Call to ban sale of electric shock collars.
Last weekend I took our family Labrador Declan along to a lead training workshop at the wonderfully named Wizard of Paws in Glasgow. Of late Declan has been straining at the lead when we take him on walks. He’s so friendly and loves people so much that when we meet other people on walks he jumps up and has almost knocked some over with his exuberance. I was mindful that I could learn new habits as well as Declan. The trainer was very helpful and informative and clearly he loved dogs as he was telling us the horror stories about how in America to train or control dogs they use devices which deliver electric shocks.
I came away both horrified and probably a bit over-confident about society across this side of the ocean thinking well we don’t do anything so barbaric here such as shock dogs. That smugness was short lived as in my in-box was news of the scale of use of such devices in Britain with estimates of over half a million users of such devices as E-collars. E-collars are collars fitted with a device which can deliver a shock to the dog when they go beyond designated boundaries. The devices are currently legally sold in the UK, with the exception of Wales where they are outlawed. The good news was though that the Department of Environmental Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have spent over half a million pounds on two official UK studies into their use.
Those of us interested in the welfare of animals will not be surprised that the first research project found that the use of e-collars “in training is associated with behavioural and physiological responses that are consistent with negative emotional states.” The second report also agreed with the first on the lower welfare through the use of collars but also indicated “there is no statistical significant nor clinically relevant differences in the efficacy of an e-collar training protocol combined with rewards and a reward based programme that does not use an e-collar for the management of dogs presented with comparable levels of livestock chasing, which is one of the most commonly advocated justifications for the necessity of e-collar training.”
So in plain English using the collars isn’t good for the welfare of dogs. On those grounds alone OneKind believe the devices should be outlawed all over the UK. However given that using the devices are not actually any more effective than a rewards based training method there can surely be no justification for the use of such devices.
What do you think; we’d be interested in your views.