19/06/2026
I put a prong collar on Rumi. 🐾
I know. Stay with me. I’ve been sitting with this for a few months now as a dirty little secret and that didn’t feel right so here we go.
I am a positive trainer. And I tried a prong collar on my dog, because I wanted to know.
One of my favourite quotes is
‘The mind is like an umbrella. It only works when it's open.’
Rumi had developed a behaviour I didn't like. After greeting people, if they didn't have the treats he expected, because, I'll be honest, I taught him to expect them, he would use his front teeth. A little nip. Five seconds in. Frustrated. Confused. Expecting something that wasn't coming.
My mistake. My teaching. My problem to solve.
A talented friend who trains with tools saw me training him and offered to help . She had a prong in his size. She knows how to use one correctly. And we agreed on the fairest possible parameters, no handler correction. He would simply feel the collar if he chose to push forward. He would, in effect, correct himself.
And at first? It worked. Beautifully, efficiently, immediately.
And then I watched what happened next.
His tail came down. His ears came down. His whole body turned and he leaned with his full body, fully, heavily into me. 🐾
The trainer said: ‘that's normal, he'll get used to it.’
And I thought: yes. That's exactly the problem.
Because if he gets used to it, if discomfort becomes the background noise of greeting people, then it loses its effect. Which means the level of discomfort has to increase. And then increase again. And suddenly the logic of the whole thing started to unravel for me.
But that wasn't it.
The biggest thing I learned was this.
My Rumi, in a moment of confusion and discomfort, turned to me. He came to me. He pressed his whole body against mine and asked me to help him.
And I thought: I will never, ever be the person who ignores that. 💛
Experiment over. Collar off.
Not because the tool doesn't work, it does. Not because I'm judging anyone who uses one — every person, every dog, every situation is genuinely different, and I mean that. But because I understood something in that moment that I couldn't unfeel.
His behaviour was never his fault. He nips at people because I taught him to expect food from strangers. I created the expectation. I never taught him what to do when the expectation wasn't met. And asking my dog to pay a physical price for my own incomplete teaching?
That just didn't feel like cricket.
So here is where I have landed. Not as a judgment. As a clarity.
My clear, deep, non-negotiable intention is to have a dog who trusts, with every cell in his body, that his mum has his back. That she will never be the source of his pain, his fear, and i will not intimidate him.
Because when things got hard, he turned to me.
And I want to spend the rest of his life being worthy of that. 🐾💛
I'd love to know your thoughts and , just as you didn't judge me for reading to the end, I won't judge you either.
