Aversive

Anything a dog will work to avoid — a prong collar, a shock, a jerk on the lead, a shout — used to make a behaviour stop.

Also called: prong collar · shock collar · e-collar · choke chain · correction

The honest description of an aversive is not "a correction" but "something unpleasant enough that the dog changes its behaviour to avoid it". If it were not unpleasant it would not work, so the marketing language around some of these tools is doing a lot of lifting.

The predictable side effect is association. The dog does not necessarily connect the discomfort to its own behaviour; it may connect it to whatever it was looking at, which is frequently another dog, a child, or a stranger. That is how a lead correction aimed at pulling produces a dog that is worse around other dogs.

Aversives are legal and widely sold in India. That is not the same as being the shortest route to a calm dog.

If this is your dog

Related words

Not sure whether this is what you are dealing with?

Fifteen minutes on the phone, free, and we will tell you honestly what it would take.