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Shocking: Here Are a Bunch of Humans Electrocuting Themselves With Dog Collars

Here’s a weird form of torture porn that pops up on Youtube: People shocking themselves using electronic dog collars. Some history: Shock collars for dog training have been around for decades. Prior to the 1960s, many of them were homemade. When...

Here's a weird form of torture porn that pops up on Youtube: People shocking themselves using electronic dog collars.

Some history: Shock collars for dog training have been around for decades. Prior to the 1960s, many of them were homemade. When they began to gain in popularity in the 1970s, there were FDA attempts to recall them. Recently, there’s been a movement to ban them in Canada. Last year, they were outlawed in Wales. In the states, there are occasional animal cruelty cases brought upon those who use them; earlier this summer, a woman in Mahopac, NY, was charged after it was found that her pitbull’s shock collar had become permanently embedded in his neck.

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When it comes to stopping a behavior (say, barking) shock collars work pretty well. Most forms of torture are indeed effective in the short term. But they can cause much larger issues. As a dog trainer and student of the conditioning principles outlined by Skinner and Pavlov, I'm firmly of the belief that there are better ways to elicit the kind of behavior we want from our dogs, however complex those behaviors might be. Some of the country’s most reputable zoos, aquariums, and service dog training organizations exclusively use positive reinforcement methods to train animals.

As the video above illustrates, shock collars hurt. That raises some interesting questions for loving dog owners.

Earlier this month Bryan Lynn of OutDoorLife.com's Gun Dog blog wrote a piece defending the use of shock collars on dogs. The post was a response to Gizmodo's relaying my shock at the news that the GPS maker Garmin was buying a top American shock collar manufacturer, in what seems to be an effort to beef up their own line of shock-collars. As an animal trainer, I'm dismayed that tons of dog owners and trainers continue to use these modern-day torture devices when there are so many other tools that are available to us.

In the world of dog training, there's a rift between those who use "aversive" methods of dog training (like alpha rolls or shock collars) and those who don't. I’m firmly in the latter camp.

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Some in the aversive camp argue that shock collars don’t hurt dogs. One content-farmed article copied-pasted across the Internet announces that shock is the wrong word.

In truth, electronic Anti Bark Collars should be called "tingle" collars, as opposed to shock collars. Few people have not experienced the static energy effect, and we cannot describe the tiny electric shock produced when we touch something metallic as beeing painful. Yes it gives you a fright, but it's by no means painful, and it can certainly do you no harm… The static shock we know is barely overpassed by the maximum intensity level of the collar shock. It cannot be more powerful than the two AA batteries allow.

There are several kinds of shock collars. Some give a shock that is triggered by the vibration of the dog's throat. These are used to discourage barking. Others are part of an electric fence system; a few beeps warn the dog as it approaches the invisible fence, and then shocks him if he crosses the barrier. Then there are remote control operated shock collars. Most collars of this kind are used by "gun" dogs who accompany their owners on hunting expeditions.

Shocking a dog while he is doing something he thinks is fun – something they've been bred to do for thousands of years – seems particularly cruel, since it can forever link that pleasurable thing with the fear of an occasional unexpected jolt. What's more, there is a degree of imprecision when training any animal, especially one that doesn't speak your language. You might be shocking for one thing (barking, say) but the jolt comes just as your dog steps on his dog bed. You might have just deterred him from going to his bed, but he thinks barking is safe. What if he barks just as the shock stops? For all you know, you've helped erroneously communicate that the bed is bad but that barking after stepping off the bed can make the pain go away. Barking is therefore good. Even I'm confused, and I’m a human.

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However, as Brian Lynn points out, I really don't know much about hunting and I've never received any kind of professional instruction on using electric collars. Also, as a non-vegetarian making a case for animal rights, I would go so far as to label myself a hypocrite. Here I am treating my little poodle mix like a baby doll while I pick at a plate of fried bacon.

So, I'd like to abandon any kind of animal rights argument in favor of this one: Shock collars can be dangerous to people.

A common retort that people often have to shock collars is: Would you treat your child that way? Yes, apparently some people would. YouTube hosts literally hundreds of people shocking themselves (and sometimes their children) with electric collars made for dogs. I'm not blaming the collars. I'm blaming the people. In his reply to Gizmodo's anti-shock collar post, Brian Lynn writes:

More dogs have been, and continue to be, abused the world over by boots, crops and hands or rolled up newspapers than by educated and knowing e-collar users. Even a person's voice and body posture can be inhumane and cause stress reactions for a dog.

Indeed. The problem is the people, not the tools. We could rid the world of rolled up newspapers, but you can still use a Kindle to spank. But these videos make me wonder about the way that our tools can sometimes greatly influence our behavior; the adage about the hammer and the nail comes to mind, or as Abraham Kaplan put it,

Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.

I also think about the dark things people are doing with shock collars to each other in situations that aren't fit for YouTube primetime. And I wish that PetCo weren't a place where people can buy torture devices.

Anna Jane Grossman blogs at “thedo.gs”http://www.thedo.gs.