Easier, Faster = short cut. I had open all age pointers, and horseback open shooting dogs for years. Never had a collar on them. My big complaint is that the collar becomes the easy answer to everything. If used incorrectly, and a very few amatuers or pros truly understand the process, the potential to do damage to a young dog is exagerated. There's a reason for puppy and derby stakes, and admittedly there is pressure to show a finished performance in derby stakes, but it results in a lot of collar spoiled dogs. To much pressure, to young. Field trialing and hunting have devolved into almost unrelated activities. As you say, when you are hunting, your trial training. When I'm hunting, I'm hunting, to put game in the pot, and enjoy some comraderie with my dogs and companions. My dogs need to be pretty strong on fundamentals, in the life immitating art example, trials are the art that immitates hunting. Purpose of the trial is to identify individuals which demonstrate propensity to carry on genetically traits which make superior hunting dogs. Hunting being the real world test of value. Along with these traits of search, point, nose, and style, maybe we should add biddability, intelligence, trainability, and conformation necessary to do the job. If a breed becomes such that all generations become fire breathing, runoff, bird busting hellions, that need to be ground down with log chains, or electric collars, maybe we should question what we are doing. Put another way, if an average backyard amatuer, can't train a dog to perform to a respectable standard, and is as a matter of course, forced to go to a pro to solve problems, or do our training for us , we need to evaluate our breeding and trial standards. I can stop my dogs at the road, whoa and recall them in the presence of snakes,(never had one bit), they all back, and they are all staunch, didn't happen at 18 months either, but they hunt for me, range as big as the country allows, and are a pleasure to be around. Trials are a dog shows, a subjective and sometimes bias opinion of two men on any given day, a pleasant diversion in the off season, with less and less pertinence to upland bird hunting.[/QUOTE
key is using the ecollar correctly. my dogs are 9 months old or older before i break them out and been through a lot of drills and birds before hand. the key is setting stimulation to where the animal just turns his head and dont over use the collar. every dog will have a different setting. you need to be close and give voice comands at the sametime. they are a big tool in my training process along with remote launchers and auto backers to blank guns. they really help with teaching a dog to whoa and back. well bred and trained animal can be controlled on its range according to terrian and target bird by the handler. my 2 pennys..:thumbsup: