Admin- Hi Lisa,

Dogs overreacting and avoiding going anywhere near the beep and flags is a perfectly normal reaction. You will see over the next couple of weeks that your dog will begin exploring more. They will start roaming further and further away from your house and closer and closer to the flags. However, you do not want to force the dog to go near the boundaries. This could make them associate more negativity with the flags. To help your dog, you will want to play with them in the safe areas. This will help them to associate the safe area with fun. By adding positive reinforcement and giving the dog a bit of time, they will become braver over time.

ADMIN – Hi Jack,

When the dog makes a false association (what is sometimes called superstitious behavior), the best way to break the association is providing more positive exposure. It is best to go in gradual steps.

Start with having another neighbor’s dog play with your dog in the yard. Once your dog is used to that, have the dog with the negative association come play with your dog outside the yard (perhaps in a park). Then, once that is no problem, have the negative association dog play with your dog in the yard.

It helps if you are very confident when you do this. If you see your dog getting fearful, try and redirect their attention. A tap on the shoulder, or leading their head in another direction.

Admin – Hi Melissa

Yes, respond to the warning and train your dog to respond. If you hear the beeps, then surely he hears them. Depending on the system you have, there may be a vibration as well as the beep that the dog should respond to. Keep working at it, training is the key.
I hope this helps you.

ADMIN – Hi Jane,

Once a dog gets used to going through, retraining them takes time.

The most common cause of a trained dog going through is that owners start to put the collars on too loose and the dogs stop getting the correction. But since you are hearing the dog yelp, they are likely getting the correction.

You want to make the boundaries as unpleasant to cross as possible. You can do this by making them as possible and increase the correction. Sometimes we would use two collars (but using two Stubborn collars on a Shelter would be too much). You can widen the boundaries either by dialing up the boundary width, or if that isn’t possible, by snaking more boundary wire out in front of the existing boundary.

Finally, you need to go back to the second and third step of the training. You can’t leave the dog off leash in the yard any more until the retraining is complete, because we don’t want to reinforce the bad habits. If you know there are particular triggers like other dogs, or the postman – then try and incorporate them into your training.

ADMIN – Hi Michael,

It is not so much a matter of stubbornness as pain tolerance. Some dogs like pit bulls and german shepherd have been bred to not feel pain as intensely. Most dogs have not. So you can have dogs that owners think of as very stubborn, who will become very compliant with even a very mild correction (e.g. Alaskan Malamutes). And you can get dogs that are very obedient but will not pay any attention to the collar because they just don’t feel anything on the low settings (e.g. some German Shepherds)

I am not too familiar with the walker hound, but from experience with other hounds, I would guess that you would not need to go with something as strong as the stubborn dog. Start with something else like the SD-2100 and if it does become necessary to go to something stronger we can swap it out for you. Alternatively, get the stubborn dog and stick to the low and medium-low settings unless the dog proves unresponsive.