My dog is a 6-month-old GSD. Setting my transmitter at 100, I barely get a reaction. I made sure the electrodes made good skin contact. Should I get a more powerful unit?

In my experience, there are 4 possible reasons that the dog isn’t responding to the collar.

1. The collar is not on tight enough to make contact-if she has a thick coat you may need to thin a small area and/or get the longer probes for the collar
2. The collar is positioned incorrectly on the dog’s neck
3. You haven’t conditioned the dog to the collar properly, or are trying to test it when the dog is in a high state of drive or arousal before she understands what the stim is
4. The collar is not functioning properly

I use the 280 NCP for my extremely driven working dogs, and I rarely EVER turn the collar up past 40 even during bitework or something that has my dog extremely excited. If my collar was working properly and making contact and I turned it up to 100 my dogs would be screaming. My gut feeling is that your our dog isn’t feeling the collar because it’s not really making proper contact or it’s a defective unit.

Many people new to the collar think they have it on tight enough and in the correct place on the neck but most people tend to make it too loose and put it low on the neck.

Have you tested the levels on yourself? Put the receiver on your palm and start at zero and go up through the numbers. That will tell you if it’s working.