And those horse people who take short cuts are regarded as crappy horse people.
Same goes for shock collars and dogs. Put the time in, be a good trainer with good timing, and you wonāt need one.
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As others have tried to explain, e-collars seem to be one more tool in a trainerās bag.
Like other tools, it requires that you know what you are doing and when to use it and how.
In our dog training club, we sent one of our trainers to some seminars to learn about e-collar use.
Then she gave us a seminar on it and we decided it was not something we would really use for our training system, mostly because we teach the general public and consider e-collar an advanced teaching tool, one that requires training concepts that most people donāt quite learn to a level they should be using e-collars.
Yes, in some cases an e-collar is used as an aversive, here the bird dog club uses it for rattlesnake aversion. For that they place a rattle snake in a safe manner in a bushy area and one of their advanced trainers will handle the dog on a long line, walk it around the bushes and when a dog notices the rattler and tries to run at it, he shocks it.
He has used that on little toy dogs to the biggest ones and all the dogs do is jump and run back from the snake. As he keeps walking the dog by there, the dogs clearly avert that spot, they donāt want anything to do with that thing that shocks.
That training has saved the lives of many hunting and ranch dogs and it stays for the dogs for life.
The shock is not that much, we tried ourselves in our arms, is less than hitting a fence hot wire, is the timing of the shock that teaches the dog.
Then we have herding and field dog clubs that use e-collars to train and there is a tap on the shoulder, a dog well trained first and then trained to the e-collar to stop and wait for more instruction one way to use it.
Just think, if an e-collar was used abusively, the dog would become confused, run off and be hard to train if it was expecting a shock.
Dogs are trained to invisible fences, to hot wires in their fencing if they tend to wander off, etc.
If someone doesnāt want to train with one, is fine, but if others do find ways to use e-collars, why not?
OF COURSE as any other tool, abuse with e-collars or any other tool is never acceptable.
Hope that helps explain some ways how and why e-collars are used.
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Back in the late 90s I bought a āno barkā collar for one of my corgis. I lived in a condo and these were my first dogs. Within a day or two, I got a sample of the shock it administered and the collar went in the trash immediately.
Using electrical shocks on an animal are not ok with me.
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Countless dogs DO shows stress while being trained using a shock collar.
Flagging on point is a big one. Lying down on point is another. The instinct to point will over ride their ability to just say āeff this and eff you, Iām not doing itā. But the stress caused by the overuse of the tool are apparent in both NSTRA and NAVDHA dogs.
Thereās pressure to have the dog out and competing in a flawless manner by 1 year or sooner. Thatās unrealistic for dogs, unless you want to inflict pain on them to get it.
Put that thing on your neck and give it a whirl. Or, on your lower belly.
You can train dogs to hunt without this. We know it, and we have proven it (5 times now, working on the 6th). Even my mutt dog who got a late whoaing start whoas 100% reliably. She didnāt start to learn whoa until a year or older.
If youāre consistent, and use opportunities often to practice, it works.
Perhaps the real disconnect we have from those that insist this is a necessary tool is that our dogs live in the house with us. We have endless training opportunities with them. They arenāt kennel dogs that only come out to run birds, then get locked up again. Theyāre our family FIRST, and hunting dogs second. Edit: They want to work for us. Does that mean theyāre mistake free? Of course not! It just means we arenāt going to fry them for it. Theyāre going to get scolded or put back where they should be, then we move on.
I want to go back to the horse docked tail thing and the response that it is cruel because they can not swat at flies and suchā¦
How is shaving their tail bone naked except the very top any different?
I am not saying I am pro tail docking. I assume there are ways to secure the tail with out docking it.
I just do not get how the point made by so many is fly control but they are OK with that shaved look.
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I agree with you. I am not ok with it. Horses have a tail with hair on it for a reasonā¦
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Itās not, but the horse at least doesnāt have to go through the docking process. If things evolve the way they have in the dairy industry (in Canada) shaving the āswitchā will eventually also be put to rest.
And since weāre back to horses 
hereās a video of a pull. https://www.google.com/search?q=university+of+michigan+draft+horse+pull+showing+horses&client=firefox-b-d&biw=1280&bih=595&tbm=vid&ei=dMHzY7DnIN-pptQPx6ug2AI&ved=0ahUKEwiw8ZHV4qT9AhXflIkEHccVCCsQ4dUDCAw&uact=5&oq=university+of+michigan+draft+horse+pull+showing+horses&gs_lcp=Cg1nd3Mtd2l6LXZpZGVvEAMyCggAEPEEEB4QogQyBQgAEKIEMgoIABDxBBAeEKIEMgUIABCiBDoFCCEQoAE6BwghEKABEAo6BAghEBVQ7A9YskVgukZoAHAAeACAAY0BiAGNDZIBBDYuMTCYAQCgAQHAAQE&sclient=gws-wiz-video#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:06639785,vid:87l-KQiMC98
Thereās whole lot of dangerous stuff going on and yet, I didnāt see a docked tail (trimmed, yes) in the few I watched. That just brings me back to cosmetic and easier to take care of as the main reasons for docking. Ugh. Iām not actually a fan of horse pulling competitions, but saw a video while I was scrolling social media the other day and happened to notice non-docked tails which sent me looking to see whether that was an anomaly or not.
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Back to horses! @endlessclimb and @sascha as back to horses here. I actually was sufficiently interested in the question that I asked my farrier about that last Friday. He currently has a four horse hitch showing and another four or five in for training (Percherons and Belgians). So a pretty good second opinion. His horses are generally docked. But, he does work with an increasing number that are just trimmed extremely short. Which is what I will probably do with mine (both undocked). Not the weird shaved tail of the Clydesdale upthread. But trimmed as short as possible.
As for flies with a short tail. The time honored solution is the shredded bailing twine tail. Cheap and effective! But horse tails if simply cut short, do grow back almost as fast as manes. So a short cut, but undocked tail isnāt permanent harm.
As for securing the tail, which was the question that caused me to ask him. He pointed out the fact that, aside from the serious issue of how you tie a muscular, thin skinned, flexible bit of spine so it canāt move much but donāt damage it, if you managed thatā¦what happens when the horse needs to poop? And since his horses spend several hours at a time in harness, you would have a problem. And a very unhappy horse.
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Again ?what?
My husband has a NAVHDA dog. Heās trained w/ a training group (Iāve only observed). Puppies are out with ropes and 2-3-4 guys, each w/ a job to do to train the pup to find birds, hold a point, retrieve, come, etc. It takes months to years of work. No e-collars until the pup/dog clearly knows what s/he is supposed to do and then only if the dog tends to get a bit headstrong about knowing what to do. The LAST think you want to make a dog is LESS birdy or afraid itās going to do something wrong and lose itās initiative. DHās dog does wear an e-collar. Occasionally he needs a beep -a warning. Itās better to have the tool than the dog take off and get lost in the miles of open hunting land or worse.
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Again - itās the PUPPY test at 1 year. they get graded. they are not flawless. The judges expect a 1-2 second pointā¦
Sometimes, Iāve seen the trainers act in a way that I thought was too harsh but it was NOT with an e-collar.
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What kind of classes did they have at the draft show that you normally wouldnāt see in the UK ?
Please search upthread for the pics of her docked Percheron posted by @Foxglove.
That horseās dock had been shortened to 4", yet grew tailhair well below his hocks.
What you saw could very well have been docked tails that arenāt braided or trimmed.
As far as"dangerous stuff":
Have you been to a pull?
I have, & the only danger is to the guy who has to drop the hitch onto the sled.
Those teams know that sound.
If theyāre not quick enough, they go waterskiing!
The horses may appear to be straining, but please notice they stop pulling when they hear the whistle
They know the drill.
And also note, aside from voice, nothing else is used to urge them forward.
They also are brought back for multiple tries, as the weight is increased, so, depending on the number of teams competing, there could be minimal recovery time between rounds.
Not a single team I saw was sweating or even breathing hard when brought back.
Pulling-bred Belgians are purpose-bred.
Theyāre the powerlifters of the breed.
They are HUGE, make the hitch horses look like supermodels.
And they command some pretty high prices at the sales.
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Get your glasses out. You can see the tell tale (haha) tail nub ends at normal horse length on many if you watch on a big enough screen.
There is plenty of dangerous stuff going on. If you choose to not see it because the horses are so well trained, thatās on you, but Iām pretty sure each and every one of those handlers and teamsters knows exactly what could go wrong and respects that.
Donāt waste your manicure typing reasons I should like the sport - I just donāt like the sport. I donāt like eventing, running, hockey, baseball, football and basketball either.
Manicure 
I wasnāt asking you to like Pulling.
& It was very apparent the handlers were the ones in danger.
At the Pull I attended some were quite plainly docked, some just cut short.
Can we agree to disagree?
Glad you found the humour! I may have been looking at my own winter fingernails (Fack! There goes another one thatās going to need to be cut back to the quick 
) when I chose that wording. Hee.
I wasnāt saying that no horse in pulling is docked, just that I found a bunch on a video that did not appear to be docked and that despite what we heard above about the dangers of undocked tails being a hazard, that these horses seem to manage fine despite the heights of the teamsters and handlers, and the breeching, tugs, chains, etc.
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I agree with you in this. It is possible to keep a horseās tail trimmed short enough that it is not likely to get caught in heel chains or in chain tugs. It is a bit of continual maintenance of course. But now that by and large horses are no longer tools that we Have to use, but rather working partners that we choose to use; I donāt think we should begrudge the little extra time of keeping the tail short and some additional training (because they will catch the lines at some point if you are working off to the side on the ground) rather than the old āonce and doneā solution of docking, which is permanent harm. I get why it was done from an historical perspective, that isnāt the same as agreeing with it today.
I still wonāt support PETA in the cause though!
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100% agreed! I will not support PETA or any other rabid Animal Rights groups or individuals. But that is not exclusive to standing up for/questioning welfare/husbandry issues
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LOL yes like the cuddly leverage bits and cuddly spurs.
This keeps going back to e-collars but I said itās about R+ versus R-. How do you feel about training to heel with a choke chain?
You can teach a dog to heel with a choke collar without any positive reinforcement at all. Used in the right hands, it is exactly like a bit and/or shank lead or a lot of other horse training devices.
I donāt want to go down a rabbit hole of ābut people donāt use them correctlyā because as was stated - there are at least as many ways to abuse/mistreat/under train a horse. I participated in a performance obedience class where the instructor was unapologetically still willing to include choke collars as training tools because they communicated faster and more accurately than flat buckle collars, which dogs commonly lean into. This was a while back, but the COTH community was horrified. Why? Itās R-. Thatās not a bad thing.
I agree 100% and I believe thatās why most of the dog breeders I know use the vet to dock tails. And they typically use some kind of local pain medication. I think it is still technically legal to do them at home (unlike ears, which require a vet) but I donāt know anyone who does.
But bringing up circumcision again - I just donāt get the disconnect where people think itās totally ok to circumcise boy children, but rally against tail docking in dogs. That is selective outrage, and I think itās ridiculous. I will admit that I was very glad not to have had boy children so I didnāt have to decide - I am also an adoptive mother and was very worried about making a decision like that for a child of an older age, particularly because I wasnāt sure how my then husband would feel. Fate matched us with sibling girls and I breathed a sigh or relief on that score.
Choke chains are a no all around for me, due to risk of neck/throat damage. But letās switch your question to āthin martingaleā so I can answer it.
Training to heel? Hell no, thatās not fair. Refining a heel in a dog who already has the basics down? Depending on who has their hands on it.
Itās like starting a 3 year old horse in a spade. I mean, Iām sure there are people who can do it, and not turn it into abuse. But 1) why? and 2) there are so few people with the skillset that itās probably best to just not do it at all.
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Again - your argument is all about whether someone can do it. Not R+ versus R-.
The obedience instructor did it as a challenge to herself - especially the part about not speaking a word at all so deliberately not using R+. And since she makes a living doing this, yes I think she has the skillset. It inspired a great discussion about how dog owners donāt think you should use anything other than R+ even when R- is equally effective.
And obviously, MOST of us use both, even if we donāt realize it. But in horses, we primarily use R- and everything is very cool with it. For dogsā¦apparently not. Becauseā¦people think itās āmeanā even when by definition is isnāt.
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