The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Notes -
One thing about those collars is that they are best used as kind of an extension of your zone of influence, not a punishment. So they can replace a long lead for training dogs who will come when called, but only when you are close enough that they think you might make them -- but zapping the dog everytime it barks/jumps up will probably have undesired side effects.
If you want to use the collar for that, I'd train the dog to sit (or something) using the collar, and then ask him to sit when it looks like he's getting ready to jump on somebody. You should be able to get him to do this based on the beep/rumble alone pretty fast, and eventually just the voice command will be solid.
I've got a new dog too, and have had interesting results using the clicker + treats to encourage desired behaviour, which is not something I'd thought of in the past. (I think this comes from Karen Pryor, who has some really interesting books on clicker training in general, although the one I have is light on step-by-step instructions)
So when the dog is minding it's own business, not jumping up or chewing anyone's ankles -- click and treat. As he gets ready to do something bad, distract him by asking for something he might do instead (sit, or chew on a toy or something) -- click and treat. It's not like, magic fast results, but it seems to be working a lot better than I'd have thought so far.
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