To those of your that have used head halters SUCCESSFULLY when training a dog…?
I’m sure someone is going to come here and rant about how useless they are and all you need is a prong, and blah blah blah, but I’m open to any training collar and have heard a few success stories with head collars getting a dog to heel.
My question to these people is, how do you wean a dog off the head halter? I’ve heard of some people doing this but I’m thinking it would be somewhat difficult seeing as it’s obvious to the dog if it’s on or not. If you used a head collar to successfully heel train your dog, how bad was his heel work beforehand?
For those of you who dislike head halters and would like to add your two cents, if you have used the collar, where exactly did you run into problems? After you took it off? While it was on the dog? Getting it on the dog in the first place?
@Launi I liked the idea of the Illusion collar. I’d like to try it myself one day. I think it’d work pretty well for my dog. Isn’t the idea just to focus the collar on the upper part of the neck and prevent it from slipping down?
ms manners
29 Jun, 2010
With my big, dog-reactive Lab mix, the halter only worked if there were not a lot of distractions.
At one point I took him to a get- together, and with both the halter AND a choke chain, he still yanked me to the ground in an effort to reach another dog (and I am not a small person).
He also managed to get out of it twice, although it stayed around his neck so I did not lose him completely.
With the prong collar, I am able to control him, even with distractions, and he walks nicely when there are none. With the halter, he was better controlled than with a choke chain, but he had to be constantly reminded to walk beside me, even with no distractions, because he was still looking for trouble.
Launi ~Thundering ~ Wild Angels~
29 Jun, 2010
Dd, the first thing I used on Launi was a head halter. She was unresponsive and completely focused on how to get it off. I used it for about 2 weeks. Nothing changed. She hated it. Then I went to the Illusion collar. *I* hated that one. And Launi had no response to it. It was as if she didn’t have a collar on.
I have nothing against any type of *tool* if it works for the dog.