Changing-Up Proteins for Your Dog or Cat

Holt Dog Walking Collar

Quite often we receive questions about how to get dogs to heel and what collar to use to achieve a satisfied dog-walking result, which consists of the dog not pulling you a mile down the road, and it’s been our experience that different dogs respond differently pending variables that consist of their personality, their background, and possible behavioral issues.

On this note of choosing a collar that works for a dogs with specific behavioral issues, we decided to try out the Holt dog collar on two different guys:  1) A sweet boy who stayed with us who was armed with lots of energy, a great desire to pull but needed to wear a head collar due to an infection he had on his neck; and 2) An aggressive guy who tends to lunge at everything from people walking to other dogs to bikes, etc.  So, we had two different dogs with different reasons for sporting a head collar (though both shared the common denominator of being noted very high energy boys on the energy scale).

The Dynamic of the Holt:

The Holt collar works at correcting the dog at the muzzle when they’re not performing on their walk correctly.  Correcting at the muzzle is something that “mama” dogs do especially to older pups (when pups are very young, mother dogs tend to scruff them a lot), and it’s also followed by a specific bark mixed with a growl if you will.  So, as far as the collar simulating the mother’s correction, it obviously doesn’t mimic it exactly (lack of pronged teeth for the tooth effect of course) but at least corrects at the right location and does well otherwise.

An interesting safety feature, and the only feature that made this collar worth buying quite honestly in our opinion, is that it comes with a safety catch if you will.  There is a safety clip that hooks from the head collar to the dog’s regular collar so that on the off-chance he tries to get the head collar off and succeeds, the leash would still be affixed to his regular collar where escape wouldn’t be possible.  This is a huge pro especially if someone or something else distracts you for a moment during your walk and the dog has the head collar off before you can respond.

When we used the collar on our “foster fur-kid” (the name we give all pets that are in our care) with the neck infection, the results were favorable.  He responded instantly to the correction at the muzzle, as opposed to, correction via a pronged collar, which he responded to fairly well but as you know about prongs, they have a tendency to slip too far down the neck so you’re constantly stopping the walk, repositioning the collar to sit at the base of the skull (where correction is received) before you can begin to resume your walk correctly and effectively.

Now, when we used the Holt collar on our little “red case” sweetie who has  aggressive tendencies, you would have thought you were watching a rodeo!  However, after bucking and doing his best to get the muzzle off, in between corrections, he finally succumbed to it and walked pleasantly.  The benefit of this collar for him was that it acted as a restraint because of the collar fitting over the muzzle.  A kudos for the collar to say the least!

At the conclusion of the trial for this collar, at least for the above two dogs with their specific behavioral issues, the collar worked well.

Remember, whatever collar you choose to put on your dog, you first have to be the pack leader.  This will be noted in your attitude and the way you carry yourself 🙂  No collar will work unless you have the basic dynamics of such leadership established and understood—first.