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Should I use a prong collar on my dog?

Updated: May 5, 2023

Prong collars are meant to cause dogs physiological harm (on purpose), not only physically, but mentally as well. They can be very detrimental to your relationship with your dog, just like all other aversive training methods. Prong collars are designed to stun your dog by piercing your dog's neck the moment you pull or tug on their leash. Doing this makes it so your dog is more likely to stop what they're doing in order to avoid feeling that pain again.


And so, to avoid inflicting physical pain to your dog and instead of using a prong collar, you should consider using either a flat collar or even better a harness, as well as the support of positive reinforcement training to instead work on guiding your dog towards success in a fun, encouraging, and harm-free way. In addition to keeping your dog away from an aversive tool like a prong collar, another reason to not use prong collars is that it's not a tool that is designed to help you and your dog better understand one another, particularly when your dog is struggling in a social setting. Aversive methods like prong and shock collars aim to simply stun your dog, regardless of how they're feeling or why. Needless to say, although you might find those types of results using this tool, you might also find that other behavioural issues may appear as a result of not having addressed the problem as a whole, by understanding why it's happening in the first place and providing your dog with a new 'replacement' behaviour that you're both happy with.

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