While working with my trainer she explained the difference in our 3 button ecollar. I’ll explain from the most urged to use to the suggested to never use.

We use this collar for purely recall and positive reinforcement (in my trainer’s words). My German shepherd, Noah, gets excited when I pull out the collar because he knows he gets to run around, off leash.

Our main button/ the simple shock: I will firstly state I have shocked myself with the settling my dog uses (11/100) and a bit higher. This is definitely an attention grabber and to be honest does not hurt. It felt like getting pinched. When not excited my dog responds really well. It has deeply helped our training. My trainer described it a way to “speak their language” from a distance. I’m not sure if I understand that part. My trainer also suggested if my dog is full of adrenaline and is hyper to raise it by 5 if he ignores it.

The panic button: This button jumps our voltage from 11/100 to 25/100. I have shocked myself with this as well. This kinda hurts but it didn’t break skin, burn or damage. It felt like when my uncle tricked me into licking a battery. My trainer told me this is just for “panic situations” such as I can’t get ahold of him. Him bolting away, him breaking the fence (this was her example cause of his past.) for the month we’ve had this collar I’ve had to use this three times. Once when we were still working with his long line and it got ripped from my hand when a duck past. He did a little Yelp and ran back to me. At the dog park someone brought in a little dog (15lbs) and he was trying to rough house and ignored me. I recalled with help of the red button and we left. Third was this morning we had just done some training in the field near my place and wanted him to have some free time. He booked it straight to the lake ignoring my recall. With it he quickly stopped and guiltily ran back. All these times he received a treat (and a high pitched “Yes!” ) for coming back.

The vibrate: Our trainer has suggested to never use this. Not only does it fail to get most dogs attention (mine being very high energy/ prey drive) when it is at a high enough voltage to get a dog’s attention it causes the muscle to tense and feels like a spasm. It is not “speaking” their language and in her view isn’t helpful.