Which collar do you use as your primary correction collar when walking your DA dog, prong or dominate?

I know the website says the dominate dogs collar works best for aggressive dogs. Just curious to know which most of you use. I have tried both. Both have their advantages and disadvantgs in my humble opinion. Both need to be high up on the neck to be effective.

Prongs can put more drive in a dog...not something that you would really want in an aggressive situation. Especially if you are going to be doing multiple corrections. If you can do one good correction, then it would be enough to tell you dog to knock it off, then that's different.

With my female, if she gets ramped up, I say, NO, give a good correction & ask for a down. If I think that she might break the down, I step on the leash.

You CAN'T do a correction with a dominant dog collar. You can take the air out of a dog..but you can't correct.

But I ALWAYS use a dominant dog collar as a back up with my prong. I don't walk my dogs in dominant collars alone.

Thanks for clarifying Anne. By "correction" I meant taking air from the dog, as was demonstrated in the Dom Agrsve Dog Vid.

You wouldn't want to do that with a prong, as you might puncture the dog's neck.

No thats not true I do it all the tim and his neck never punctures.

I meant a pop with the prong and pulling lifting the dog's feet slighlty off the ground with the dominant dog collar.

Because it hasn't happened doesn't mean that it can't--and won't. Each collar is specific to its uses.

My DS is extremely animal aggressive and re-directs on prong. (His training in this area is not to manage his behavior but to re-shape it.) Even if he didn't re-direct on prong, I would never consider using the prong in the manner you've suggested/described.

Yep. I personally wouldn't think about using a prong in this situation.

I was being sarcastic, it was bad humor. Would never do that, but thanks for your response Sharon. The line underneath my offensive statement mentions "pop with the Prong" and "lifting with the dominant collar".

Paul, I'm going to chime in here, although my experience is limited to the dog I currently own.

If your dog is at the point where he can focus on you under distraction, you can give a command while walking like 'watch me' to keep him focused. If he blows off the command, a prong correction may be in order, as long as you are sure that he is capable of performing the command under that particular distraction. The correction is for blowing off the command, not for reacting to another dog or other type of distraction. Good timing and a clear command before the reactivity starts are important.

Are you really encountering many situations where you would need to take the air away from the dog? (I know you have another thread going about positive reinforcement for redirecting a DA dog, but I haven't read through all of it)

Lynne I wouldn't say that I encounter a lot of situations where I need to take air, but we have occasional relapses due to overwhelming circumstances.


For example the other days we were approaching a barking pitbull behind a fence. No problem we get by that dog all the time no sweat and we approach very calmly with my dog focusing on me. All of the sudden I notice a cat approaching my dog and the cat has it's back arched and is hissing. Next a pitbull running with bike flys right past us. So we were dealing three heavy concurrent distractions. I would never intentionally bring put my dog in a situation like this ofcourse. We got kamikazied and tt just happened.


Understandibly my dog looses his cool and goes beserk. At this point the prong corrections just put more drive in him. If I catch him in a lower state the prong is much better at regaining focus, but when he reaches a hyper excitd state it is tough to bring him back. The Prong definately seems more effective for everyday situations and at this point my corrections are pretty mild and infrequent.