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The term “collar wise” is used to describe a dog who only listens and performs when they are wearing equipment. When collars are taken off, the collar wise dog will ignore commands, perform at less than their normal level, and will not take direction from the handler. This is an issue that has a couple of different factors to consider.

1. Relationship

This is one of the most critical, and one of the most misunderstood aspects of why dogs become collar wise. Sometimes people will use an ecollar as a shortcut when there is a deficit in their relationship with their dog. This is especially true with recalls. If I have a young dog, and teach them recalls in a motivational way, with lots of rewards from me and strong positive emotions for the recall, it is very easy for me to then layer over the remote collar for proofing against things like wildlife. When I then go to remove the collar later on in my dog’s life, they love recalls, they love interacting with me, and I have not allowed bad habits to develop around distractions such as deer. It is highly unlikely for me to run into issues with my dog blowing me off.

Now let’s look at a different scenario. I have a dog who I really want to have off leash on the hiking trail, and he’s hard to motivate and doesn’t really like coming back to me. I could spend a month on foundation work, but that’s so much time, so I am just going to rush into the collar work. For this type of dog, the collar has become the reason that the dog comes back, rather than a backup form of correction for rare mistakes. This dog has a very strong likelihood of ignoring me completely when the collar is gone. It is the difference between a dog coming to you because he likes you and enjoys his job, and a dog who is only coming to avoid a correction.

2. Different Sets of Rules

You have put in a ton of work on your recalls, and your dog knows the communication of the ecollar very well. When you have your remote and the collar is on, you have a high standard for your dog. You expect him to come to you quickly and directly, and to do this in any setting. You and your dog have clear expectations for what this looks like. Until one day, you leave the remote in the car, or you forget to charge the collar so you just go without. Your dog does well, so you stop using the collar at all.

A week in, you are letting him play with his friends, and you call him to go home. He ignores you. You say “Oh well, I can give him 10 more minutes.” And you change the rules. Come no longer means the same thing when the collar isn’t in the picture. After this happens a few times, you will put the collar back on and correct him, and he will have an even clearer picture that the collar is the piece that’s different when the rules change.

3. Bad Procedures

Fluffy gets easily distracted around dogs, but he’s fine on the rest of the walks you take. He heels nicely, works well with you, and never ignores direction as long as a dog isn’t around. So you say to yourself that Fluffy doesn’t need his collar on unless we are in high dog traffic areas. You keep the collar in your bag, and put it on him when you are going through a busy park. You take it off the second you walk in the door back home.

Buddy needs his e-collar on for protection work because he gets really amped up around the helper. When it is protection time, you put his collar on, you go and work, and when he is done and coming off the field, you take the collar off because you no longer need it.

What both of these handlers have done is turned the collar into a cue that something is about to happen. Fluffy starts to see the collar as a cue that dogs are going to start showing up. Buddy starts to see the cue of the collar as a sign that protection is happening. Buddy’s handler is going to be in for a rude awakening on trial day when Buddy does not receive this cue.

4. Rushing

The remote collar is a fantastic communication tool when taught right, and can give you and your dog levels of training that are beyond what you ever dreamed. With just a small low level reminder, you can heel your dog through a crowd, recall him away from deer, and stop him from counter surfing. You get him home from his board and train, and he is a total rock star, doing all the things you always dreamed of. It is natural at this point to decide that the collar is no longer needed, and you can put it in the drawer. The problem comes two days later. You haven’t needed to correct him for two weeks, but on this day there is a particularly interesting squirrel, and he chooses the squirrel over you. Your collar is at home, you do not correct him.

Great responses to instructions and low rates of correction are a great and fantastic thing, and they do not mean that you are ready to remove your training equipment. Life is unpredictable, and you can never control what happens in the environment around your dog. You can easily create a collar wise dog by rushing to remove equipment before your dog is ready for it to be faded out.

Training tools are not a replacement for training.

Your e-collar is a fantastic tool to help in the training process, but it is not a magic button that will solve all of your problems. Teaching things correctly, building a great relationship with your dog, and being thoughtful about how you structure your training sessions are all key for building a dog who works beautifully regardless of what kind of necklace they have on.

If you need help with a collar wise dog, feel free to reach out to us .

If you hang out in any IGP or PSA Facebook groups, you will start to see a trend. People are looking for advice on selecting an “off breed” for a biting dog sport, or for a club that will let them play. While Malinois and German Shepherds are commonplace in these sports, you will occasionally see other breeds crop up. Traditionally, Dobermans, Rottweilers, Boxers, and Giant Schnauzers have all been participants in these sports, and there are breeders today who still work to preserve the working character. Every now and then, you see something different. Somebody working their lab/cattle dog/collie in IGP protection, or trying to get a PDC with one. Some can pull it off, most can’t. They do not have the right building blocks.

“But my dog loves to tug, and loves to bite toys, and has super prey drive. He will definitely love bitework.”

This is a very common misconception, and protection sport people are partially to blame. To help people understand the sport, and to make it more palatable, people will talk about how the dog is biting an extra large tug toy in the shape of a sleeve or a suit jacket. While for many dogs this is a giant game, it isn’t as simple as a jumbo game of tug. There are pressures and challenges in these sports that require very specific traits that off breeds typically don’t, and shouldn’t, have.

The History of Protection Sports

Schutzhund is the sport that most people are familiar with when it comes to protection sports. Now known as IGP, this sport features tracking, obedience, and protection, and was designed as a breed suitability test for the German Shepherd. In order to prove that your GSD was suitable to produce offspring, you had to achieve a base level of proficiency in the sport. Just like hunt tests were designed to test labs and hunting breeds, and earth dog was designed to test working terriers. Other sports were designed to test the qualities of a working police dog, and other breeds of guardian types were developed with these programs.

Over time, these sports have developed into more of a sport than a breeding test or a police dog test. We have specific lines of Malinois for IGP, specific ones for French ring, and still others for the KNPV sport in Holland. A German shepherd who competes in the AKC show ring generally does not have the same character as a modern working bred GSD, who excels in all three phases of the IGP sport that they have been selected for.

Slight Off Breeds

After Malinois, GSDs, and Dutch shepherds, there are a couple of breeds that you will see relatively frequently in protection sports. Dobermans are probably the next most common, followed by Rottweilers, Boxers and other bully breeds, and Mastiff breeds such as the Cane Corso. You will see these dogs titling, and sometimes to high levels. Dobermans and Rotties have stood on all breed championship podiums, and there is a Beauceron with a Mondioring 3.

But there are some issues here. The selection pressures on these breeds have not been the same as the main 3 breeds. Most of these dogs that you see from reputable breeders today are being bred for the show ring or for performance sports, and there isn’t as much of a focus on the things that a protection dog needs. There are health and structure issues that can cause these dogs problems moving to higher levels of sport, especially the ringsports. So while there are some phenomenal working Dobermans out there, they are hard to come by.

Very Off Breeds

A border collie competed at the FCI IGP world championships, and people were all about it. It was a much different dog to see in a see of shepherds and Malinois. The performances were also much different. This is a border collie in a million to be able to take the pressure of world championship helper work, and even he could not muster a passing score.

There are a good number of breeds with Schutzhund 3 titles. Labs, goldens, a great dane, some cattle dogs and border collies. These dogs become beacons for people who want to go out and show the world that any dog can do the sport. But for every dog that you see who makes it through at the club level, there are 1,000 who would not and could not. Nor should they. When I look for a correct lab or golden, I want a handler sensitive, soft mouthed dog with exceedingly friendly character. A good retriever should not have a full hard grip on a sleeve, and they should not see stick hits as a fun cue to keep sparring. When I look for a correct herding dog, it is a major issue for them to have a death grip on a sheep. It is a major issue for them to be eager to get into fights.

Why can’t you just teach the dog to go down the field and bite the tug? Because the guy is trying to get them not to bite. Pressure is poorly understood in most dog circles, and we do not always perceive it in the way that dogs do. I can have a rock solid stable cattle dog or lab, not worried about anything, who is worried about the type of pressure that my Malinois lives to work under. It takes a very specific kind of dog to do a PSA or Mondioring attack with accessories. It takes a very specific kind of dog to bark in a dominant and powerful way for a minute straight. These things may seem simple from an outside perspective, but it’s hundreds of years of genetics that make those things happen. And for your collie, there are hundreds of years of genetics telling it something else.

Beau is a social, happy goldendoodle from Lexington, KY. He was struggling with good manners at the door, which is a very common problem with doodles. Having a dog who loves strangers is a fantastic thing to have, but it can lead to issues with jumping and hyperactiveness. Beau also pulled badly on walks, wouldn’t come when called, and had issues with seperation anxiety.

The first step with Beau was to teach him a solid system of communication. Dogs can’t understand that a behavior is undesirable unless we have a way to communicate that to them. Beau has great food drive, so it was easy to build new behaviors with him, and introduce him to a fair system of corrections. He was conditioned to a marker system to help give him feedback with training. We also introduced him to a slip lead, and a quality remote collar from E-collar Technologies.

The e-collar makes communication a breeze with a dog who has had the right kind of conditioning. After being conditioned, we can move onto off leash reliability, and reliability around distractions. Once Beau made it through three weeks of training, including a trip to the FMBB Selection Trial in Tennessee, it was time for him to graduate. We did a few lessons with his owners to make sure that his training transferred back to his home environment.

On follow-up on Beau the other day, his owner had this to say: “Things are going good! We haven’t really had any problems. It’s funny anytime we go out on walks, you can tell he’s in the zone!”

We love updates like these, and this is several weeks after Beau graduated. People often ask if training will stay the same once the dog returns home, and the answer is yes! Our training program is designed to make sure that we are the last trainer you ever have to use.

Polo (formerly Solo)

Polo the lab is getting ready to go to his new home in Iowa! This wonderful boy just got his hip and elbow x-rays, and everything looks fantastic. There is no better peace of mind than getting a young dog who you know is healthy both physically and behaviorally.

Polo also got neutered yesterday, so he will be all healed up and ready to start his new life by the time he goes home in January. He can’t do any serious training while he’s recovering, so he’s going to get some nice relaxing time off.

Brutus (formerly Luke)

Brutus also has a new home! He will be going home around Christmas time, and will have a great family who has an older female Boxer who will be his new buddy. We have already started on his name recognition training with his new name.

Brutus is also working this week on his sit, his place command, relaxing in the house, walking on leash, and continued socialization. He is sleeping 8 hours through the night regularly, and is an angel in his crate.

Leia

Leia is still looking for her forever home, but she’s in no rush. She’s having a blast playing with her Kong while I’m writing this blog post. Her name recognition training is going well, although she may end up with a different name when she finds her new family.

Leia is responding really well to leash training, and is sleeping 8 hours through the night with no complaints and no messes. She is learning sit, place, and wait at all of the doors. She and her brother are going to start going on a few field trips this week as well.

Cody

Stay tuned for more information about Cody, the newest dog to enter the program! We will add some more info about him later in the month.

For some families, raising a puppy from 8 weeks is overwhelming and too risky. You don’t know what your puppy’s personality will be as they mature. You have to deal with teething, potty training, crate training, and socializing your puppy in the midst of a pandemic. Purchasing a trained puppy is the right solution for some.

Because we are a dog training facility, we have the resources and set up to still be able to provide safe and productive socialization. We get the puppies through all of their crate training and potty training stages, and teach them proper manners from Day 1. They will understand all of their basic obedience commands, and the older puppies have extensive off leash and advanced obedience work. Check out their progress through our weekly training diaries!

Solo

Solo is working hard on both on and off leash obedience. He is a very happy, social boy, so distractions from people are one of the hardest areas for him. Toward the end of today’s training video, you can see him recall away from somebody petting him. This is a big deal for a labrador! You can also see that we do Solo’s recalls when he is free and running loose in the field. We are very particular on how our recalls are trained, and reliability is super important. Real world recalls should be from a dog who can have fun with people, dogs, food, etc, and still recall away from them to come to you.

Solo is available to go home Jan 15 when he wraps up his training program. Contact us to reserve him.

Luke and Leia

The dynamic duo are such a joy to spend time with! These puppies are both very confident and outgoing, and love to meet new people. As with any social dog, it is important that they learn proper manners for greetings. Boxers are too big of a breed to be jumping all over people when greeting them. Luke and Leia are also working on learning “sit”, “wait”, “break”, and some toy retrieve skills.

But it can’t be all work and no play! They get plenty of time to be puppies, and play with each other and with some neutral adult dogs. We are super excited about watching these two grow up.

Luke and Leia are available as early as December 23 as graduates from our trained puppy program. They are also eligible to stay longer and complete more advanced training.