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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29349 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

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It is? I have literally never encountered anyone in real life that uses one or even talked of using one outside of joking about doing something cartoonishly evil.

It’s a common tool for things like snake training your dog. A dog’s prey instinct and natural curiosity can get it killed or maimed in a number of ways, so it CAN be useful as a training tool to help stop dangerous behavior.

I have very nice neighbors who trained or tried to train a dog to stop barking inside with one. I live in a very normy, probably even slightly upper middle class, burb.

Everyone I knew growing up with a dog used a shock collar.

Have you not encountered invisible fences? They are extremely common and widespread in my experiences and use shocks based on proximity to the fence

I am confident most invisible fences have an allowable area greater than 3 feet by 2 feet.

Invisible fences exist and are common. They also are easy for the dog to understand. They are clearly defined boundaries with geographic markers at all times. You train the dog on them at what we think is mild discomfort levels of pain so they stay in the yard and dont get hit by a dump truck. But also they get to be in the freaking yard! Which toddlers (who are smarter than said dogs) dont get to do unsupervised.

I've not encountered their use. I've encountered conversations about them not working very well and essentially amounting to lazy owners abusing their dogs. This is from Americans exclusively, seeing as they're illegal or heavily restricted in much of Europe.

Anecdotal evidence, of course, but in my neighborhood multiple houses have them and they work quite well. Maybe this is one of those situations where you really need to teach the dog about the invisi-fence rather than just installing it and assuming the dog will react the way you want, so it'll work well for the conscientious owner and poorly for the lazy owner.

so it'll work well for the conscientious owner and poorly for the lazy owner.

That may well be true, but its also true that the conscientious owner doesn't need an invisi-fence, so what effect does their availablity really have?

I do believe there's some space in between, "dog is trained enough to respect the invisi-fence" and "dog is trained so well it can be trusted to stay in an open yard regardless of how many squirrels, kids, etc may come running by".

My father got a shock collar for one of our dogs when I was a kid in the 90s-00s, to let her out in our yard without having to worry about her running away. It didn't work for keeping her "fenced in," as she would respond to the shock by just running even faster until she left the area. I didn't think much of it at the time, both as a kid and as a Korean immigrant who grew up with dogs being little more than props to put in your yard to keep thieves out.

It’s pretty normal for big dog owners around here. But I also live in a bubble where everyone spanks their kids, so acceptability of corporal punishment is just higher.

E-collars are extremely common for people with dogs and land, especially people with hunting dogs.

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/outdoor-recreation/sporting-dog-tracking-training-devices/

When we got a dog, and had it professionally trained, they used a shock collar. They also gave use the shock collar, and instructed us on it's use. It was really helpful training the dog to stop jumping on people, because it scared our daughter so badly she was hesitant to come out of her room if the dog was around. Later on, when we got a geofenced collar, it's also a shock collar. Basically an invisible fence collar, except it uses a GPS instead of a buried wire.

Now that I think about, everyone I knew with well trained dogs has them on shock collars. But maybe that's regional or social bubble related.

When we got a dog, and had it professionally trained, they used a shock collar. They also gave use the shock collar, and instructed us on it's use.

This is when shock collars are good. Professional people who actually knew what the fuck they were doing trained your dog, and then further trained you on how to be a good trainer to your dog.

Hassan seems like... 0 of those things are true?

Now that I think about, everyone I knew with well trained dogs has them on shock collars. But maybe that's regional or social bubble related.

I would assume so. As I said, I know literally no-one that uses them and that includes Trump voting Americans with land (California, Nevada and Colorado).

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