My Lilly trained with her dogtra in the rain, and as she is a Pit Bull she has very short fur, never saw a difference in her behavior.....

Rich, I have a Dogtra collar....my dog gets in the pond and I have not seen any difference in her reaction to the collar.

The collar needs to be fairly tight, high on the neck able to get one finger under it. Otherwise, when the dog puts his head lower than it was when you put it on him the collar slides down and the contacts don't make contact. Hope this makes sense!!!

It stopped raining cats and dogs, the temperature dropped, and now we have snow. So I decided to work indoors with my dog on his long down stay. Ed in his DVD recommends having the contacts on the back of the dogs neck for working on the down. I took the dummy collar off and put the remote collar on. Before I mentioned that I determined I would have to find the correct stim level every time I used the collar. So I started at 15 (before he reacted at 60, then 40) and pressed the nick button. It looked like he reacted, but maybe he was going to turn his head and look that way anyway. So I pressed the nick button again. He looked again, then tried to get up on the couch between my daughter and her fiance. He isn't allowed on the couch, and he knows that.

Digress: My daughter's fiance is home on mid tour leave. When he returns to Iraq in early December he will be promoted to Sergent. We're proud of him. :end Digress

I saw this once before, when I put the collar on and tested the nick, that he tried to get as close to someone as he could. Ed discusses this in his DVD.

I dialed the collar down to 10, then put him in a down stay and started my 30 minute timer. He got up almost right away. I said "no". He stayed up. I pushed the nick button, said "down", and down he went. About 10 minutes later I looked over and he was sitting up, looking at me. I said "no", and he immediately went back down. I was feeling victorius.

About 25 minutes into the exercise he got up and started walking away. "No" ... nick. "No ... nick". He walked into another room and laid down behind a table. I think once I nicked him he was looking for a place to hide. I grabbed his leash and took him back to his place and made him lay down. He stayed there until I released him when my timer went off.

What I think I learned is that the back of his neck is more sensitive. Maybe because there is less fur there, I don't know. It surprised me that he reacted to a setting of 15, because I have now tested the collar on 7 friends and family members and the lowest setting where any of them felt anything was 20. I also think I learned that he is beginning to associate the nick with "no", and is learning that it is a correction.

I'm still using the dummy collar, putting it on and taking it off, rotating it with his prong collar and wearing it with the prong collar, to make sure he doesn't associate the nick with the collar.

Rich,

My 15-month-old dog runs the fence and goes crazy at anything that moves (but only when off-lead). I have been advised to get a remote collar for this dog. I don't have one yet, but I just wanted to say that your posting of your experiece is very helpful to those of us who are also new to this and helps me know what to expect.

So, thanks, and keep the posts coming!

P.S. My dog and I also do 30-minute-downstays. When he gets up, I always have to physically put him back into a down as he doesn't really understand the "down" command. Sometimes it turns into a wrestling match, as he isn't easy to "down" anyway. I had never though of using the e-collar for the downstay. So, post your experiences on this too!

Angela,

I think it would be easier if you taught him "down" first, then worked that into down-stay. Ed's Basic Obedience DVD covers teaching that pretty well.

I'll continue to update this as I work with my dog with the remote collar.

 Quote: rich pallechio

I'm still using the dummy collar, putting it on and taking it off, rotating it with his prong collar and wearing it with the prong collar, to make sure he doesn't associate the nick with the collar.

I think my dog associates the e-collar with being "off lead" and "outside." If I have it laying around the house, we will nudge it with his nose practically begging me to put it on him. I still do the rotating and marking when it comes on and off as well. I'm a little disappointed that he notices when it comes on and off, but at least he associates positives things with it and wants it on.

Every time I take off or put on a collar I give my dog a treat, so he thinks collar time is great.

This afternoon I worked on the down stay again. I tested the collar and got a reaction from him at 25 this time. I put my dog near the front door. I work at my desk about 10 feet away.

He was down for about 10 minutes when he heard something outside and got up and barked. Then he turned at looked at me. I said "no", and stim'd him. He ran over to me and laid down beside me. So I took his leash, took him back to the original spot, and told him "down". He stayed there for 20 minutes before I released him.

Today I put the remote collar on him and worked on "leave it". He got into something he shouldn't have, I said "leave it", he didn't, I said "no" and nicked him, at a setting of 15, and he obeyed. He went for something else and I said "leave it" and he obeyed.

My wife and I took him for a walk. He has been showing more and more dog aggression lately. Part way down the road he saw a cat. Ears went up, head forward. I said "no" and he didn't change. I nicked him and he looked away from the cat. The collar was set at 25 at this point. As we walked by the cat he looked, I said "no", and he looked away. On the way back from the end of the cul-de-sac every time he looked towards the cat I said "no" and he looked away. Since he would go back to looking, should I have nicked him every time he looked?

We walk past a fenced yard every day where a chocolate lab lives. The lab comes out and charges the fence, barking, growling, hackles up, and my dog often responds in kind. I give him a strong leash pop and he stops, then looks again and tries to bark and lunge, and I pop him again, about 4 times before we get past the yard. They aren't little pops either.

Today the lab wasn't in the yard. As we walked past the fence my dogs ears would go up and he'd look towards the yard. I said "no", and he looked away. Again, since he looked several times, should I have been nicking him every time?

Walking down the hill, my cell phone rang. My wife took the leash and the remote so I could answer the phone. My dog started pulling and barking. I looked up and there was a golden retriever across the road with a little kids football in his mouth. He started coming across the road towards us. My dog started barking, pulling, hackles up, and suddenly my wife yelled that she couldn't hold him. I hung up on my call and ran after him. He got to the golden, hackles came down, barking stopped, and they started to check each other out and play. I caught up with my dog and grabbed the leash and gave him a strong correction. My wife was pushing the continuous button on the remote, but at a setting of 25, he didn't even notice it. I got control of our dog and my wife chased the golden off. Or he decided fun time was over and he left on his own. Who knows.

We continued the walk. When we'd pass the homes of people who had dogs, and he'd look for them, I'd say "no" and he'd look away. One home has a water spaniel that stays in the front yard behind an in ground fence. He always barks at my dog. I said "no" every time he looked, and he'd look away, then go back to looking at this dog. Again, should I have nicked him, even though he'd look away when I said "no", because he'd go back to looking?

Coming around the loop, we came across the golden again. This time I had my dog, and I'm strong enough to control him. While popping him I turned the collar up to 57 and nicked him. No reaction. Hit the continuous button. He yelped and calmed down. I took him away from the golden. In the meantime the mailman drove up. Turns out he knows where every dog in the neighborhood lives, and he went after the golden's owner. From about 150' away I put my dog in a sit. He started to head towards the golden and I hit the continuous button. He yelped and sat down. The mailman brought the golden's owner back, who explained that he had dug under his fence and escaped from the yard.

So, if anyone is still reading at this point, what did I do right (don't think much) and what did I do wrong? Ed in his video suggests working on dog aggression by getting a friend with a calm dog to help. I think I can line up someone to do that, once it stops raining. Until then, any ideas on how I can use the remote collar when we are on our walks and we come across other dogs?

By the way, very seldom do we run into loose dogs in our neighborhood. The golden being loose was truly an exception. Most dogs we come across are on a leash. Occasionally a dog in the yard or garage. Amazingly, they all leave us alone except for the chocolate lab.

Instead of giving your dog a strong correction when you got to it and it was already with the Golden, you should have been giving it something else to do and correcting for non compliance (sit, here, down etc.) Your wife should not have been hitting the continuous button when your dog is already engaged with another dog. This can easily lead to a vicious fight if your dog were to perceive that correction as coming from the other dog. The dog won that battle and you corrected too late. The dog won by first getting away, second he got what he wanted by engaging the other dog. By correcting him at that point you were telling him that being around other dogs is unacceptable and I am sure this is not what you intended.

There is a proper way to hold a leash so that the dog can't get away from you. You loop it once over your thumb and hold both pieces of leash or if the leash has a loop, put your thumb through that loop and hold the rest of the loop in your hand.

To answer your other questions on whether you should be nicking the dog, the answer is yes, you should have been. By saying NO over and over again you are getting to the point of nagging your dog. Correct and move on. If the dog doesn't comply, correct again. You seem to be almost there. The dog is understanding the corrections but when you choose to keep warning with the command NO, the dog is going to soon stop complying with that as well. If you don't want to correct everytime then be sure you are rewarding when you do give the NO command and the dog looks away, then get the focus on you with some verbal praise or a treat to take the dogs attention off the other dog. If you don't like using treats then just use some physical praise or verbal praise. I like to give the dog a chance to do the right thing but I also like to set the dog up to fail. I set them up to fail so I can teach them what I want. If they choose to do the wrong thing they get corrected. If they do the right thing then I am there with lots of praise, excitment etc. to reward the behavior I want. Anyway I am sure I could ramble on for hours but I won't. Just my observations from what you posted. Like I said before, it sounds like you're almost there, keep at it.

Thanks Chris. My wife said she just barely got the leash from me when the golden started crossing the street and my dog started pulling. She thinks she didn't have a good grip with it yet. What you describe is the way we usually hold the leash.

When the dogs got together they didn't fight, they played. But if the Golden had been an aggressive dog ... I shudder to think what could have happened.

What you say about nagging makes sense. I don't do that with my kids, shouldn't do that with my dog.