I have a question regarding levels of correction. In the Q&A for remote collars it says that any correction that causes a yelp is far too high.

In Basic Dog Obediance DVD Ed causes several corrections with a pronged collar (when doing the walking exercise and down stay).

I also have a 1 yr old Mastiff mix who will yelp at almost any correction.

If you cause a yelp is that too hard? Is it different for pronged collars and remote collars? Seems like contradicting information.

Not to butt in to your post but I have pretty much the same question when I saw the videos.

One of mine will yelp at any feather light correction ( he won't act like these even happened when corrected, just yelp loudly ) and scream like you just killed him at anything even a little harder...yet he'll still go back to whatever it is he was doing again without acting like it ever happened.

Are there dogs out there that the general rule doesn't apply to?

Yea Mike I've been trying to come up with an answer for this question for part of the day as well.
It's so individual to each dog. 'Generally' though, handler sensitive dogs don't need that level of correction for teaching the ins and outs of living in our world. But on the other hand, one can't have the dog training you, so there is a place for a collar correction that elicits a yelp......

For the op, I'd say the difference between a correction on the pinch collar and the correction with the e-collar is night and day for the dog.
With the e-collar the dog has no idea where it's coming from.
With the pinch, make no mistake Kevin, the dog knows exactly where it comes from.

Hmm.

Like Mike said, I think there's a time and place. You don't want your dog to yelp during obedience training. You just want it to know that failure to comply/willful disobedience won't be tolerated.

But, if your dog is showing unwanted aggression and nothing else will get through to it...

This too is a question I've considered. I think a lot depends on the temperament of your dog. I work with very soft tempered pointing dogs... setters. They really can be rattled by too harsh training... even if there are no "yelps." I see Ed training his shepherds, that seem to be quite robust in what they can handle.

In my experience you don't really know what the long term repercussions of possibly too harsh training is right away. Even if the pup will eat and play after a correction, over the long haul, there can be weird fears and such that come up later (I say this from experience having worked with a trainer who was too harsh on my dog, even though he did play after corrections, several weeks into the training he started to get odd fears of things and became overall more insecure)

My bias comes from working with soft dogs, and seeing their spirits injured down the road. I don't know what its like to work with really hard dogs, where the issue becomes the dog being out of control, obnoxious etc. So with that said, my tendency is to err on the side of caution with the corrections, and spend more time conditioning responses through repetition, building confidence and so forth. FWIW...

For my dogs, if I induced a yelp, it would be way too harsh a correction. I can see being that tough if you are training for something life saving, such as not to chase cars or such, but otherwise, I would try to tone it down a little.

Another thing I've seen is that sometimes one can correct and the dog seems to learn nothing from it. Sometimes correction is not the answer for my dogs. For instance, if I tried to correct for dogs being all excited because I just came home, and they were jumping up on me, corrections wouldn't work or make sense to them. Instead I just go into super calm mode, and this calms them down too. I'm a big believer in "management" as a way to form patterns for dogs.

Great reply, Sue,

I think that's were Ed says that training is dog and temperament specific instead of breed specific and that you should always start with the lowest level correction that will work.

My dog's really submissive and handler soft so I can usually give him a leash correction with just a slight pull from my fingers, no arm or wrist movement, or even just a vocal correction. He's a completely different dog in drive, though, and I have to give him significantly harder corrections based on how high his drive is. When he's in full territorial defense mode it can take a really hard correction to bring him around. If the first one doesn't work, the second one will.

Speaking of which, I think Ed's recent short video on the differences between obedience and pack corrections would benefit this discussion.

 Quote: scott garrett

Great reply, Sue,

I think that's were Ed says that training is dog and temperament specific instead of breed specific and that you should always start with the lowest level correction that will work.

My dog's really submissive and handler soft so I can usually give him a leash correction with just a slight pull from my fingers, no arm or wrist movement, or even just a vocal correction. He's a completely different dog in drive, though, and I have to give him significantly harder corrections based on how high his drive is. When he's in full territorial defense mode it can take a really hard correction to bring him around. If the first one doesn't work, the second one will.

Speaking of which, I think Ed's recent short video on the differences between obedience and pack corrections would benefit this discussion.

Scott, Yes, this is the hard thing in my mind to deal with, the question of drive. As soft tempered as my dogs are, if they are on bird scent, their drive is so high they don't seem to "hear" anything. So trying to get the right level of correction, enough to get their attention, while at the same time not demoralizing them, is difficult.

I know some students like this too (I teach highschool). You try to be gentle, subtle, etc but have to keep being more direct, more clear, use stronger and stronger explanations. When the kid finally "gets it" you feel like you've used a 2 by 4 to get your point accross, and of course the person feels beat upon. Then you need to do a bunch of repair work to the kid's sense of self esteem.

Dogs are not any easier sometimes. ;-)

Something else to keep in mind is how vocal your dog is naturally. Two of my three shepherds are extremely vocal ... they yelp when they're excited, they yelp when they're irritated, they yelp if you look at them cross-eyed ...

My 1st and oldest GSD initially trained me to be fearful of correcting him ... once he understood what a correction was, the most insignificant, lightest correction would elicit a yelp. I really thought I had hurt him the first couple of times Then, when I *knew* I was not harming or frightening him (as he would go back to whatever activity had brought on the correction with a just hint of a smile on his face) I was just embarrassed, since surely it appeared to bystanders that I must be beating my dog

I quickly decided to teach a quiet command. Then when he screeched in response to what I knew was a fair and appropriate correction, I corrected the yelp with a Quiet command, then continued through with whatever correction we were working through like the yelp was no big deal (as opposed to "OMG, baby ... are you ok??"

It was sometimes a trick to balance when to correct vs when to ignore, but by the time he was a year the yelping was at least under control enough that I could work with him in public without wanting to melt into the sidewalk!

By the time I was bringing up my 2 younger boys, it was 2nd nature to handle the yelping this way (always with the understanding that I was being fair and as gentle as possible) and these two never escalated anywhere close to the point Dillinger would. My GSD/BC cross and Min. Poodle have never made these kind of noises and if they did I would be very concerned.

On a funny note in a wanna-bury-your-head-in-the-sand kind of way ... One day recently, I was standing on a lakeshore at a park throwing large sticks for the dogs to swim after. Dillinger loves this and gets really excited. Just as I'm winding up for the toss, Dillinger lets out an ear piercing shriek of joy/anticipation ... And that leaves me standing over the dog with a giant stick held over my head as everyone within hearing distance turns to see what I've just done to my poor dog ...

Some how the original question has gotten lost in this thread. Which was, why the seemingly discongruity between eliciting a yelp from a pinch collar but not the e-collar.

To those that have soft dogs, my advise is to back off and find a way to engage the dog. If the dog is continuely yelping from a correction, your timing is off, or something. The dog isn't learning anything.....seek professional one on one help.

If my dog isn't learning, I'm doing something wrong.
Randy