Southend dog training

[SarahSissions]

Just seen this comment on another post “I was about to say the same. I don't know why people don't agree with their methods. They don't do anything cruel.”

On the home page of their website they have a picture of a dog wearing a prong collar, and often write posts advocating their use. Just because someone has a lot of Instagram followers doesn’t make them reputable, it makes me so angry that people don’t do a bit of digging and research into people they recommend.

Or you could just not buy a prey driven breed if you live in an area where you want to let it off lead where there's loads of prey?

Even within a breed, all dogs are not the same. One of mine can be called off deer using positive reinforcement.

The other one, not so much.

I wouldn't say there is 'loads of prey' here, either. More unpredictable prey (other than the rabbit warrens, which I know).

My dogs are happy and confident and have great lives. That's the acid test as far as I'm concerned.

@EdithStourton yeah, I meant in general, the things I’ve seen prong collars and slip lead corrections pushed to be used for by these types of instagram “balanced” trainers are rarely things that require it. In general, if it does less harm and you do the lowest level possible to actually have an impact, it’s better to use an aversive than to not train it at all and end up with a dead sheep and a shot dog. Using a “pop” on a prong collar to stop a dog from going through the door before you is excessive when there’s no competing factors I.E prey stopping you from getting the dog’s focus.
(One of my dogs is a lurcher, so I know what you mean about the prey drive, luckily it’s only for the small things like squirrels/rabbits/muntjac which tend to be more of a problem in urban areas where I don’t let her off lead in case she finds a busy road to cross anyway. Other than that, we let her off in enclosed fields, one of which is the farmer we bought her from’s sheep field, when the sheep are in the lambing sheds. She runs in the field with her littermate who is their fox control dog alongside their deerhound x whippet dad, their mum being The working sheepdog.)