[nagdu] Fisher went to School

Criminal Justice Major orleans24 at comcast.net
Thu Jul 12 10:12:49 UTC 2012


Hi, Cindy,
My advice is to take one step at a time.
Sometimes when our schools offer those extra training tools, they're great to keep around, but for some dogs, they may not be necessary.
Still, I appreciate that they are there and can be brought out of the tool box when needed.
Orleans and Freedom definitely required lots of hard leash corrections and it got to the point of where the prong collar was warranted for both of them.
I have a collar similar to the prong collar, but it's called a smart collar.
It's made out of plastic and almost resembles the prong collar, but the bottom pieces don't grab as much and it's not as noticable.
On the bottom of the smart collar, there's an elastic (not sure of the proper spelling) cord with a D ring and a small, wood indicator piece that gives you an idea of where the D ring should be lined up.
Happily, Odie rarely requires leash corrections and he responds more with my voice than the rest.
I won't forget the times when I was using the regular slip collar during training class and accidentally wound up giving him a hard one.
It was enough to where he actually sat down.
I eventually learned to adjust to it all and when I did find out about his trachea being damaged from birth, the slip collar couldn't be used anymore nor could the smart collar.
So, gentle leader had to take their place.
I'm not sure about the other guide dog schools, but so far, Pilot has been using the smart collars.
Nice thing with the smart collar is that it's less vissible to the eye of the public and it's color is black.
*Smiles*
Bibi


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