your dog shows commitment to the behaviour. Because ideally we want to wean them off the pressure. The whole goal long term is we don't really have to want to use that e-collar. I like to think of an e-collar like a seatbelt. It's there if we need it, but ideally we don't want to.

And that's where I'm at with Kira now. It's literally, it is that, it's a seatbelt. Because the original reason I put her on it was because she chased a motorbike. And it's purely for me, it is just there as my seatbelt to say, If she decides one day to ignore me and she's going, you know what, no, I'm not actually going to come back, I'm going to chase that motorbike, I know I can go bang and she's going to go, oh, okay, no, I'm not.

Yeah, exactly. And people go, oh, is it, you know, is the aim to not have, not have to wear the e-collar? I'm like, well, sure, but considering you're going to pop their normal collar on anyway, why not just pop a second collar on? It takes 4 seconds and it's an insurance, because I can tell you, you're not going to feel like an idiot every day putting it on and going home and go, didn't need to use it once. I know I don't. But I definitely feel like an idiot if, you know, dogs are animals. They will make shit decisions. They all do. Even the— I can tell you, even from like the elite working dogs I've seen with working organizations, and even the elite dogs I see in sport, they will do dumb stuff. Even the best. So if these dogs who have had years of expert training will do dumb stuff and make poor decisions occasionally, I'm telling you, your pet dog will too. And like Jack said, it's a, it's a seatbelt. I'd rather get home and go, sweet, didn't Didn't need it, rather than going, no, I want to save myself 10 seconds every morning and not pop it on and then go, oh shit.

And then you're sitting in the vets with a $4,000 bill or worse.

Yeah. Your dog has been pulverised by a truck. Yes. I'd way rather. Yeah, exactly. So that's our nagging phase. We want to do, you know, those few sessions where our dog learns, okay, this is now more uncomfortable. Just like the fridge. The fridge beep is now way louder. Hey, I want to turn that off. Luckily, Dad taught me how to last week. And again, every repetition our dog comes back to, we pay them massively. They get their ball, they get— we're not stingy with our food. They're getting big handfuls of food.

That's the key.

They're going, hey, this job is now like pretty, you know, it's, it's pretty tough now. There's more pressure, there's more accountability, but I'm paying— I'm being paid really well to do so. We always want to keep that. If we look at our scales, our dog still goes, hey, that was, you know, tough but worth it. We never want our dogs to go, that was shit. I don't enjoy that because you'll flatten your dog out, and that's not the point. The last part of this, once your dog understands that, we move to our aversive and avoidance stage. Again, the whole point of an e-collar is that we can not need to rely on it, not need to use it. Your dog just does the things we ask them without having to constantly tap, tap, tap on the e-collar. And also, the other part is it means, like Jack with— and Kira with their motorbike, we can start to apply aversives and put stuff off limits. For example, cane toad chasing, snake chasing. If your dog is destroying things around the home when you're gone, putting an end to those behaviours, chasing motorbikes, uh, you know, reactivity. We could— it's a great tool for reactivity once you've done all your pre-training, et cetera. So in this 4th phase is where we now go up by whatever your nagging phase or your working level is. We then have your e-collar if you've got a good brand. And if you want a brand recommendation, you know, I use the Martin Systems Chameleon Collar. Jack uses a Mini Educator by E-Collar Technologies. Dogtra also do really good collars. They're kind of the 3 that we use.

Please don't skimp on it though, because they aren't cheap. I think the Mini Educator was maybe just under $400 for the Mini Educator. I know your one's even more expensive than that. Yeah, but you're a professional dog trainer, so it should be. But please don't skimp.

Yeah, don't go to eBay. The little shitty yellow remote ones. If you type in e-collar on eBay and you see that yellow remote, orange strap, Don't get that. They are shit.

And again, you know, you are going to need to invest in it, but again, it is well worth the investment. I've had the Mini Educator now for like 2 years or just under 2 years. It's waterproof. Kira can go swimming with it on. Um, you know, I can go out in the rain with it all the time. It's, yeah, it's great. It's fantastic. And same goes with yours.

Spot on. So we want to get a good one. It's, it's worth the investment. Honestly, you'll get one of these $50, $100 ones. You'll ruin your dog. So you're then going to need to— because anyway, you'll ruin your dog. You're going to need to pay for training to fix that and then buy a more expensive collar anyway.

Yeah.

So just don't waste your money. Spend it from the get-go. So with this final stage, this is where we can now start to close doors on certain behaviours. So if your dog's a snake, you know, a toad chaser, we can use it for that, for example. We can also use it to make behaviours happen without the use of the e-collar. So Whatever our nagging phase was, the other button on our collar app, or what we call our boost button, should be now going up by 50 to 100%. So if your dog was at 15, we might go up by half of that to 22, but this could also go up to as much as double as that to 30. Your dog's relationship with this button and this sensation should be, hey, I don't just want to turn this off, I want to avoid that altogether. Again, let's just, let's imagine, let's go back to the fridge. Let's imagine now that the fridge, if you don't close that in time, is as loud as a ship's foghorn. And you go, hey, I do not ever want to hear that in my house. That is so uncomfortable, it's not funny. You would, you would learn quick smart to open, get what you need, quickly shut it. You'd make sure you avoid that sensation altogether. That's our dog's relationship with this button. So we do this in a couple of ways. We now start giving our dogs a command— sit, down, come, etc. We give them 3 quarters of a second to start performing the thing, or the big red button happens. We start to go, hey, I'm going to give you a couple of chances to do your thing. You can either say do it, wait, and then with the big button, or you can give your dog a couple of chances to do it with the, the normal button, the nagging or working level. Here, tap, tap. And if they blow you off and say, sorry, there's something I actually want to do more Tap, tap, tap with the big button. So for example, if Kira was, you know, at an empty park, recalling on the nag level is fine. But let's say all of a sudden there's birds or whatever, whatever, and she goes, sorry, this is worth more than the, the nag button, the birds are better. Our red button should outweigh anything. Nothing is worth the red button.

Well, I mean, that's what I did. Once we— once I did it, went through all those steps in the beginning, completely conditioned her to the e-collar, I then Popped her on a long line, put the e-collar on, and I actively went looking for a motorbike.

Yeah.

Because I'm like, I want that to trigger her.

Yep.

So that I can pair those 2 together and say, Nana, we're not doing that anymore. And that's exactly what we did. We went down training where we normally went training. I had her on the long line. We were just training a little bit with the e-collar, heard a motorbike coming along. Fantastic. She saw the motorbike. I did a recall on the normal tap, tap, tap. She went, I don't think so, pal. And she went to bolt. And then so we went to boost, boom. And she went, oh, okay, nope. All right, not doing that. And she spun around and came straight back.

That's it.

And you know what? I actually don't even need to use that anymore. Like, she sees a motorbike now and she instantly— she looks at it, she thinks about it, and then she turns to me.

Yeah, it goes once.

And then she's just like, you know what? I know that's not worth it. And again, though, on that boost button, she did not yelp.

Yep.

There was no yelping. There was no like freaking out. None of that. There was none of that. Like, because let me put it this way. So we're talking about levels. Kira's working level is around 40 on the e-collar.

Yeah.

So it's high.

Yeah, that's very high.

And it has to be there because otherwise she just does not feel it.

Yeah.

Now when it goes to chasing a motorbike, 40, nothing. Nothing.

Yeah.

It's like it doesn't even exist.

Spot on.

And again, You know, the—

because she's a cattle dog, she's got such a crazy pain threshold.

If she was a human, she'd be into dominatrix. Like, she's just, she loves it.

Don't kink shame, Trav.

Yeah. But anyway, sidetracking. But, but yes. So, you know, again, it's not a pain level, but it is enough for them to go, you know what? The juice ain't worth the squeeze. Yeah.

If we, if we were to draw an imaginary line of where our dog's pain threshold starts, it's below it. We want to, again, if we constantly ask a dog, how is that? They go, that is so uncomfortable. I don't want to experience again. Did it hurt? No, it didn't hurt. Yeah, we don't want that. We just want it— I've got like, the moment you start using pain, like, it's just shit. But your dog's relationship should be is like, the nag level, when I feel it, I'm really keen to turn that off as quick as possible. But our dog's aversive level or boost button should be, I don't want to feel that at all. Okay, so that's why Kira, she knows if Dad calls me now, if I come back and start doing the thing in time, I avoid the big red button. If I blow him off That's where the big red button starts to go.

She turns on a dime, that dog.

Exactly.

Like turns on a dime. And, and again, it's not because she's scared, like, because she knows, because I have paired everything with like, you come back to me, everything's going to be great.

Yeah.

And her biggest thing is like, she has her toy drive is so strong for this ball that I call her back and she will race to my feet, sit there, look up and go, let's go. And I'll throw the ball and she's like, boom. And she's off. Yep. So yeah. So it's again, I think a lot of people who don't agree with the e-collar see it as purely it's a fear-based thing that the dogs are terrified and they're only doing what you ask them because they're terrified of being hurt. And again, Kira has never yelped in pain, has never— she doesn't fear the e-collar. Again, I put it on, she's ready to go. And that's if you train it properly. You've got to do these things properly. And if you're listening to all this and you're feeling a bit overwhelmed and maybe thinking, oh God, I'm not sure, please don't even try.

Yeah.

Unless you listen to someone in your area who knows what they're doing to help you. Yeah, because you can get up.

That's it. And I've— and one common— not a super common, but yeah, a common enough callout we'll get is people have tried this on their own or done it with a cheap shitty trainer or whatever, um, and yeah, have just really fucked their dog up pretty badly. The moment you put that thing on, that dog will just lie down and refuse to move and think, hey, I'm super shut down and it's shit. So the other thing you can use this for at this level, your boost button, is you can apply it for like, again, closing doors on things. So like if you've got a motorbike chaser or a tow chaser For example, with like toads in our backyard, I don't need Nelson when he sees a toad to come and fly back to me. I just want him to go, hey, I'm not supposed to go near them. So again, rather than give him one shot of, you know, 100 on the e-collar, is I like to give him, you know, 4 or 5 taps at his boost level, which is much lower. So, hey, you went near a toad? No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And I always think of it like we've all got parents who go, oh, back in my day, I used to get the cane at school. You notice they never say the teacher gave them one just almighty whack that snapped their arm.

Yeah, got 3 or 4 slaps across the back of the wrist.

We prefer an accumulation of pressure, the one that went one gigantic overwhelming moment. And he knows, like, all right, that ain't worth a squeeze. I'd love to chase a cane toad. I'd love to get high as all shit and lick the back of it, but it's not worth it because I know what will happen. And again, we can use this for things like, you know, things that are hard to correct when we're not there, you know, chasing toads, or if your dog's chewing stuff and destroying stuff around the home. Chuck a pet cam on, sit outside and correct them. Hey, don't do that.

I used it with, in conjunction with your training.

Boundary training.

Boundary training. Yeah. So what I did was pop the e-collar on, left all the doors and gates and everything open in the house, and I just sort of disappeared around the corner. And as soon as Kira's foot went over, nope, boom, and gave her the tap tap. And she's like, oh God. And now honestly, like every afternoon my wife just leaves the garage door open and comes and meets me and the kids down the street as we ride home. Kira just does not cross that line.

No chance at all. That's it. Juice ain't worth the squeeze. And with our aversive level, the whole point here is we're closing the door on something we really don't want our dog to do. Now, we don't want to leave this up to chance. We don't just want to say, stick our dog, you know, in the backyard with a toad or send them out in an empty park where there's cars and motorbikes. If they're like Kira and they're a bit of a chaser, we want to do what we call a controlled rehearsal with our dogs on lead as our insurance policy until we're so confident our dog will definitely respond to the levels. Definitely has an understanding and we're confident ourselves. So if you're taking your dog around something we really don't want them to do anymore, have them on a leader's insurance policy like Jack did. He said just before he nailed it, and I just want to touch more on that point, is he took Kira to the park. He was looking for motorbikes, but he had her on lead because you tried this level, this level, this level, and then finally that level is what worked. He went sweet. But if that process took him 10, 15 seconds to find that, our dog might have already done the thing we don't want. And generally You know, it's not just a, I wish she wouldn't do that. It's like, it could be a life or death thing, particularly with car chases, tow chases, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it's just one of the things is we want to do controlled rehearsals. You could even practice this with something else our dogs find really reinforcing and motivating. You might throw a whole bunch of food on the ground, have someone that's like calling them. You could, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, put something they're not supposed to have that's a bit more low stakes until you've got a bit of a key. And got a bit of an idea, and then go practice controlled rehearsal with the actual trigger that you're wanting— toads, cars, etc., other dogs— and then you can finally go, okay, once you eat, the, the, the long lead is just redundant. We're not using it. We're purely using the e-collar now. That's when you can start to drop the leash. And then once you're really confident off the back of that, that's when you can unclip it altogether. But just want to go through in that order. You don't want to jump straight to it because, like we said, there could be huge risk of fallout. That's, that's how to e-collar train a dog, guys. You got those 4 phases. Couple little last little caveats. Make sure you've got good contact. So with—

Yes.

Every e-collar that'll have 2 little nodes, prongs, things, contact points, whatever you want to call them, both of those need to be touching the skin firmly enough because the idea of an e-collar, it makes a muscle contract. What we don't want to get is what we call a false negative. A false negative is where you stim the dog and you don't get a response and you go, oh, They just ignored level 15 as an example. Yeah, when we're going to turn it up to 20. Yeah, reality is it might just not have been touching them. They might have absolutely listened at 15 and absolutely felt it. You've now increased the level. The e-collar is now touching their skin again. You can tap it and then bang. So you always want to make sure you've got really good contact. Number 2, you always want to make sure both things are on and both things are paired. If your dog does make a decision to go, fuck it, I'm going to go chase that thing. you start tapping, go, oh shit, it's not actually on.

It's happened to me before.

That's, that's a danger. So you always want to make sure it's charged on.

Sometimes it is, especially with the one I have, the Mini Educator. You've got to sort of hold them together and they connect. And if you don't, if sometimes you don't do it right, it won't connect. And I have had that situation where I'm like sitting in the stim and I'm like, she's just not responding. What's going on? Like, she should be like, is she?

And then I realized, oh, And lastly, guys, is this should go without saying, but let's just say you're listening to this today and you've got kids, or let's say you're listening to this and you've got a partner who has zero interest in dog training. Neither of those people are allowed to use it. So let's just say your kids can either go, sorry, fuck no, absolutely not. Okay. I have heard some absolute horror stories where kids think it's a game. They were not being nasty. They just—

Kids just don't get it.

Number 2, with your partner, if you do 99% of the training and your partner just is one of those people that's not super involved with the training, that's cool. Not having a crack, the e-collar is not for them. They need to be able to understand this. You should be able to— anyone who uses the e-collar should understand it well enough to be able to teach someone else to use it.

Mm-hmm.

So unless you've put in that time to teach your partner, unless they properly understand it, they can't. Same with my own wife. When I was like, hey, when you take Nelson, pop the e-collar on him, here's how you like Mel now could teach people to use the e-collar. Okay. And lastly, same as if you're leaving a dog with someone.

I was literally going to say that one.

Spot on. You don't, if they go, oh, can I have the e-collar? Do you know how to use it? What?

Nup. And definitely don't you say, hey, they're only trained on the e-collar. They, you know, maybe take the e-collar. If you're going to do that, like I've found someone who looks after Kira now. She's fantastic. And she knows she has e-collars, has been training e-collars for a long time. She uses them on her dogs. First thing she said to me was, is she e-collar trained? I said, yes. She's like, great. Are you happy if we have her on an e-collar?

I'm like, sure.

They just know what they're doing, which is fantastic. But yeah, don't go, don't give your dog to someone to look after and say, hey, here's the e-collar. If they don't come back, just don't.

People think it's this magic compliance tool and they can't wait to have it going.

It can really go wrong.

Exactly. Exactly. And last little thing in terms of age, again, you can, you can go through this when your dog's young. I personally wait till the dog's like 6 months. That is just my rule of thumb. A lot of people ask what age you need to be. I personally like 6 months and up. But any other questions? If you guys, you know, hopefully you've got to the end of this and you go, cool, you might need to play it back. You might need to go, all right, you know, this week we're in conditioning phase, we know what to do. Next week you might go back, give it another listen just so you can re-listen to each of the phases, so on and so forth. But you should hopefully by the end of listening to this understand how to e-collar train your dog. If you've still got questions, post them in the group rather than guesswork and get it wrong and create an issue. If you get to a point where you go, oh, I don't exactly know what to do here. There's no shame in that. Just post in the group. We can help you problem solve. Both of us know how to e-collar train dogs. We'll help. But I'd way rather you do that than screw it up and go, hey, I think I went really wrong because now my dog's doing this. And then we go, all right, we're going to go do all this repair work and then back to the beginning.

Well, a longer episode than normal, but I think it's a really great episode. And it's one that you can, you know, yeah, as Max said, you can keep listening to, go back again, stop, make notes, come back to it. And again, any questions, as Max said, just jump in the Facebook Facebook group, because as you— again, as Max said, we'd much rather you ask questions. No question is a stupid question. Just ask, because you'd rather ask and get the right answer and do it right the first time. The Dog People Podcast is a Mashed Pumpkin production hosted by Jack Lawrence and Max O'Neill. Edited, produced, and audio production by Jack Lawrence.

There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. Stand still? Not a chance. You're a lifelong learner who's come this far. Now we're here to help you keep going further. Capella University. What can't you do? Visit capella.edu.

High Five Casino is the top choice for social casino gaming that's free to play. With chances to win and redeem for real cash prizes, free spin rewards, and tons of exclusive games, you can experience more high five moments than ever before. You're gonna wanna high five everyone. The neighbors, the mailman, all your coworkers, of course your friends.

Well, you get the point.

Your high five moment awaits at highfivecasino.com. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited by law. Must be 21 years or older. Terms and conditions apply.