The Pinch Collar: Using One Ring Or Two?

Dear Adam:

I hope all is well with you. Things have been busy for me and I have not been on line much but, I did have one question for you. Have you ever done any research on the origin of the prong collar and it's original use?

Also, I've heard it used in different ways, for example, leash getting hooked to one ring or both rings? Which information are you privy to and what technique do you use? I'm always open to learning true information.

Thanks for your time,

Jag

Dear Jag:

I do not know the history of the pinch collar. It's a good question. If I learn anything about it, I'll write about it here, in my e-zine.

As far as using one ring (the D-ring) or two (the D-ring and the safety ring) ... generally, I just hook the leash to the D-ring. This is how the collar is designed to be used.

You can, however, hook the leash to both rings. This will damper the correction. You can use the pinch collar in this manner if you have a very sensitive dog or if you're training an exercises where--for some reason--the dog is self-correcting, accidentally.

For example, when teaching the dog "control" in protection work, we try to communicate to the dog that he should only lunge if the attack command is given, first. If the dog lunges before the attack command is given, then he is corrected.  However, in such a scenario, we want to error on the side of under-correcting the dog, rather than have him think that he should NEVER lunge by accidentally over-correcting.

Make sense?

That's all for now, folks!

Adam