The choice in dog training collars on the market today is huge, so many choices offering the ultimate cure that times have never been harder for someone trying to choose the right product to suit their dog.

Dogs are unique but suffer from a variety of behavioural issues, fortunately these can be grouped into a few common misdemeanours such as jumping up , excessive barking, recall problems etc. As a company that offers free specialist advice and help with choosing the right dog collar, we talk to hundreds of people who have an issue that they would like to resolve.

Some of these customers have spent many hundreds of pounds on conventional training lessons or with animal behaviourists to no avail, many of these people are desperate to find a solution as they fear they could lose their dog if these problems are not addressed. Unfortunately the market is littered with many cheap foreign imports that do not conform to UK legislation and carry no warranty or guarantees. To prove this point just go onto Ebay and check out the number of remote dog training collars that are sold for a few pounds, the majority of which do not conform.

Every day we get calls from people that have purchased a cheap alternative and now regret this move, buying a quality dog training collar will mean dipping deeper into your pockets but if you get it right you can have peace of mind, a product that has a 2-3 year warranty and a product that conforms to UK legislation. It is also important to point out that some of these cheap imported dog training collars are unfair to use on your dog as the levels of correction are set unreasonably high. I recently spoke to a customer who had purchased a collar with 100 levels of correction and no beep tone or warning button on the device. This is ridiculous as the dog wouldn’t have any opportunity to learn.

At Easy Animal we researched all the collars available before deciding which collars to sell, we extensively tested these remote dog collars both on ourselves and also on dogs, as a company we only wanted to be associated with the brands of dog training collars that were fair, reliable, effective and legal. We now have what we consider to be the best brands available, having turned down quite a few companies that wanted us to sell their range.

Firstly all the brands that we sell are RoHS approved which they must be to meet current UK legislation, to meet this criteria costs manufacturers a lot more to develop the products in line with this criteria hence most cheaper collars will almost certainly not be RoHS approved.

To ensure that customer’s expectations are met from a performance point of view, all the brands we sell have a 2 year warranty at minimum and some have a 3 year warranty. This is important as these are electronic products often working in difficult terrains and weather conditions, and of course even the best products can and do malfunction. Having a reliable remote training collar is essential if your dog is chasing a scent and hurtling towards a busy main road!

When you are training a dog, consistency and continuity is of paramount importance, there is little point buying a training collar for it to fail and then interrupt all the good work you have put in. The warranty gives you total peace of mind that very quickly you can have a new trainer delivered promptly to maintain your training programme with your dog.

At Easy Animal we want you to choose the right collar; we want you to be happy with your purchase so we offer you totally free advice and help in buying the right dog training collar. We believe that all dogs are unique and every situation is different, also it is worth pointing out that what works on one dog will be totally the wrong product for the next dog. We sell collars to dog trainers, and we talk daily to dog trainers about training methods so we feel that we have the experience and knowledge to be able to point you in the right direction.

So which are the best collars? These fall generally into two main categories spray and static pulse collars and we have had good success with both types, spray collars of which there are only a few choices generally don’t operate any further than relatively close range 100-300m. Spray training collars can be a little more problematic as the process of having a spray nozzle means that technically it becomes an issue to keep this clean, also the seals around the spray can dry out so they are prone to more problems than static ones. Having said that they have huge support from the dog world and can often be seen on dog training programmes on television like ‘ Dog Borstal’.

Static dog training collars can be seen as more controversial but are widely recognised within dog training circles as more effective than spray trainers. Whilst this is a generalisation, it is far to say that these static pulse collars create much discussion about whether they are harmful, unfair or cruel. When I hear people making these claims I always point out that when these are used in the correct manner they can be used extremely effectively, but of course the responsibility is very much in the hands of the person holding the remote control. As an example a car driven erratically and dangerously by one person can equally be driven carefully and safely by the majority. We sell many of these static pulse remote collars for owners of deaf dogs for recall issues and on a low setting the dog only experiences something similar to someone tapping him on the neck.

At Easy Animal we always advise customers to use the static collars in a measured way starting off by setting the level very low and gradually increasing the levels until by observing the dog you can tell that they are getting a mild sensation. This level of static is very low and in fact in most cases just has to be at a level to interrupt the dogs trail of thought. Obviously for more wilful and stubborn dogs the settings may well be set on a higher level. Static collars with small increments and a gentle increase over a number of levels is certainly better than large increments. Many of the collars we sell have a nick button or short stimulus together with a button for longer levels of stimulus, ALL the collars we sell however have a beep tone which is fundamental to the training process as it is used as a warning signal to the dog and gives the dog an opportunity to respond, it is this important element on a training collar that allows the dog to learn and become trained. Please never buy a collar unless it has this function.

The brands that Easy Animal sell and have total faith in are Canicom, PetSafe, Innotek and Sportdog. All these brands sell good quality training collars, in future articles we will go into more detail and start to give you a totally independent view on all these collars explaining in detail the pros and cons of each collar. For further details please do not hesitate to contact us at the following address:

Easy Animal Ltd, Unit B2, Whitebridge Lane, Stone, Staffs ST15 8LQ Tel 01785 919507