09/06/2026
Very good article. Well worth a read for when you’re looking for a trainer.
Why are shock and prong collar advocates so determined to avoid learning how to train a dog properly?
Despite the mythology surrounding these devices, dogs are trained every single day, all over the world, without electric shocks and without metal spikes digging into their necks. They always have been. Guide dogs, assistance dogs, detection dogs, therapy dogs, family pets, sporting dogs and even police dogs in the UK since 2000. Somehow millions of dogs manage to learn behaviours without needing to be electrocuted or stabbed in the name of ‘communication’.
The dirty little secret of the shock collar and prong collar industry is that these tools are not evidence of advanced skill. They're often evidence of the exact opposite.
A genuinely skilled trainer should be making aversive tools obsolete because expertise expands your options. It improves your timing, your observation skills, your understanding of behaviour, your ability to teach, motivate and communicate. The better you get, the less you need force, intimidation and pain. I say this as someone who came into dogs from horses. If you want to talk about an animal community where pain and fear are normalised in training, look no further than horses.
It was a long journey to learn how to train dogs humanely because that requires skill and education and I worked hard at it. In the beginning most of the trainers I had to look up to in the dog world said things like ‘you have to make the dog fear you more than anything else’ or ‘the dog must learn that he is only ever told something once’. It was all about control and dominance and, quite frankly, a lot of abuse. I remember one trainer teaching me to use a prong collar and telling me he called it the ‘religious collar’ because dogs would truly believe you once they were wearing one. It was such a toxic world and I am so lucky and grateful I recognised that.
Sadly though some trainers seem to be moving in the opposite direction. Rather than investing in education, they invest in hardware. Rather than improving their skills, they buy a remote control and seem to think it equates with respect.
And whenever these methods are questioned online, the response is often the same, ‘Show me a video of you training a dog without a shock collar’.
It’s a bizarre demand when you think about it. No. Let's see you train it without one. After all, you're the one claiming to be the professional. If you cannot demonstrate the skills needed to train a dog without pain, intimidation or electric shocks, then you're making our argument for us.
And if you’re genuinely interested in seeing dogs trained to a high standard without shock collars, there are already thousands of videos online showing exactly that. You just don't seem very interested in watching them.
And it’s such a stupid position to take. The question isn't whether a shock collar or prong collar can suppress behaviour. Of course, they can and anyone who denies that is their purpose is knowingly telling a lie. Pain and discomfort are very effective at making behaviour disappear in the moment. That's hardly a revolutionary discovery. Humans figured that out thousands of years ago.
The real question is why someone claiming to be a professional is choosing to rely on those methods when better alternatives exist.
Maybe it's laziness. Maybe it's greed. Maybe it’s a lack of confidence. Maybe it's an unwillingness to spend years developing the skills that modern behavioural science demands. Maybe it's a desire to dominate and control. In some cases, perhaps the attraction is even darker than that.
Whatever the motivation, the one thing that remains true is that nobody has ever been able to explain why these tools are supposedly essential while millions of dogs are being trained successfully without them. So, whenever somebody insists that dogs ‘need’ shock collars or prong collars, ask a simple question. Why are you refusing to pursue training and education so that you don't need to use pain?
The collars aren’t the most interesting part of the conversation. The person choosing to put it on the dog is.
