Can electric collars be used at all in training britishlabrador.com Labradors?
Yes, provided the trainer knows what he or she is doing. Keep in mind, the collar is not used in Great Britain, and dogs there are routinely trained to very, very high levels. Having said that, given the nature of, say, even hunt tests in America, at the highest level it is difficult to prepare an animal to run without the use of a collar. The reason: Hunt tests in America, like field trials, reward dogs that run straight lines, that ignore points of land jutting into ponds and lakes and other natural temptations. Proficiency at training dogs to succeed at these tasks is often aided by a collar, wherein a retriever can be “burned” off a point, or similarly reprimanded if it fails to run a straight line.
