A reader named Eggs posted a very passionate comment expressing his/her disagreement over my post on the Gentle Leader as a Training Collar. You can read the post and his/her comment by clicking the link. In short, though, he/she feels Gentle Leaders (and presumably Halti’s and other head harnesses) are cruel, carry risk of injury and I’m irresponsible for recommending them. For the record, I don’t recommend for or against devices I review here. I just review them, express my personal feelings about them and leave it to you to decide if the device is right for you and your circumstances. As my response grew much longer than I expected and touched on a few points about training duration I neglected to mention in my original post, I’ve decided to just turn my reply into a post of its own.
What follows is Eggs’ comment and my response.
Eggs wrote: Yep, use a Gentle Leader, if you:
Enjoy using leverage to control your dog
Want to be physically strong enough to manipulate your dog, but not really teach him anything
Put something on your dog’s face that makes him feel as though he cannot see, bite, sniff, or bark
Live with the potential for incredible harm to your dog’s neck, head, and shoulders.
Gentle Leaders work through two principles: leverage and repression. They don’t TEACH anything - learning theory is based off of consequences, both good and bad. Gentle Leaders do not provide consequences; they provide enough torque in the handler’s arm to PHYSICALLY FORCE the dog into a specific position.
They are a tool for those who have been suckered in by marketing and the appearance of the thing. They are by no means “dog friendly.”
Recommending them is irresponsible and quite dog un-friendly
Signed,
A former Gentle Leader user who will NEVER go back.
Eggs - I’ll respectfully disagree with most of what you wrote. But before I go into why, I have some good news. Your passionate comment has prompted me to place a disclaimer at the head of the Gentle Leader post and I will be placing a similar disclaimer warning of risks with ALL dog training collars in front of all the other posts over the next few days. So we thank you for that because it’s simply a good idea. But as for your opinion on dog training collars…
First, anybody who uses any collar because they “enjoy using leverage to control” shouldn’t own a dog. People should buy collars for no other reasons than to keep their pets from running off and getting hurt and because the law requires them. And they should buy dog training collars strictly to train, not as manipulative tools to be used on every walk.
Second, stating they don’t “TEACH anything” qualifies as one of those “thanks for that, Captain Obvious” statements. Assume a dog pulls, prompting its owner to try to train it with a dog training collar. Use of this (and other collars) teaches it that there are negative consequences associated with pulling. It stops pulling. This opens it up to the opportunity to be rewarded for good behavior and for the training process to begin. Once the dog is doing the right thing it can be treated and rewarded for positive behavior and that behavior can be reinforced. If you don’t actually train the dog, it will begin pulling again the minute you put it back in a regular collar.
You are right in that the Gentle Leader collar doesn’t teach the dog anything, but then it isn’t the collar’s job to teach, is it? There isn’t a collar in the world that teaches a dog anything positive. All of them result in something the dog doesn’t want or doesn’t like. Teaching them proper behavior is the owner’s job. Training collars of all kinds are nothing more than tools to open up opportunities for the owner to train. Nothing more.
What I find ironic, though, is that in another comment you left you reveal that you are in favor of prong collars while you vehemently decry the Gentle Leader. Prong collars?! Now there’s a tool that leverages. Prong collars work strictly by causing pain (or at least discomfort). In other words, they leverage a dog’s inclination not to get hurt. And, if an inexperienced owner is using one and the dog runs to the end of the leash, they can also cause irreparable soft tissue damage to the throat, ligaments and tendons as well as disc and spinal damage. Calling somebody irresponsible for recommending a Gentle Leader while you champion prong collars just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
There are thousands who would tell you that people who use prong collars are masochists who thrill in hurting their dogs. They represent the pinnacle of reprehensible tools in the eyes of many (trainers and owners alike). I’m not one of them. In fact, though I find them personally distasteful with at LEAST the same level of passion you have for the Gentle Leader, I’ve actually taken the time to write about prong collars as training tools in an effort to provide readers with information about all available options without specifically recommending one or the other. But I hope I’m making a point about perspective. What you disdain, others laud. What you champion, others loath. And there’s simply no pleasing all of the people all of the time.
Now let’s discuss your assertion that Gentle Leaders “work through two principles: leverage and repression.” I’d like to suggest that you are absolutely right. You should NEVER use a Gentle Leader because it sounds like you’re so accustomed or inclined to using leverage with your prong collars that you were totally failing to use the Gentle Leader correctly. Within 3 minutes of wearing a Gentle Leader (in the house for a controlled training session), the two dogs I tried it out on would not pull (at least not to any degree I could feel on my end of the leash). There was no real leverage required as simply moving too far ahead on the lead would result in such a tiny tug on the dog’s muzzle that it immediately slowed down. The very weight of my arm (not the ample and shapely muscles in it) was sufficient to “leverage.” Egg, I have visions of you yanking your dog’s head back as you improperly tried to “leverage” it into doing what you wanted. I’ve said it a million times… it’s the owners who need training more than the dogs.
As for repression, yes, you’re absolutely right. Now show me a collar that doesn’t. Buckle collars repress by applying pressure to the dog’s throat. Likewise choke collars with the addition of some real pain. Likewise prong collars. And, to your point, Gentle Leaders repress a dog by turning its head in an undesired direction. Eggs, I will be thrilled if you would show me a collar that doesn’t, in some way, repress a dog’s preference for a certain action, result or behavior. They all do. The difference between us - you prefer one that does so through pain while I’d rather just annoy the dog into a state of compliance that allows time for training. Actually, I’d rather do neither but for the sake of debate let’s just say that, given no other options, I’d rather use a painless collar.
Regardless what collar you chose there are risks associated with improper use. Prong collars and choke collars cause tissue and spinal damage when used improperly. Gentle Leaders can likewise cause neck and shoulder damage if used improperly but at least the Gentle Leader comes with a training DVD in the packaging while prong collars just hang in the store without any instructions for any inexperienced owner to just pickup and misuse. Shock collars can cause irreparable confidence damage and, if an owner attaches the lead to the shock collar rather than an additional buckle collar, can even pierce the throat. I’ve yet to write a post about the safest of them all, the body harness (coming soon) but even that can rub and chafe painfully if not properly fitted. In other words, every collar made requires some education and common sense on the part of the owner/trainer. Absent that, they are all mental and physical torture devices to one extreme or another.
Now one final point…, of all the dog training collars I’ve tried, head harnesses like the Gentle Leader have one advantage over the others; the results are so quick (comparatively speaking) that the opportunity for damage is diminished simply because, used properly and with real training included, the dog will spend far less time in training before it can be switched to a regular collar. It’s the lack of patience on the parts of some dog owners that leads to the use of training collars in the first place. And, no offense, but it’s that same impatience, lack of time or unwillingness to learn how to train a dog properly that leads owners to opt for pain-inflicting alternatives like prong collars. If you are truly an advocate of decency and kindness to dogs (prong collars? really?) then I think you’d agree that the faster an animal is OUT of any training collar, the better.
In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need training collars at all. Absent that, all dog owners would take the time to learn alternate methods of training that don’t require any kind of training collar other than a standard buckle collar. But the world isn’t perfect and for every dog owner who has the patience to rely on PRT, there are a hundred who don’t. Far better the animal be in a collar that gets fast results without the intent of causing pain and allows real training to begin than one that takes longer and prolongs the opportunity for an accident to occur. The longer the dog is in any kind of training collar, the more opportunities it has to get injured.
As for me, my use of the Gentle Leader was experimental with a pair of aggressive and willful Australian Shepherds. After two days of training (independently), they were no longer trying to defend me from everything that moved or trying to get me to their chosen destination at warp speed. The collar didn’t teach them anything, you’re right. But it DID present me opportunities to teach them everything they needed to know to be well behaved pets on walks. They have never had to wear a Gentle Leader or any other kind of dog training collar since.
Of course, I could have trained them using any kind of dog training collar (as I’ve done with my other dogs) and even PRT alone but, you are right. I was taken in by the marketing and wanted to try this product out. Given the results, I’m glad I did but I also could have achieved the same results with your “friendly” solution, a prong collar. I opted against that, though. Why? Do you really need to ask?