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I also would have commented sooner if I had been able too but the hurricane/tropical storm that came up the east coast last week knocked me out of power and offline from Tuesday afternoon last week to Tuesday evening this week. That is where I know I will be parting company with some earlier posters.

I use pinch collars and often recommend them to people who I trust and with whom I have time to instruct on their proper use. No single tool is the correct tool for every single dog, but they are often very useful for many dogs. All three of our dogs have pinch collars that we use for various situations. Lily learned to do nice heeling with a pinch collar. She mostly does not wear it anymore, but earlier in the spring with COVID raging I used it a bit to remind her not to drag me around when we took walks on opposite sides of the street with my mom and her mpoo. She was desperate to get to my mom, but even we were distancing when we walked. I knew my mom wanted to spend time with me as best was possible and that my poodles were very excited to see her. The pinch collar settled Lily down after one week where I had it attached to her leash. After that I put it on but attached her leash to her flat buckle collar and now I have put it away again. Peeves is an incurable bunny, squirrel and cat chaser. Sometimes we see chickens on our street since several neighbors allow their birds to range. He knows not to chase with the pinch collar and I would rather take him for a walk than for his entire world to be our home and yard, which is what would happen if he didn't understand the pinch collar.

Javelin loves his pinch collar because he has a strong positive association with it since me putting it on means we are going out to train. I call for him to come get dressed and he runs from wherever he is to sit and have me put it on. While we train there are times his leash is on the pinch and times he has no leash on. Really I just hook his leash to the pinch when we are heeling so he knows if he is out of position. He loves to heel and has the potential to be a no points off obedience heeler (if I can just not interfere with him with my crooked paths). His love of heeling and affinity for his pinch collar are the result of how I introduced it to him and how I have used it. He was over a year old when I first put a pinch collar on him and I made it looser than appropriate by adding a link. I never attached it to his leash for about a month. I taught him to understand how it would feel by gently pulling it a little bit taught while feeding him cookies and telling him he was a good boy. I have described in detail several times the method I use for introducing pinch collars to naive dogs here on PF. If you want to see the details search on other threads about pinch collars and I am sure you can find that information. The method I use with private pet clients when needed is the method Ian Dunbar described to me when I was at a workshop with him a number of years ago. He (and I agree with him) thinks that if you need a correcting tool and introduce and use it properly as a means of dealing with problem behaviors that might lead to a dog dying that the tool should be used. When his leash is attached to it I never ever have collar popped him, but I'm not a collar popper anyway. It has been a great tool for him along with things as innocuous as pieces of pvc gutters and pipe and moldings that also took work to introduce. He used to shy away from even a frame made from skinny pvc moldings but by teaching him how we were going to use them he has come to have great love even for those pieces of pvc. My private trainer was walking through the ring the other day to set up a landing strip for him and he tried to follow her just because she had molding strips with her. The point is that he has been taught about all sorts of tools and that things that might scare a dog can also be very high value to any well taught dog.

In my obedience classes the only tool I do not allow for novice handlers is an unlimited slip collar. Too many people jerk their dogs around with them, are too quick to not let pressure off until the dog is clearly in distress or even will use them to hang their dogs. I only allow people who I know to be experienced (even with a green dog) can use unlimited slip collars whether chains or nylon. A pinch collar is essentially a martingale collar. The critical points overall to me are: using the tool properly to the level of the dog and the handler; having good quality and properly fitted tools; having clear goals for fading the tool as training continues and making sure that the tool is in good condition. The only brand/style of pinch collar I use or recommend is this one (Herm Sprenger pinch collar with quick release) M Sprenger Quick Release Collar For both of my poodles I use ones with small size links. For the German Shepherd dog I have one with medium links. If the links are too big you will have a smaller number of them and it won't be flexible enough to give the proper level of correcting information to the dog.
 
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I also would have commented sooner if I had been able too but the hurricane/tropical storm that came up the east coast last week knocked me out of power and offline from Tuesday afternoon last week to Tuesday evening this week. That is where I know I will be parting company with some earlier posters.

I use pinch collars and often recommend them to people who I trust and with whom I have time to instruct on their proper use. No single tool is the correct tool for every single dog, but they are often very useful for many dogs. All three of our dogs have pinch collars that we use for various situations. Lily learned to do nice heeling with a pinch collar. She mostly does not wear it anymore, but earlier in the spring with COVID raging I used it a bit to remind her not to drag me around when we took walks on opposite sides of the street with my mom and her mpoo. She was desperate to get to my mom, but even we were distancing when we walked. I knew my mom wanted to spend time with me as best was possible and that my poodles were very excited to see her. The pinch collar settled Lily down after one week where I had it attached to her leash. After that I put it on but attached her leash to her flat buckle collar and now I have put it away again. Peeves is an incurable bunny, squirrel and cat chaser. Sometimes we see chickens on our street since several neighbors allow their birds to range. He knows not to chase with the pinch collar and I would rather take him for a walk than for his entire world to be our home and yard, which is what would happen if he didn't understand the pinch collar.

Javelin loves his pinch collar because he has a strong positive association with it since me putting it on means we are going out to train. I call for him to come get dressed and he runs from wherever he is to sit and have me put it on. While we train there are times his leash is on the pinch and times he has no leash on. Really I just hook his leash to the pinch when we are heeling so he knows if he is out of position. He loves to heel and has the potential to be a no points off obedience heeler (if I can just not interfere with him with my crooked paths). His love of heeling and affinity for his pinch collar are the result of how I introduced it to him and how I have used it. He was over a year old when I first put a pinch collar on him and I made it looser than appropriate by adding a link. I never attached it to his leash for about a month. I taught him to understand how it would feel by gently pulling it a little bit taught while feeding him cookies and telling him he was a good boy. I have described in detail several times the method I use for introducing pinch collars to naive dogs here on PF. If you want to see the details search on other threads about pinch collars and I am sure you can find that information. The method I use with private pet clients when needed is the method Ian Dunbar described to me when I was at a workshop with him a number of years ago. He (and I agree with him) thinks that if you need a correcting tool and introduce and use it properly as a means of dealing with problem behaviors that might lead to a dog dying that the tool should be used. When his leash is attached to it I never ever have collar popped him, but I'm not a collar popper anyway. It has been a great tool for him along with things as innocuous as pieces of pvc gutters and pipe and moldings that also took work to introduce. He used to shy away from even a frame made from skinny pvc moldings but by teaching him how we were going to use them he has come to have great love even for those pieces of pvc. My private trainer was walking through the ring the other day to set up a landing strip for him and he tried to follow her just because she had molding strips with her. The point is that he has been taught about all sorts of tools and that things that might scare a dog can also be very high value to any well taught dog.

In my obedience classes the only tool I do not allow for novice handlers is an unlimited slip collar. Too many people jerk their dogs around with them, are too quick to not let pressure off until the dog is clearly in distress or even will use them to hang their dogs. I only allow people who I know to be experienced (even with a green dog) can use unlimited slip collars whether chains or nylon. A pinch collar is essentially a martingale collar. The critical points overall to me are: using the tool properly to the level of the dog and the handler; having good quality and properly fitted tools; having clear goals for fading the tool as training continues and making sure that the tool is in good condition. The only brand/style of pinch collar I use or recommend is this one (Herm Sprenger pinch collar with quick release) M Sprenger Quick Release Collar For both of my poodles I use ones with small size links. For the German Shepherd dog I have one with medium links. If the links are too big you will have a smaller number of them and it won't be flexible enough to give the proper level of correcting information to the dog.
Lily CD re - would you ever require pinch collars in a novice class?
 
Lily CD re - would you ever require pinch collars in a novice class?
ABSOLUTELY NOT! I only require no slip collars and always find myself telling people to have a proper leash. Lots of people think they need a much heavier leash than they need. Think Chihuahua on a 1" wide leather leash that weighs more than the dog! For a toy dog at most you need a 3'8" leash and for a spoo I find a half inch wide flat leash to be sufficient. With Lily and Javelin I now walk them and do on leash exercises with thin braided paracord leash (very light weight) and I take Lily in and out of rally trial rings with something akin to a leather boot lace (single strand) or a piece of paracord also single strand. The leash needs to be light enough to have some life in it so the dog feels it quickly when they run out of leash say when you halt and they don't. If the leash is too heavy the correcting information reaches the collar long after it can possibly mean anything. I also really prefer people to use flat or martingale collars over harnesses unless there is a respiratory tracheal collapse type of concern.

For Want of Poodle your question also harkens back to this terrible "trainer" who does require pinch collars but apparently doesn't explain why he does so, nor does he help people understand anything about how to introduce or use them properly. In any dog training you have to be fair to the dog and not assume they understand something they have not been taught. This guy's class doesn't sound like he does any of that. At the very least the OP should have been told before she coughed up her payment information such as the requirement for a pinch collar. I don't do that for my classes, nor do I ever walk into a new private client home and hand the people a pinch collar in exchange for $50 without them having expected me to do so.

This is going to seem unrelated to the current discussion but it is related in that it is about being fair to the dog in context of what it does or does not already clearly understand. In the last week or two I have been working on cleaning up aspects of Javelin's directed retrieve of a glove found in utility obedience. He clearly understands and loves the exercise. He will even take gloves off a chair and trot around with them (an extracurricular activity). That has made him prone to kill the glove and then shake it as he trots around on his indirect return to me. I want him to learn that he needs to make a clean pick up and a direct happy return to front. My private trainer suggested I back chain the parts of the exercise which we worked on together by putting out pvc strips to mark the direct return from where the pick up takes place and having him stand and face me with the glove in his mouth (in other words what he will do after he makes the clean pick up). He did great, no problem, totally understood. She told me to next have him stand facing away with the glove and let him make the turn then the come to sit in front. I thought he was redy for that and he just couldn't make any sense out of what I wanted him do do. As I tried to leave him he kept turning and following me. Since this was in the middle of our power outage from the tropical storm I was tired and I got mad at him and took the golve, balled it up and threw it at him (good thing I wasn't mad about a dumbbell exercise). We went over my problems when we had our private lesson yesterday and my trainer told me I had to teach him to stay at the pick up facing away and to break it down into tiny stages (sit facing away, me back up two steps and return to heel, treat and repeat until I can get to center ring from where eventually he will be directed to the glove; repeat for all 3 glove postiions; repeat with stand facing away then give him the glove and have him wait with it facing away). Bottom line I was terribly unfair to him last week and I am just lucky that he adores and trusts me enough to back him up for hard things that he forgave me instantly and to go on to happily doing something else I know he loves to reward him for his forgiveness. It takes work for a person and dog to build that kind of deep bond and to go back to the beginning of this thread a pinch collar without any decent teaching is a betrayal of that kind of relationship building. Since this was a one time thing I think Teddy will be just fine since his mom clearly loves him and wants to do the right thing.
 
...a pinch collar without any decent teaching is a betrayal of that kind of relationship building.
Powerful words! Amen!

It sounds like Teddy has found his way into a class that's just not appropriate for him. His human mentioned the class is populated with older, aggressive bully breeds. Teddy, on the other hand, is a sensitive, happy-go-lucky poodle puppy.

So prong collar aside, I'm not sure this trainer is looking out for the best interest of his canine students. Did he not do any sort of consultation or assessment first?

I'd personally ask for a refund.
 
There is always the power of Yelp to convince him to refund her. I somehow missed the mention of a class full of older bully breed dogs. They probably could learn with proper use of pinch collars, but if the instructor is just relying on slapping the collar and and forging ahead then probably not. But at any rate not the right kind of class for Teddy and his mom.
 
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