Is it a mistake for a dog owner to skip sit, stay, and down using the ecollar, and instead teach the recall first? Is e-collar training a mistake for such a dog?

Hi Cindy,

I'm attempting to help yet another friend e-collar train her dog to perform the recall. I've got a couple of questions concerning this: Is it a mistake for a dog owner to skip sit, stay, and down using the ecollar, and instead teach the recall first? I suggested to her she first do all of the obedience/e collar/dominant dog videos by watching your videos I loaned her, but I'm afraid some shortcuts were taken by her thus far. This dog knows the sit, but when the recall with a stem correction was attempted, the dog bit one of the dogs in his pack.

Raising the stem put him in even higher drive. This is one of those dogs that thinks the correction is coming from another dog. Is e-collar training a mistake for such a dog? Or should this person instead do more foundational training with the e-collar which she has not done yet (ie mastery of sit, stay, down with low level corrections and low level distractions at first), so that the dog will realize the correction is coming from her rather than another dog? This is at least what I suggested to her but I don't want to steer her wrong, I remember Ed touches upon this problem in one of the videos but I don't recall which one. Thanks so much for your insight!

Diana
Goodnews Bay, AK