I'm writing this post to possibly help others. I have a 4 month old super hard Dutch Shepherd. The pup was growling and often showing teeth with a number 3 {out of 10} correction with a flat collar. The corrections were limited to picking and trying to eat bad stuff on walks. I was also correcting him for biting my 6 year old son way too hard. Flat collar corrections meant nothing to this pup, even if I jerked him off his feet. I didn't want to kill his drive but I did feel the need to cure this domination problem early in his life. I spoke with my breeder-trainer who recommended the ecollar. I considered a prong collar. I wrote to this forum and finally to Ed direct. Cindy wrote back with several suggestions to try before the ecollar. Cindy is apparently working a 4 month old Mal sometimes with a ecoller. She recommended keeping my son away from pup for awhile and lifting the pup up with a dominant dog collar when he showed aggression. She also said to offer to trade for dog yummies if he picked up bad stuff off the ground. The dominant collar not only did the trick with the aggression but many other less important issues I was having. There is no change in his drive or hardness

A lot of people would take issue with the use of a dd collar on such a young dog. Being that not all dogs are equal, I don't have a problem with this. You do what you can do the accepted way for dogs of certain ages but there is always the exception to the rule. Glad it worked out.

Howard

all dogs are different, but bottom line is that it's not about what tool you use but HOW you use it that makes the most impact on the dog long term.

It sounds like Lee is having good results, after exploring a lot of different options.

As Cindy said, I tried to explore all possibilities before resorting to stronger methods. I got some expert opinions before I finally decided to go the way I did. I liked Cindy's theory of trying the dd collar before going with the ecollar. It turned out that I didn't need the ecollar for this particular issue. Please keep in mind with this post that I've owned working breed imports before. This pup is very hard and has exceptional drive. I just need to channel his motivation correctly and not screw anything up.