Originally Posted by bronco67

I used to believe in prong collars, but I stopped using them. It basically punishes the dog for not doing as asked. I've found that rewarding for good behavior works better. A pinch in the neck is just giving the dog another thing to be anxious about, and making any situation worse. There's a German Shepherd in my neighborhood that my Lab hates for some reason. He has a thing about any dogs that look wolf-like. Huskies, Shiba-inu, shepherd...

He would lunge at the dog and his prong collar made him yelp a few times. So every time he sees this dog, he'll associate pain with the situation and get aggressive again. It took about a year, but I made sure I always had cookies on walks, and would make him sit as soon as we saw his enemy, which was at least 3 times a week. He gets treats until the dog passes. He slowly got less agitated by the shepherd over months, until he now just looks up at me every time he sees the dog. Even if I don't have a cookie, there's no problem. I had to do the same thing with bikes. I almost had to sit on him when saw a bike rider, but now he pays no attention to them.




Anyway, hope that helps in some way.