A dog who LOVES to run and has a long history of running off and avoiding capture far

First of all, thank you to this amazing community of dog lovers who care enough about animal wellbeing to care what kind of collar I have on my rescue dog. It’s a GPS/ cellular network tracking device called Tractive to help me track her if she ever gets loose. As a dog who LOVES to run and has a long history of running off and avoiding capture far before I adopted her, and because she’s insanely fast (she’s been clocked running 40 mph and that wasn’t even her all out run), it’s a must to ensure I can track her down and find her even in the wilderness area of my parent’s ranch if she runs off or gets lost. 

I love that the questions about what collar I have on our baby girl rescue dog Nova has opened up this conversation on corrective collars, because it’s important to distinguish GPS tracking devices from corrective shock collars (also called e-collars, electric collars, or even ‘static reminder’ collars). As a Fear Free Animal Trainer I do not endorse the use of shock collars on dogs. And believe me, no matter how cleverly marketed such corrective collars are, including when they’re just called a ‘static reminder’ that supposedly ‘just gets the animal’s attention’, the truth is that they only work because they are aversive (they’re scary, painful, alarming, upsetting). 

As a trainer I’ve actually done my due diligence even though I don’t use or recommend shock collars as a training tool to know how they work and how they feel, having actually worn it myself for the purpose of being better able to speak to their use and empathizing with dogs who wear them. And believe me, it’s really not fun to wear them, especially when it’s random and surprising when you don’t know why or when you’re going to be shocked (the exact scenario many dogs find themselves in that can lead to paranoia/hyper vigilance and generalized anxiety). 

So, if you ever see any of my dogs in a collar with a device on it (same thing with the collars of my parent’s dogs, like my dad Dr. Marty Becker’s QT Pi Becker), rest assured it’s either an activity tracker or GPS device, not a corrective tool