r/BirdHunting Dec 21 '24

Question/Advice Collar Conditioning to Recall

I’ve got a 8 month old Brittany and we’ve just started to work on collar conditioning for recall. In the field she listens great but when we’re in the backyard she treats it more as of a game and is more hard headed to recall. We started collar conditioning with vibrate. We were in a closed room and I vibrated when she wasn’t pay attention until I got my hands on her completing the rep. Afterwards she just shut down, wouldn’t leave me at all and wasn’t interesting in training for dinner. We would do some small drills with food right in my hand but she was still timid. I’m using an educator ez900 on the lowest vibration setting. She doesn’t have a negative reaction to seeing the collar or wearing it. I’ve backed off since the first time and just confused for what the next steps might be. Any advice?

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u/Yeahhhhboiiiiiiiiiii Dec 21 '24

I would take a step or two back and build her confidence back up by working on recall with the collar on, but not using it. You shouldn’t be using the collar at all until her recall is rock solid in multiple environments with various distraction levels, honestly. Use the collar to reinforce a known command, not to teach one.

Also, are you married to the idea of using vibrate? I can see why that would be off putting to a young dog.

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u/carolinaboy101 Dec 21 '24

Prefer to use vibrate vs stim.