[00:00:00] Emily: If you’re listening to this episode and you feel your  ladder of escalation starting to, shoot up pause, go take care of yourself,  touch grass, do whatever you need to do before continuing. The second  disclaimer that I want to say is that nobody at Pet Harmony, including  myself supports the notion of buying e collars and using them with our  clients. 

[00:00:22] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast  devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through  enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender… 

[00:00:39] Emily: …and I’m Emily Strong… 

[00:00:41] Allie: …and we are here to challenge and expand your view  of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be and what enrichment can  do for you and the animals in your lives. Let’s get started. 

Thank you for joining us for today’s episode of Enrichment for the Real  World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing  wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Hello and welcome to today’s Q and A episode, e collars. In today’s  episode, Emily, Ellen, and I talk about obviously e collars, and vibration  collars, and what’s the difference, nuance, and Emily’s million dollar  shark tank idea. Here it is, today’s episode, Q& A: E Collars.  

Okay, so several people have asked us a variety of questions about e  collars over the years, which tells us that a lot of people are curious on  our stance about them because we don’t speak in absolutes about e  collars, or almost anything for that matter. So we figured it was time to  answer that one big question that has come to us as a lot of little  questions. And that’s it! Emily, I know that you are very passionate about  this subject, you have an entire diatribe on this, so I am just going to  release the kraken, you are the kraken, and go for it. 

[00:02:01] Emily: I love it. Thank you. I’m here for that. So, so yeah,  there are so many layers to this topic, so bear with me as I sort through  them. However, the first thing I want to say just to start off, because I am  aware of how heated this topic is, and how many feels this topic can  bring up for people, and how concerning this topic can be the first thing I  want to say is take care of yourself.

If you’re listening to this episode and you feel your ladder of escalation  starting to, shoot up pause, go take care of yourself, touch grass, do  whatever you need to do before continuing. The second disclaimer that I  want to say is that nobody at Pet Harmony, including myself supports  the notion of buying e collars and using them with our clients, because  we do not believe in supporting an industry that profits off of pain and  peddles quick fixes.  

So, whether or not the collars themselves can be used appetitively or in  a way that actually is enriching to me is a, a secondary point because  the first point is the, the industry of, of producing and selling e collars  profits off of pain and, and sells, sells their products as quick fixes to  behavior. So, from an ethical standpoint I don’t support that industry. I  never will, a full stop, right?  

So, I wanted to get those first two things out of the way, because I know  that if I waited to say that, people would be feeling very anxious. So, so  let’s just start there. This is not going to be an episode where we are  defending the industry because the industry itself is indefensible. 

Okay, but let’s, let’s get into the dialectics, the nuances, the, the things  that are important to know and think about in order to have a productive  conversation about this tool.  

And I think the good, a good place to start with this is to really sit with the  idea of a cognitive bias called the affect heuristic. So the affect heuristic  heuristic is when our emotions, our feelings about a topic, skews our  perception of the actual integrity of the topic. So what, how that affect  heuristic plays into this conversation about e collars is that people who  are against them and who have seen the harm they cause and like me  Have big ethical complaints with the industry tends to overstate the, the  risk of harm, and people who are proponents of e collars and and use  them all the time and support that industry tend to understate, the, the  risk of harm.  

And the reason that that’s important is because as humans, we tend to  think in these all or nothing dichotomous mindsets of something is either  safe or it’s dangerous. It’s a safe tool or it’s an aversive tool. And that’s  not actually how tools work. That’s not how anything in life works. 

Everything is on a spectrum of risk and every tool. that is used to  manage dogs, or animals in general, has a potential to cause harm. 

Even tools that we like to think of as the safe tools or the better tools,  front clip harnesses can also cause harm. So, when we are looking at  which tools we’re going to use to manage a behavior until ideally we,  have been able to train a skill so that the animal no longer needs that  

management tool, we need to look at the risk of harm that that tool  poses. 

And this is why that affect heuristic is so important. Because if you have  strong feelings either way, you’re super pro e collars, or you’re super anti  e collars, I can almost guarantee that your ability to do an objective risk  assessment is compromised. So, this is why we’re talking about this,  because it is important to learn all of these details and dialectics so that  we can be better at actually assessing the risk of harm in an objective  way. 

The other thing I want to say about that is that a lot of people who are  proponents of using tools that fall on the higher end of that spectrum of  risk that are more likely to be aversive, that are more likely to harm an  animal’s physical, behavioral, or emotional health, I’ve heard a saying, or  a phrase, or an adage, whatever you want to call it, many times from  people who support the use of those tools, and that goes: It’s not the  tool. It’s the fool.  

And I, I just have to say, like, this is, this really plays into this  conversation a lot because if you as a teacher are setting your student  up to fail by putting a tool in their hands, that needs extraordinary skill to  reduce the risk of harm, then it’s not the student who’s the fool in that  situation or that scenario. 

So I, I really think that we need to think about the whole picture, not just  is the tool good or bad, but does the teacher have, know how to use the  tool proficiently? Does the students know how to use the tool  proficiently? Is the animal an animal that can receive this tool, or learn  from this tool with a minimum risk of harm. All of those things play into  our decisions when we select a management tool to give to our clients  while we are helping them to teach their pets skills so that they no longer  need any kind of management tool whatsoever.  

So the, the speech that I have for my clients, the script that I use is, I  want you to get to a place where ideally the leash is only there to comply  with leash laws. And otherwise, your dog does not need a tool to be able 

to walk with you, and stay engaged with you. So that is the script that I  use.  

So, with all of that said, that is the context for this conversation. I think  one of the biggest misconceptions that people have about e collars is  that the only way they can work is by causing pain, that it is the painful  stimulus that quote unquote works. 

And unless your goal is to entirely shut down the dog, which obviously is  not our goal, and actually most of the balance trainers that I have  worked with and that I know, and some of them I’m even friends with  that’s not their goal either. And they’re very good at using an e collar  without ever shutting down a dog. 

But the, unless that is your goal, which there are trainers out there who  do use e collars to lay a dog out, right? And if that, unless that is your  goal the, the painfulness of the stimulus is not actually the thing that  works. So the reason that e collars are effective, it’s not actually about  pain. It’s because they are a tactile cue and tactile cues do not lose  intensity across distance. Whereas auditory cues do lose intensity  across distance, especially if the dog is producing their own noises. If  the dog is yelling, they’re going to be much less likely to hear an auditory  cue from a football field away than they will to feel a tactile cue that is  present with them. 

So, another thing that I think a lot of people who have never used an e  collar have never had one in their hands. They’ve never felt it. A lot of  people don’t realize that the lowest settings of a, of a good e collar are  far less intense than vibration. And the, the thing that I tell people who  

have never touched an e collar before, if you want to know what the  lowest setting of a good e collar feels like, lick your fingertips and put  your fingertips on the prongs of a D battery and that’s what the zero  setting on good e collars feels like. 

It’s just barely, it’s not even a tickle, it’s like a whisper of a sensation, like  I don’t know how to describe the feeling, but if you want to know what it  feels like, lick your fingers and put them on the prongs of a D battery,  and that is the sensation that that lowest level on the E collar feels like. 

Which means that it’s actually quite easy to create an appetitive stimulus  stimulus pairing with that lowest setting, because it is so far away from  being aversive. It’s just the barest whisper of, of a stimulus at all that it’s 

actually quite easy to pair the, the first few levels of an e collar with an  appetitive stimulus so that we basically just turn that little tap on the dog  into a cue to look at their handler. 

And that’s, and that’s how I’ve used it, in the past. I will talk to you about  the two situations in which I’ve used an e collar and why I’ve used it.  We’ll get to that. But a lot of people don’t realize that a vibration collar is  actually more aversive than the lower levels of e collars and the, the two  brands of e collars that I have had experience with because my clients  had them and uh, wanted to use them, the vibration setting wasn’t until  level 10. So you have nine levels below vibration that are less aversive  than vibration. So, when people think that e collars by definition are  intrinsically aversive, that is inaccurate, that is an inaccurate view of e  collars. You can turn e collars into an appetitive tool. 

Again, I still am not a proponent of buying them because I don’t believe  in funding an industry that profits off of pains and peddling quick fixes,  but it is possible to use an e collar in an appetitive way where it’s just a  

tactile cue that maintains consistent level of stimulus across distance as  opposed to an auditory cue. So, those beeping collars also don’t lose  intensity across distance because the sound stays with the dog instead  of staying, staying with the handler. 

But if some, there are some dogs who do seem to respond better to  tactile cues than auditory cues when they’re really upset. Or not even  upset, but when they’re really excited about something, or very  interested in something. So, I do understand why clients have reported  that e collars were the only thing that was effective for their dog. I  absolutely believe them. I do not doubt them at all. When, when clients  tell me that the e collar was more effective, and it was not because the e  collar was painful, it was because it was a tactile cue.  

[00:12:47] Allie: So, I just wanted to point out, like, as you’re talking  about, like, believing your clients and all of this, because I know we have  a lot of professionals who listen to this podcast, so I just wanted to, to  insert a little note here that when we are talking with clients who have  used these tools, and perhaps have used them in a way that we wouldn’t  otherwise. prefer they be used. They’re not using an e collar in an  appetitive way, or in a positive reinforcement way, if that’s an easier term  to wrap your head around. 

It’s really important that we honor the experiences that our clients have  had with those tools, especially because what the, the problem that I see  with many professionals is they go into that all or nothing thinking that  Emily you were talking about in the beginning where they’re like e collars  don’t work, and it’s like well, that’s just patently false. They do work in a  variety of situations depending on what your goals are, and so when a  client says, well, an e collar worked to get my dog to stop barking and a  trainer says, well, e collars don’t work. It’s like, okay, there’s a whole lot  more nuance that needs to go into that in order to be accurate, first of  all, and to build a relationship with that client because if we come in  saying that something that they have experienced is wrong, that’s just  getting a relationship off to the wrong start.  

[00:14:15] Ellen: And I’m gonna throw it back to Corinne’s episode  earlier this season because she said something that has stuck with me  every day since I’ve heard it. This is very on trend for our 2024 year, but  it was go in with questions, not statements. So when you have those  things that you hear and you’re like, Oh, my chest feels tight. For me, my  cue is that my thigh muscles clench, and that is my inhibition of my own  flight cue. And those are the times where I’m like, Oh, we should be  asking questions. One, to give myself the chance to like process  whatever is happening, and also because what was said probably is out  of alignment with what I heard. And what was said is probably much  more benign than the story that my funny little amygdala was able to  spin in record time from those things. 

[00:15:02] Emily: Yes, I heart agree. And I have had clients, which we’ll,  we’ll get to the clients who have already used them when they come to  us in a little bit. But I have had clients who’ve, who’ve said like, oh, the e  collar was the only thing that worked. And, and then when we talk about  it and I’m asking them questions and talking about it in a way that is  more objective and, and believing them, and supporting them. 

Then they feel safe enough to say, we didn’t like the, the emotional  outcome that our dog had, but it did work to like, get the behavior to  change. So, a lot of times people are coming to us like feeling conflicted  already about e collars. And so, then if we add on like, oh, they don’t  work or they’re bad or whatever we’re just increasing the anxiety that  they already had. 

So, so yeah, when people feel safe, a lot of times they do acknowledge,  like don’t love the way that it worked with my dog, but it did work, right. 

So, we’ll talk in a little bit about how to help clients navigate that. But in  that context, let’s talk about the two clients that I’ve had that I have  actually agreed to work with them with e collars and they were almost  identical situation. So I’m just going to talk about them as if they were  one client.  

So, in Utah being able to take your dog on off leash hikes through the  mountains is treated as like a God given, right? It is so deeply ingrained  in the culture that most people who have dogs can’t fathom life with their  dog without being able to do off leash hiking in the mountains. So both of  these clients were those people, and they both had newly adopted dogs  who were adults and were just learning life skills. And both of them had,  one was a husky, the other one was a mixed breed, but looked probably  like had some houndy stuff, although, we, we know that like, you can’t  really tell by looking at a mixed breed dog, what they actually are most of  the time. But for the most part looked, I would feel safe guessing little  houndy creature. So we have like both dogs had a tendency to just run,  and run, and, and not really turn around. 

So they were both concerned that their dogs were high risk at not  recalling, both of them had been to other positive reinforcement trainers  and had tried just like the sort of traditional methods that we teach recall.  

Both of them did not have good experiences.  

Both of them had been told by everybody and their neighbor, their  mother, their, everybody that they know that like e collars were the way  to go. 

Both of them had talked to their previous trainers about using an e collar.  Both of them had been shamed by those trainers.  

So, they came to me very defensive already. They were like, we are  using an e collar, positive reinforcement doesn’t work. If you won’t help  us with this, we’ll go to just like a regular e collar trainer. 

And I could see the defensiveness that this wasn’t an ultimatum because  they didn’t care. It was, they were ultimatums because they were feeling  defensive because they had previously been shamed, and had not been  

successful at just using treats. For the recall the way we normally teach  it.

So, with both of them, I talked to them about the fact that the thing that  made the e collar effective was that it was a tactile cue, and that we  could in fact do it without causing pain. The conversation I had with them  is that while your dog is learning this skill, they’re going to make  mistakes, because that is part of the learning process across species.  We don’t just come right out the gate being perfect at our skill. We are  going to make mistakes. So when your dog makes a mistake, are you  likely to want to crank that e collar up and punish your dog. Are you  going to want to use the e collar to lash out at them if they make a  mistake?  

One of the clients was horrified that at the, at the thought of that, she  was very, very committed to not hurting her dog, which is why she kept  trying positive reinforcement trainers, even though she’d been shamed  by them. And so she was like, no, I don’t want to hurt my dog. If there’s a  way to use an e collar without hurting my dog, I’m committed to that. So  we just had a conversation about not going above level 10, we had,  we’re going to find the level of the tactile cue that their, that her dog  would make that stimulus, stimulus pairing. 

The guy, the other client, the guy with the husky was, at that point, we  had worked up enough rapport and trust that he was comfortable being  honest with me and going like, Yeah, I might, I might want to crank up  that collar. And I was like, cool, so if you do that, you’re going to undo all  the work we’ve done, because this collar has to mean good things, and if  it stops meaning good things, or those good things become  unpredictable, and it could be either good or bad, though, we lose the  efficacy of the collar altogether. So how would you feel about some  antecedent arrangement for you?  

I did not use the term antecedent arrangement with this guy, okay. But I  basically asked him, so how would you feel about, we super glue the,  the remote at the level at which we’re going to use it as an appetitive cue  so that you can’t get frustrated, and crank the, the setting up and he, he  was like, oh, that’s a great idea. Yeah. I, I love that. Cause I’m going to  try not to, but I might get frustrated.  

And, and I told him our goal is that you never feel frustrated. Our goal is  that we do this in such a way that you don’t experience frustration. But  we want to prepare for the worst because we don’t always get to control  everything that happens in life, especially when we start getting out into  the mountains off leash.

So, we use the e collars exactly as I described earlier. They had already  purchased the e collars. So again I, I didn’t feel the ethical quandary  about funding the industry because the collars had already been  purchased. I was not telling my client to go buy them, and we used the  lowest settings, but the Husky had thicker hair. So I think we were at a  four with him. The houndie dog had less hair, so we were able to use a  zero, and the hound very quickly did the stimulus stimulus pairing. And  what I told them is that those pairings are very fast. If we don’t get it in  five repetitions, the dog probably can’t feel the stimulus. So that’s what  we did. 

We started at zero, we did five pairings of tap, treat, tap, treat, tap, treat.  If the dog didn’t respond by the sixth time, we turned up the settings. So,  that’s how we got up to four with the husky. We did not start at four.  

And and by the way, for those of you who are unfamiliar, these collars  have like a hundred settings. So four out of a hundred is still incredibly  low stimulus. Like I said, the vibration was 10 with this collar.  

So, so that’s how we found the, the level that the dog could actually feel  through their coat and we paired it with food. And so, it very quickly  became TAP means look at handler to get further instruction, or to get a  treat, or whatever is going to happen. 

So that was how we use them. And what we found is that both dogs  responded really well to the tactile cue, and very appetitively. They  would get happy, and excited when they, when they felt the tap. They  would come running back to their handlers, and all was, all was happy  and good and, and, and, and, they don’t have any issue with the dogs  being afraid or, or showing any kind of pain or anything like that.  

However, I still don’t recommend that and with our clients, we do not  offer e collars because they are high risk tools, and using those e collars  would be funding an industry that profits off of pain, and selling quick  fixes. 

So, even though I have been able to do that twice successfully, that is  still not my go to. And I still don’t recommend that as a regular strategy  because the industry itself is problematic and we don’t want to fund that.  And because when we can teach clients how to effectively use auditory  cues more often than not the overwhelming majority of the time, we don’t  need to go further than that. 

So, so I wanted to, to give that context because I would be lying if I said I  hadn’t used an e collar, and, and also we had a very good, pleasant  experience with the e collar being repetitive. And also, I still don’t  recommend that as a primary strategy. It should be a very last resort in  my opinion.  

I also want to say that I have heard multiple people in this field say that  the only way to address dogs who have quote unquote high prey drive,  which I don’t really use that those, that language to describe those set of  behaviors, but I have heard people say that the only way to change or  quote unquote fix high prey drive is to use an e collar and that’s just  simply not true. 

We deal with prey drive. All the time, all the time, all the time. We have  so many clients who exhibit those sets of behaviors, and we just have  never needed to use e collars for them. So again, this is about affect  heuristic, and maybe a little bit of those auto epistemic logical fallacies  where we think because this is the only way I’ve been able to  successfully do it, it’s the only way that’s possible or available, but we  still, we don’t recommend using e collars even though we have been  able to use them successfully and repetitively and in an enriching way. 

[00:24:12] Allie: So yes to everything Emily was saying, I’m going to  throw in one little caveat and that is for deaf dogs. We get asked  frequently, I see this question asked all the time in like Facebook groups,  the internet and all of that, How do I train a deaf dog? And we often, in  those spaces, give a flippant to answer, which is you train them the  exact same way you train a dog who can hear. And one of the reasons  that we give that kind of flippant answer is because it’s not the space to  discuss what we would actually be recommending to a client because I  dislike getting roasted on the internet.  

So, let’s talk for a second about deaf dogs. So, Emily mentioned that you  can use an e collar as a tactile stimulus, and really when we’re talking  about a deaf dog who you can’t use an auditory stimulus for, then our  options typically go to a visual stimulus or a tactile stimulus. I have  worked with clients who have deaf dogs where I have recommended a  vibration collar for the reasons that Emily just said of I don’t want to be  supporting the e collar industry. 

Yes, vibration collars are a subsection of that and also it makes me feel  better and sometimes that’s what you have to do for your little human 

brain. The other reason for that is they don’t have the ability to crank it  up. If if they want to, anything like that. What I will say, though, is that we  usually have to do more work on the front end to make sure the vibration  is not aversive because some of, like, even the lowest setting on some  of those vibration collars are, it’s like those old school, y’all remember  those, like, brick phones and, like, the vibration level of those old school  brick phones where it was, like, your pocket was taking off? 

Like, that’s legit the, the lowest level on some of those vibration collars.  And so we have to do a lot of work on the front end of that to make sure  that the vibration isn’t aversive. And then we compare that with good  things so that we get the effect that Emily is talking about of we feel that  vibration, we’re happy and excited and good things are gonna happen. 

And we look at our human and we can do recalls and we can be out in  the yard off leash, and all of that fun sort of stuff. We can give a lot more  freedom to those deaf dogs, but I do, I did want to point that out here is,  one of the reasons that we at least give vague answers when people ask  us about deaf dogs is because it’s in a space where we are not able to  talk about the nuances of using a tool that can have fallout attached to it  if done improperly. 

[00:26:56] Emily: That’s what it means to take a descriptive rather than  a prescriptive approach, and look at our learners, and let our learners tell  us what’s going on, what they want to do, what feels good to them, what  doesn’t. So, the way that we actually introduce vibration collars to deaf  dogs is by wrapping a hand towel around the vibration part. 

And we start by teaching the dogs or like with a lure or some kind of cue  depending on what the dog already knows to walk into the collar itself  and then we pay. And because it’s wrapped that we’re basically reducing  that sensation by wrapping it in the towel, and then when the dog is  really eagerly walking into that collar, we’ll take off a layer of the towel,  do it again. When the dog’s eagerly walking into it like that, we’ll take off  another layer. Usually I can only do three layers of a hand’s towel  around the collar, but we take off that layer and then we’ll drop the, the  towel altogether and have the dog walk into the full vibration, and then,  and then we’ll put the collar on the dog. 

So we go through a lot of really an operant process because the dog is  choosing to walk into the collar, but the outcome or the byproduct of that  operant process is a desensitization protocol that results in counter 

conditioning, and, and I don’t, I don’t think I’ve ever had a deaf dog who  noped out of the vibration collar when we did it that way. And Allie’s  shaking her head. So same with you, right? 

[00:28:24] Allie: Every deaf dog I’ve worked with, I have ended up using  a vibration collar for attention getting, and every one of them were, by  the end of it, were pleased as punch to be using that tool. 

[00:28:35] Emily: Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, I think that the idea that a  vibration collar is somehow more humane is not necessarily true. And  we can still introduce the vibration collar in a way that is appetitive. And I  will tell you, it does not take very long to do it. Where the sanctuary  where Allie and I worked didn’t give us a lot of time to do things. 

We had to do things very quickly. Allie’s face, for those of you who can’t  see it, just said, that’s an understatement. So we, so the people who are  concerned about it taking too long to do it appetitively and I can promise  

you it really does not take very long. Usually I could get through that  whole process that I just described with a towel in one or two, five  minute sessions. 

Because usually that was all we were given at the sanctuary. So, so it is  totally possible to do it and it doesn’t take very long and it’s worth it to  have a communication tool with a deaf dog who then that gives them  more freedom, and allows them to go farther and be more independent  and explore more things. 

But with either a vibration collar or an e collar, the way in which that  often goes south, like all our plans get messed up, is when people think  that it isn’t working and that the dog quote unquote needs an escalating  stimulus. And, not only is that not true that’s also a very human centric  approach to behavior because it’s not actually taking the learner’s  experience into consideration, and we’re not really investigating why it  isn’t working at that level. 

I think there’s probably a false dichotomy involved in this way of thinking  too, that people are thinking it should either work or it, or it doesn’t, and  we need to, to bump it up. What we should be thinking instead is there’s  something about the situation that’s too hard for this dog’s current skill  set.

So, I need to help them get out of this situation and we need to figure out  what it is that isn’t working, why this isn’t working. And a lot of times it’s  just, we gave the learner a test that was too advanced for their current  skillset. We hadn’t proofed the behavior enough, or the dog was in pain,  or the batteries died, or something. There’s just so many things to  investigate that don’t involve assuming that it’s the learner’s fault and  that they just need an escalating correction. 

So, I think that is a really important, kind of piece of this of this  discussion because so often I’ve heard people say well Yeah, but even if  you teach it appetitively if it stops working people are gonna crank it up  and that has not been my experience. Because we provide support for  our clients, and for their pets, and we’re looking to at behavior through  an enrichment framework.  

So, ultimately, the entire back and forth debate about e colors is really  just one gigantic red herring because the question is not whether or not  e collars work. Of course, they work by definition. If they didn’t work, at  

least. Somehow, in some way, some of the times, people would not  continue to use them, and they would not be the gigantic industry that  they are.  

And, the question is not, are they always harmful or not? Of course they  aren’t always harmful. Almost nothing causes harm a hundred percent of  the time. There have even been people who have survived skydiving  accidents. So, so no, it’s not a question of whether or not e collars are  always harmful. 

The actual question is, are they the best tool to effectively reach our  goal, while minimizing harm, and maximizing welfare and well being,  from the dog’s point of view, and also from the client’s point of view? Do  they work from the dog’s point of view? Do they work for the dog? Which  is why we’re here in the first place, right? And the answer is almost  always no, they really aren’t that, that they really don’t meet that criteria,  the overwhelming majority of the time.  

So, there are just not very many situations in which I think it is a good  idea to use e collars. I don’t think funding an unethical industry is the, the  best situation, the best possible decision most of the time. 

However, the one thing that we have not talked about yet is the thing  that we mentioned in passing earlier. And that is what do we do when a 

client comes to us and is like, I want to work with you, I really love your  approach, I don’t want to hurt my dog, and also I cannot stop using my e  collar. I will not stop using my e collar. It is the only thing that works. It’s  the only thing that makes me feel safe. I’m I’m not going to do it.  

So, we’ve created a flowchart that we use internally with our team, and  for those of you who are listening who are in PETPro, we have also  given you access to this in PETPro. And that flowchart basically helps  our team to navigate how to help a client who is insistent on using one of  the management tools that has a higher risk of causing harm, which  includes e collars. 

And essentially what we’re doing is is first finding out, is this tool actually  getting in the way of us being able to reach our client’s goals? And then  there’s a whole flow chart from there, because if we can see that it’s not,  

then let’s let the client keep their security blanket while we work with  them to meet their goals, and then they might be more likely to relinquish  their security blanket when we’ve given them actual tangible help, helps  them reach their goals, established trust, then they might be ready to  relinquish those tools. 

And I will tell you that that flow chart is highly effective. I do recommend  creating a process like that for yourself if you are a professional,  because we have not had a client continue to use an aversive tool in the  way that they were using it when they came to us by taking that  approach. So, we don’t reject people who are using tools that we don’t  endorse. But we do help them to navigate it so that we are still meeting  everybody’s needs, the client, the pet, and our own needs.  

So, I have an idea, and I’m going to give this idea out for free because I  have zero interest in trying to develop this, but if anybody runs with this  idea, and makes millions of dollars, you can send me an inspiration fee,  like a thank you fee. 

I’d be cool with that. But here’s my idea. Create an e collar, that goes  from zero to vibration, and have the collars sold with instructions on how  to teach tactile cues appteitively and effectively. And if somebody makes  that tool, I will give them all my money. 

Because I think it would be so helpful for people to have at their disposal  a tactile cue that is much, much harder to make aversive, like you’d have  to work really hard to make a collar like that be aversive. So, so that’s 

my idea. That’s how we could solve this big debate, and if anybody  wants to run with that, like, Hey, just, just lob some of your profits at me  and I’ll be like, cool, thanks.  

All right. So that’s, that’s where I stand on knee collars. Allie Ellen have  anything else to add? 

[00:35:47] Allie: I’m just glad that this turned into an episode of Shark  Tank, where you’re like, I will take a 5 percent stake in your company for  my idea. LAUGHS 

[00:35:59] Emily: Yeah. What I stand by that statement.  

[00:36:02] Allie: No, I, I, you know what? I’m here for it. I hope that that  happens for you and our industry. Yeah, I, I think you’ve covered  everything that was in my head about this. This just wraps up today’s Q&  A episode, I want to thank all of you for joining us for season eight and  we will be back at you in a few months with season nine. Thanks  everybody, and happy training!  

Thank you for listening. You can find us at petharmonytraining.com and  @petharmonytraining on Facebook and Instagram, and also  @petharmonypro on Instagram for those of you who are behavioral  professionals. As always links to everything we discussed in this episode  are in the show notes and a reminder to please rate, review and  subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts a special thank you to Ellen  Yoakum for editing this episode, our intro music is from Penguin Music  on Pixabay. 

Thank you for listening and happy training.