Positive reinforcement training is the only humane way to teach your pet how to behave. Shock collars and other abusive devices hurt your pet and weakens your bond. Learn how to effectively train your dog and create a lifelong mutual trust.

1. How to Use a Shock
Collar Correctly
by Fun Paw Care
http://www.funpawcare.com/2012/11/09/how-to-use-a-shock-collar-correctly/

2. Considering using a shock collar?
But at what expense?
• Stress to your dog and quite possibly your dog’s life!1
Stress is as debilitating for dogs as it is for
humans.2
As dog trainers we constantly clean up and
repair broken relationships, poor behavior
and shoddy training advice given by
uneducated, abusive, and outdated
“traditional” dog trainers.

3. What does it mean to be a pet parent?
These are all violated and dissolved when someone forces
you to do something, incites fear, and puts you in pain
• Friendship
• Trust
• Love

4. Someone with great power does not lead by
force, someone with great weakness does.
“Force always attracts men of low
morality.”
-Albert Einstein
Friendships and relationships are about
empowering one another, not disempowering
someone
• Disempowering someone is abuse
Bullying is the antithesis of sacred relationships
and weakens the bond you share with your
pets.
• When was the last time you got bullied
into being someone’s friend? Did you
want to be around that person?

5. It is illegal to use and sell pain
inflicting devices such as shock
collars3
• There is never an instance where teaching through pain and
force is warranted
• Pain, force, intimidation, and bullying leads to shutting down, learned
helplessness, and generalization4
• Instead, use positive reinforcement
techniques:
• Rewards
• Engagement
• Fun
• Interest

6. Does it matter which method works
better?
• Let’s play devil’s advocate for a moment and just pretend
that outdated, traditional dog “training” worked the same
or even better then force-free positive reinforcement dog
training.16
• Of course that is patently false and has been repudiated
by decades of scientific and behavioral research but for
argument’s sake let’s entertain this notion.5
• The real question becomes at what expense are you
willing to achieve “results” from your dog?

7. At what expense are you willing to
achieve “results” from your dog?

8. Stress Manifestations on a Dogs
Health and Behavior
• We can all agree that stress is a killer!6-7
• Stress causes or contributes to everything from high
blood pressure, hair loss, depression, neurological
damage, psychological damage, cancer, heart attacks,
and just about every life threatening disease known to
human kind.
• Luckily, stress can be measured.

9. How to measure stress:
• Cortisol is the hormone that increases when stress levels
increase in the body and the limbic system helps regulate
and measure that level of stress.
• Your adrenal gland secretes cortisol and sends it spiking
higher when the body or mind is stressed out.
• When this occurs all of the previous mentioned health
ailments and countless behavior manifestations occur.

10. • Now, let’s take this a step further. At the risk of being
anthropomorphic, dogs have roughly the same
sentience of a 2-3 year old child.18
• When humans use shock collars, choke chains and/or
pinch collars on their dogs or kick, poke, punch, alpha
role, force, dominate, smack or yell at their dog, science
shows that cortisol levels spike and stress ensues.9
• The negative consequences induced by stress are all
avoidable.9
“Nothing made by brute force lasts”
-Robert Louis Stevenson

11. The dangers of electronic collars, punitive,
painful, and forceful dog training methods:
• Punishment makes the conditioned fear response (CFR)
worse and other behavioral problems manifest often times
with graver consequences and more intense occurrences.
• Punishment does not work to heal nor addresses the
underlying fear and emotion the dog is going through and
only throws the homeostasis more out of whack.
• There is a direct correlation and relationship between
punishment, shock collars, choke chains and prong
collars to increased behavior problems.10
• There are innumerable dangers that result from using
punitive, painful and forceful dog training methods. Some
of these methods can lead to death of another human or
dog.11-12
Fear feels bad to all species and given the choice dogs, like humans, try to
avoid these feelings.17

12. Dominance, choke chains, prong collars and other forceful
training methods are worthless at best and deadly at
worst as scientists explain,
“training approaches aimed at ‘dominance
reduction’ vary from being worthless in
treatment to being actually dangerous and
likely to make behaviors worse.”13

13. Dog & Human Analogies
If you are trying to teach a toddler or even an adult how to
behave or learn a new skill, would you kick them in the
ribs, use a choke chain, dominate them, stare at them, pop
their harness, or grab them by the collar and force them to
the ground?
If you said yes to this
question, you are likely
reading this from prison.

14. There is a reason this crude, uncivilized, abusive style of
dog “training” or teaching is not accepted in civilized
societies and why we also do not teach our children or
adults to teach or behave in this fashion.
As a result, these methods are condemned and not
sanctioned by any educated, moral ethologist or dog
trainer.

15. What is encouraged is the preferred method and industry
standard for teaching animals: force-free positive
reinforcement, and the least intrusive, most humane
treatment of teaching possible.

16. If you have gone to the dentist, visited a
doctor, taken any over the counter
medicine, then you believe in science.
• Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is also a science, just as
the field of medicine.
• Your innocent, loving, loyal, sentient being, and best
friend deserves nothing but the best. Just as your
children are taught by the least intrusive, least abusive,
most pleasurable way of learning possible, so should your
pets.
We do not support and recommend that others boycott
organizations that save dogs just to subject them to
abuse while hiding under a veil of ignorance.

17. Here are some more analogies for the skeptical:
• Do you smack your 2-3 year old toddler in the head or squirt them in the face with
a water bottle when they are scared or are not listening to you?
• If your toddler was deathly afraid of water and couldn’t swim, would you get them to
stop being scarred, crying, shaking and protesting and teach them to love the water
by picking them up and throwing them in the ocean?
• If your 2- 3 year old daughter was scared of the dark and even more terrified of
bats, would leaving her alone in a cave with bats flying everywhere cure her of this
fear?
• Do you expect your toddler to understand French, Spanish, English, Mandarin,
Cantonese or Swahili and all of the accents and dialects? Would that be a
reasonable expectation for a parent before attempting to teach a child linguistics?
• If your toddler didn’t understand the answer to your question or answers
incorrectly, would holding them down on the ground forcefully, looming over them
starring into their eyes confrontationally, being aggressive, poking, punching or
yelling at them make them understand any quicker?
(If you say yes to any of these questions, do not pass GO and proceed directly to jail!)

18. • All of those scenarios are proven to cause cortisol levels to
spike to very high levels. Levels at which shut down
occurs and where operant conditioning (learning) cannot
occur!
• If someone pulled out a shotgun and held it to your head
and then tried to teach you a new theory or behavior how
do you think you would react or perform? (before or after
you wet your pants).
• As previously mentioned, stress is bad for the mind, body
and soul and something we have the ability to mitigate.
“Force and mind are opposites; morality ends
where force begins.”
- Ayn Rand

19. The answer is clear!
I would NOT abuse my dog for any reason!
• As responsible pet parents it is imperative to teach at a dog’s
own pace and in as much comfort as possible, not on your
time or to win a dog sport competition.
• It’s not about what dog training method
is most effective or achieves the
quickest results
• Even science shows that force-free
positive reinforcement achieves the
fastest, long term results in the most
humane, effective and efficient way
possible.

20. • Scientists try to be as objective and unanthropomorphic as possible but
making these analogies to your children portrays an important and visual
understanding that makes everything more relatable.
• No rational, caring, intelligent, loving, humane, veterinarian or rescue
organization would ever recommend doing the aforementioned to a human
and may even be locked up for abuse if they tried, so why is this
acceptable to do to an innocent dog or cat (or any animal)?
• Pet professionals and dog
guardians should take an oath
to care for their pet until death,
in the most humane, efficient,
pain and stress free way
possible.
Being a guardian for a pet is a
privilege, not a right or
entitlement.

21. There really is no argument to use anything other than force-free
positive reinforcement dog training and the debate has been over
for decades.
Those stuck in the past are doomed to repeat past atrocities.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived
forwards”
- Søren Kierkegaard

22. “Absolutely, without exception, I oppose, will not recommend, and
generally spend large amounts of time telling people why I oppose
the use of shock collars, prong collars, choke collars, and any other
type of device that is rooted in an adversarial, confrontational
interaction with the dog.”
- Karen Overall, MA, VMD, PhD, Dipl. ACVB, CAAB
“Until these devices are illegal, consumers must protect themselves
and their dogs by looking beyond the marketing messages of those
who profit from their sale and use. It is not necessary to use electric
shock to change behavior. It is not necessary in humans, in zoo
species, in marine mammals or in dogs.”
- Jean Donaldson

23. 1. http://www.journalvetbehavior.com/article/S1558-7878(13)00004-X/abstract
2. http://www.journalvetbehavior.com/article/S1558-7878(14)00007-0/abstract?elsca1=etoc&elsca2=email&elsca3=1558-
7878_201403_9_2&elsca4=elsevier
3. http://wales.gov.uk/docs/drah/publications/090325kcpaper1en.pdf
4. http://www.journalvetbehavior.com/article/S1558-7878%2813%2900121-4/abstract
5. http://www.appliedanimalbehaviour.com/article/S0168-1591(11)00087-6/abstract
6. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12160-012-9423-0
7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NpFEn2_cqrk#!
8. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071009164122.htm
9. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201205/is-punishment-effective-way-change-the-behavior-dogs
10. http://www.journalvetbehavior.com/article/S1558-7878(07)00276-6/abstract
11. http://www.appliedanimalbehaviour.com/article/S0168-1591(13)00292-X/abstract
12. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201403/dog-aggression-is-predicted-training-methods-and-
breed?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CanineCornerCS+%28Canine+Corner%29
13. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090521112711.htm
14. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201307/do-dogs-learn-faster-food-other-types-rewards
15. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159111000876
16. http://www.livescience.com/40453-dogs-follow-friends-not-alphas.html
17. http://books.wwnorton.com/books/978-0-393-70531-7/
18. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/dogs-are-people-too.html?single=1&_r=1&