I have a dog that thankfully isn't a car chaser, or much of anything else outside of squirrels.
My problem is when taking him out to the car, lately he has had the inclination to run across the street to say hi to random people.
I also have a shock collar, and while rarely put it on him this year, it has been useful in the past and due to the above I am hoping to use it to train him to not go into the street.
I happened to have it on him recently at the dog park when a Dobie and another dog got into it. Normally my dog will ignore these incidents and just bring me the ball to kick.
This time he happened to be a ways away form me, and the 2 dog issue started turning into a pack thing with owners starting to run to the scene.
My dog has excellent recall, however with the distance and the barking I doubt he could hear me. So I clicked the remote, ... and nothing happened.
I realized I had it set at his working level of 18/100, which is basically like someone tickling your neck. Quickly ramped it up to 30 and tried again. He gave a little start, looked around for me, and came trotting back just as even more dogs start getting involved and owners were still not even half-way to the dogs.
When he came back to me, I gave him a 'good boy', and he just sat at my feet and watched the owners wade into their dogs. Then got up and went to find a ball.
I've only had to use this a couple of times, and really now whenever this is a rowdy dog scene at the park, he will swerve out of the way and usually come trotting back too me.
For a decently trained dog, I think these are a great way to communicate with your dog when you are either to far away from them, or if need be, to give them that external stimulai which can break through their mental train of thought which is in a heightened state of awareness/anxiety/fear.
Shock collars nowadays are not about using pain to effect a response. Dogs are often time not willfully disobeying their owners as much as having their brain saturated with stimulation such that our vocal commands just are lost in the noise.
The shock collar just causes a physical stimuli that breaks through the noise level and allows a command to be received.
In general, its no more painful, or barbaric than the flea bites a dog receives.
Whats funny is all the guys who I see at the park who hunt with their dogs. A lot of them use collars when hunting, and honestly their dogs most often are the better behaved ones, better trained and responsive of all.
And they don't seem to be doing it out of fear.
Propogating the old school shock collars=torture meme has probably resulted in more dogs dieing because their owners were pursuaded not to use them based on ignorance of proper, common knowledge training.
From what I've read, it's not the dog ignoring us when they bolt like that, it's that they are so focused in that instant that they literally can't hear us. I suppose a shock collar might be useful if it could snap them out for a few seconds, long enough to hear us, but I've seen how focused honey can be, and I suspect that a shock strong enough to get her attention would be strong enough to knock her to the ground
We had honey chase a car once, we were walking (back before she got car reactive) and one passed us and she snapped after it, no idea what set her off, but I was completely unprepared and the leash flew out of my hand. She was around the corner and halfway down the block before I could blink and I was convinced any minute I was going to hear the worst sound ever.
Now that she's car reactive and does that with almost any car, I've seen her snap the lead hard enough to sweep herself off her feet and not even blink, just straight back to lunging, trying to chase the car, hence my haveing no faith in a mild shock doing anything.
If you are giving him treats when cars pass, make him sit and wait until the car is a good distance past before he's allowed to eat the treat. Good luck, I understand how hard it is to have a yard for the dog and not be able to let them run in it!
