Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Our big female Doberman was sold from one Doberman breeder to a second because she was so hard-headed and unruly. When she lost a litter of puppies in utero and had to have an emergency hysterectomy to save her life, the second breeder decided to place her in a home since she fought with the other dogs. She has a high prey drive that borders on psychotic, she is food aggressive with other dogs, has a very high threshold for pain, is ruled completely by her stomach & hunger (no matter how much she is fed) and she is hard-headed and stubborn. We are experienced Doberman owners and were kind of her last chance. Luckily she is incredibly affectionate and her high threshold for pain makes her patient with older children, like our son. We are considering a move to the country and in order to keep her - and keep her from being shot - it was necessary that we come up with a way to help her be more reliable off leash, on property that may or may not be fenced with neighboring animals & livestock that she might want to chase. I researched training collars and selected SportDOG Stubborn Dog model because of the quality and because I had never trained a dog as stubborn as her. She had an ear tumor slice-biopsied without yelping once so I knew her pain threshold was HIGH. When I put the collar on her and she cowered, I realized she had been badly shock collar trained while in the first breeder's care, who also had land. She IMMEDIATELY began doing a weird heel on my left side where she was leaning into me hard and tripping me up badly. I suspected the first breeder had too many dogs to work with her high energy and misunderstanding of the heel command. I spent the next couple of days un-training the slam-into-my-left-knee heel that she was attempting to do. Then I used the training collar kind of like a digital leash, teaching her one beep meant to stop what she was doing and come to me. (The correction of just the beep sent her into a panic but she appreciated me happily petting her when she came to me and was calm enough then to receive the next command.) I was doing off-leash training in our front yard when a friend pulled up with the window down and she went for the car, most likely to see if the friend had food. She ignored the beep and my off-leash Doberman was now in the middle of the street so I hit the button, which was on level 2. (I had selected this level guessing that if I had an emergency, she might be able to feel it and hopefully respond.) She yelped and immediately turned around to obey the command to come. I was surprised that the stubborn-level collar was that powerful. I have never tried level 7. She responds flawlessly to the beeps and vibration now, only having been corrected another time on level 1, which did not cause a yelp. She is a whole new dog. She listens, she obeys and she has SO MUCH MORE FREEDOM NOW! Every day we do an off-leash walk where I let her sniff, relax and unwind as we walk without the stress of leash corrections all the time. Before, she was so terrible on a leash. She would pull, I would correct her and she would "heel" by pushing into my leg and kind of cutting me off or bumping into me and making me trip up, only to pull on the leash again. Walking her was an exercise in patience and we had been doing this for the entire 4 years I have owned her without her understanding that I wanted her to walk relaxed on a loose leash. She was either ears-up and incredibly intense, looking for squirrels to chase or she was pushing me off the sidewalk, trying to heel. There was no in-between for her and I'm not an inexperienced owner or trainer. The collar is giving her the freedom to be off-leash and learn how to walk near me in a normal way, which will translate to much better on-leash walking. She is also learning that two rapid beeps are an invitation for her to push into me in her "heel" - which actually looks as if she is being very protective, trying stop me to stand between me and someone approaching me - and when she understands this behavior by command, she will understand when I am NOT commanding that behavior. In short, the collar is helping to free my Dobe from a cycle of confusion and now she's enjoying more frequent walks, less stressful training time and a better quality of life overall. She's going to love being a country girl and I know our family will enjoy her company for her entire beautiful life. To say that I am pleased with the collar is an understatement. It was well worth the investment to give my gorgeous girl so much freedom.