Don't Jerk or Pull, Use a Harness - Part 3/4
Part 3- Collars, Slip Leads and Head Halters
Don’t choose collars of convenience
Head Halters
A head halter
Head halters discourage leash pulling by applying pressure and discomfort when the leash pulls and turns a dog’s head to the side.
Head halters are an extremely controversial equipment. Although several advocate for their use, including the CVMA, many trainers, professional associations, professionals and organizations do not support using this equipment, such as the RSPCA Australia who say that many dogs find head halters uncomfortable. Also, research has found that dogs increase pawing at their nose when wearing them. Many of the professional associations I am a member of, have it written in their ethics code that due to the negative emotional effects, discomfort for dogs, health and safety implications, trainers must not use them.
“There can be long-term health implications including injury to the neck and spine and prevention of natural gait and the dog determining his/her personal space.
(Rosee Riggs, 2019)”
Several trainers and individuals use head halters for specific purposes such as service dog work, but like all equipment, they should be used responsibly.
Professionally, I never suggest for anyone to use head halters, as in my experience I have seen many people misuse and overuse this equipment causing emotional and physical harm to the dog including lifelong scars on their muzzles. The potential is too high for injury to a dog’s soft tissue, spine and psychological damage over prolonged use. Proponents state that head halters are similar to a bridle on a horse, but the construction of a dog’s head is not that of a horses’ and does not lend itself to wearing halters. A dog’s head is highly sensitive as they have very thin skin around their heads, with many nerve endings and over 300 million olfactory cells in their nose, while we only have 5 million cells.
Imagine if you had a head halter placed around your neck. What would it feel like in your neck and spine when you pull forward and the pressure of the halter pulls you to one side with no warning? What would happen if you were wearing a halter while running and suddenly got snapped back? Do you know the jolting pain of miscalculating a step while going up or down stairs? This is how your dog feels when they pull forward and are sharply snapped to one side when wearing a head halter. In some extreme cases this can cause paralysis. The sharp pressure to one side created by head halters when dogs pull creates an imbalance that affects the soft tissue around the neck. In Tellington Touch (TTouch), the goal is to always create balance in one’s dog, to not apply discomfort, pressure, distract or correct a behaviour, which is the often the main cause of leash pulling and physical imbalance.
Your dog’s nose is full of blood vessels and nerve endings that create their acute sense of smell
A large majority of dogs are very sensitive being touched around their head and neck especially, dogs that have been abused, rescued from traumatic situations or mishandled around the neck. On many occasions, I’ve trained such touch sensitive dogs using desensitization and counter-conditioning (the process of changing emotions from unpleasant/fearful to happy) to help them no longer fear being touched around their heads. If you place a head halter onto a dog who is scared or sensitive around their head, it’s like putting someone in a straight-jacket in a room full of spiders, they can’t escape what they fear and the fear only increases, not decreases.
If your dog ducks when you try to touch them, imagine how they would feel if you put a head halter on. (AdamTots Comics)
If any equipment is uncomfortable or aversive to a dog, then it is not a force-free training tool, no matter how much conditioning or training is done to have your dog accept it.
Slip Leads/Leashes
A slip lead/leash
According to the Whole Dog Journal slip leashes are “collars of convenience”, which are similar to a choke chain as the collar part of a slip leash can tighten without any limitations, creating the potential to choke the dog.
Many animal shelters and veterinary clinics use slip leads for safety reasons because the dogs in their care need to be moved around quickly. However, the Fear Free Pets (www.fearfreepets.com) movement is encouraging vet clinics to veer away from using any punishment/aversive equipment that can cause damage to your dog and advocate for many veterinary clinics to keep harnesses at their front doors. If any dog comes to a vet clinic wearing a choke chain, prong collar, slip leash or other punishment-based/ aversive equipment the vet team can exchange it for a harness, creating responsible dog ownership awareness, safe and positive associations for future vet visits.
Several popular celebrity trainers use slip leashes as a training method and tool, to “correct” dogs by jerking and pulling on the leash whenever they pull or do “bad behaviour”. However, no positive reinforcement force-free trainer would use such outdated and aversive methods, as the function of jerking your dog by the neck or choking your dog, has the same function as a choke chain and can cause trachea and spinal damage. Jerking your dog by their neck whenever they do something you think is “wrong” or worse, using “alpha rolls”, does not address the underlying behavioural or emotional issues, teaches your dog nothing except to suppress the behaviour for fear of pain and to mistrust you, creating further long-term behavioural issues.
The Do’s and Don’ts of modern dog training (Doggie Drawings)
You would never attach a slip leash to your child’s neck, so why would you place one around your dog’s throat when there is an option of a harness? The primary underlying reason for most behavioural issues are disease or pain, so consider that by using a slip leash you are contributing to this pain and worsening your dog’s health and welfare, not helping it.
A dog on a slip lead/leash.
Regular neck collars
A dog’s throat versus our throat (Dogmantics/Kikopup)
Often people say that dog’s necks are sturdy, strong and not like our necks, but in fact they’re very similar to our necks and even less sturdy. A dog’s skin is only 3-5 cells thick, while ours are 10-15 cells thick. Your dog’s neck contains the “trachea, oesophagus, thyroid gland, lymph nodes, jugular veins and spinal column” (Dogmantics/Kikopup, who if you haven’t checked out- do so, she’s amazing!!). Applying continual pressure to the windpipe is not good for any dog but is especially serious to brachycephalic dogs (flat faced, small nosed dogs like Pugs, English Bulldogs, French Bulldogs, Boxers) who already struggle to breathe due to over-breeding for aesthetics not welfare.
A puppy walking on a neck collar (Dogmantics/Kikopup)
When walking a dog on a leash attached to a neck collar, multiple research studies have shown poorer welfare and significantly increased effect of intra-ocular pressure (IOP) which can lead to short-term risks of perfusion of the optic nerve and retina and long-term risks of glaucoma.
Typically, collars are much thicker than a nylon slip lead/leash. Imagine if you had a slip leash around your neck and are dragged around, being jerked and pulled on with just a piece of thick nylon fabric, or in the case of. slip lead/leash a very thin one. Just because you can’t see the damage that is being done such as gradual tracheal collapse, doesn’t mean that it’s not there and that it’s not happening.
Why should you never use leash corrections / jerk your dog on a leash?
Ambiguous wording from various dog trainers can mislead well-meaning dog guardians to use force, pain and fear to train. Sadly, I’ve seen many dog trainers and dog guardians unnecessarily use leash jerking and corrections, and then promote these practices on social media and in person to other professionals and pet guardians as a means to handle “hard dogs”, “big dogs” and to achieve “quick fixes”. As a professional, I use positive reinforcement, force-free methods on both easy and difficult dogs of all sizes and breeds without pain, with effective results and creating long-lasting bond with dog and their guardian, as well as the dog and me. “Quick fixes” using punishment-based techniques may be effective at suppressing your dog’s behaviour at that moment, as your dog is in pain or fear but they do not treat the underlying motivation for your dog’s behaviour or action, instead they increase fear and aggression. Wouldn’t you stop what you were doing if you were shocked, chocked, nudged, jerked by your neck or had something spray in your face? Wouldn’t that make you more fearful or aggressive?
When given the opportunity to learn alternative force-free methods, most dog guardians would discontinue using force. According to Jean Donaldson of The Academy for Dog Trainers, “the use of violence in dog training is not correlated with particular dogs or with particular behavior problems. It’s practitioner-correlated.”
If a dog pulls on the leash and has a leash correction/jerk on the leash when wearing a choke chain, prong collar, slip leash or collar, just one yank can cause lifelong injury. A study done on people who use elash corrections/jerk on their dog’s leash while they’re walking, showed that 91% of all dogs with neck/cervical injuries, had been exposed to long-term jerking and pulling back hard on the leash.
Neck collars and the pressure they cause on a dog’s sensitive neck are linked to the following:
Ear and eye issues - due to the collar restricting the “lymphatic flow to and from the head”
Hypothyroidism- collars push on the throat directly on the thyroid gland, which becomes traumatized, inflamed and “eventually destroyed by the body’s immune system when it tries to remove the inflamed thyroid cells” with long term pressure when a dog pulls on the leash
Malfunction of the nervous system in a dog’s forelimbs- excessive paw licking and forelimb lameness can be related to a dog’s collar as leash pulling affects nerves that go down a dog’s front legs. Often these dogs are diagnosed as allergic to unknown entities when all that needs to be done is remove the collar
Behavioural problems- pain is highly linked to behavioural problems. In a study of 400 dogs, 79% of those deemed aggressive had back problems, while 69% of the shy and wary dogs had back problems.
Leash corrections, jerking on the leash, using prong collars, choke collars, slip leashes and neck collars will only acerbate behavioural issues such as aggression and fear, not stop them, as the pain creates psychological and physical damage to your dog.
Look at the strain from the neck going down to the legs
What to do?
Despite what some trainers, veterinarians, pet store employees, social media, that YouTube video you watched or your friends might say, there is no good reason to train using pain. Using any collar and techniques that cause pain or punishment such as jerking/pulling on the leash, are outdated practices that have no place in modern dog training as they are not based on science. Training using punishment is abusive, inhumane and misused. These practices compromise your dog’s ability to learn by increasing their insecurities, developing long-term and sometimes lasting emotional or physical damage.
The majority of worldwide SPCAs, dog welfare charities and veterinary associations such as the British Veterinary Association (BVA) and British Small Animal Veterinary Association (BSAVA) support and recommend positive reinforcement reward based, force-free training as it is the most effective training method that maintains welfare, health and does not cause behavioural fallouts or suffering.
Let’s train and help our dogs by training with our brains, not pain.
Train to improve the human-dog relationship
Sources:
https://www.petpronetwork.com/news/why-ppn-dont-recommend-or-promote-head-collars/
https://www.sfgate.com/pets/article/Good-and-bad-dog-collars-2377239.php
https://www.patriciamcconnell.com/theotherendoftheleash/collars-i-have-known-and-loved-or-not
https://dogmantics.com/is-it-harmful-to-attach-a-leash-to-your-dogs-neck-2/