11/21/2025
HARNESS. PRAWNS. CHOKERS
which is the best approach?
I am an obedience trainer and firmly believe training from the inside out..which means, building obedience to the owner and building skill sets which develope good behavior and dissolve unwanted behaviors. However, there is a time and a place for chokers, and prawns, but only short term and when all other techniques are exhausted. Sometimes, more Indepent breeds like Grest Pyrenese, Huskies need a respect element to stop a behavior.
My first choice is always a harness as you will have full body control of your dog, whereas chokers give you control over the head and neck.
SLIP COLLARS
For large hard to handle breeds like some mountain dogs, American Pitbull, Great Danes as, an example can use a slip collar with obedience. Your dog will automatically stop with the pull on the throat, and with a humane approach apply obedience and get your dog to sit. It takes patience but your dog will learn those healing boundaries while learning respect for the handler and their commands. However, I recommend a harness once the obedience foundation and control is in order.
Without the obedience and agility piece the prawns and choke collar become ineffective, like putting a mask on to disguise yourself at a party. Your true identity will be revealed without treating the true cause of the
PRAWNS AND SHOCK COLLAR
Sometimes, when you have exhausted all positive reinforcement techniques and are not getting results a negative reinforcement is warranted short term to teach your dog what is expected.
Behaviors that may benefit from short term use:
> Territorial aggression
> Other aggression not responding
obedience training
> excessive barking
Obedience and agility training correct most behavior effectively.
I trained one dog who would swallow tennis balls whole. After much training, which goes hand in hand with the owner. Sometimes this is a respect issue, and sometimes the human has some of the same behaviors, some behaviors are a breed, and breeding issue. Or a trauma issue.
In the case with this dog, he needed negative reinforcement which the owner would not go for. I started with something simple like putting a bitter taste in the dogs tongue to make him spit the ball out.
In these cases the owner has to come to terms with what will and will not work and readiness to the next steps, in the dogs learning.
Every negative behavior needs a correction or action to resolve the problem.
