Petco is no longer going to be selling “shock collars”
Good.
To be clear Petco and PetSmart are where green-as-grass dog owners go to get advice from generally ignorant store workers who come in early to scoop the dead fish off the top of the tanks and hide the budgie bodies that have expired in the night.
The stores think nothing of hosting an entire wall of soft rubber dog toys guaranteed to get destroyed, and which too often result in $1,200 surgeries for intestinal blockage.
Any warning about that at Petco or PetSmart?
Nope.
None.
And so it is with e-collars, where $200 e-collars suitable for dog training are behind a glass case next to a $35 “buster” callers that say —right on the box — that they do the exact same thing.
Does the store clerk know the difference?
Nope.
Does the prospective buyer?
Not likely.
Does either product come with (absolutely) needed instruction?
Nope.
So am I upset that Petco is no longer selling “shock” collars?
Nope.
For the most part, these big box outfits never sold modern e-collars that sell for about $200 a unit.
Modern e-collars are not sold at the right price point for the “I just got a dog and it jumps on me” idiots who cannot be bothered to buy (and read!) a book or watch a few Youtube videos, or take a course.
And, to be fair, there’s no shortage of stuff I think should not be sold over the counter to nubies.
Spoke tighteners?
No tool wrecks a good bicycle wheel faster.
Rent-a-floor sanders?
No tool results in more expensive floor replacements.
And e-collars?
Like spoke tighteners and floor sanders, they’re terrific tools in the right hands.
And no, you don’t need to be a genius or a have a PhD in physics to use either one.
But a little instruction and a few practice runs under the watchful eyes of someone who has trued a dozen bicycle wheels and successfully sanded a dozen rooms?
Yeah, that’s a good idea.
But no such experience or training has ever been found or offered in the aisles at Petco or PetSmart.
Those stores aren’t about dogs or dog training; they’re about inventory, price points, profit centers, and low wages. Like Amazon, they’re only too eager to sell you a $40 “punisher” collar they bought for $20 from a company in China that made it for $8 using a design that went off-patent in 1978.
So am I upset that Petco is no longer selling “punisher” collars?
Not in the least. Those stores have never had a thing to do with dog training, and most of the too-hot collars they sold were part of the problem, not part of the solution.
As Marc Goldberg put in in a recent post, “If you don’t know the difference between a shock collar and a quality e-collar, you probably shouldn’t sell them. Or use them.”
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CRAP COLLARS PICTURED AS A WARNING
1 comment:
They are banned in the country I live, Iceland.
Do I think a good quality e-collar is an acceptable tool in the hands of a capable trainer; yes. I also think that the percentage of capable trainers under average dog owners is a tiny minority.
The only people I have seen use it in real life, used it on a level of cruel ignorance. And it stopped when it was pointed out to them by the local vet, who was also witness to it, that it was an illegal device ( in this case a crappy cheap collar of some chinese website).
Too late for the dog. They tried to teach it, unsuccesfully, to stop its car chase obsession (it was a bordercollie). They were VERY succesfull in teaching the dog that any interaction with its owner could randomly result in painful shocks, it was quite the nervous wreck....
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