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As somebody who lives and breathes prey drive in dogs, I am fascinated by this question. I’ve been researching this area for years. I work full time helping people with their high prey drive dogs.
For over 20 years I have lived with high prey drive dogs. My personal dogs have ranged in their responses to prey from chasing, catching, killing and eating prey to tracking it for miles and being gone for hours. Full disclosure about my biases. I’ve trained all my dogs to be able to be off lead around prey without them killing things or running off and have never used an e-collar so I don’t think they are necessary. For sure, the more extreme dogs made me learn new skills and that meant their training took longer but that was all.
Let’s dig into this fascinating subject area together. I’ll let you learn what I learned while researching it.
Let’s start by looking at the things that might make people feel as if the treats and toys training they are doing isn’t working and that the dog they have needs something stronger to make them listen. I found a few categories that led people to believe that an e-collar is an essential piece of kitfor off lead training with high prey drive dogs.
I’ll talk through them just in case you are feeling like one of these applies to you and your dog. I want you to know that if you are feeling trapped by your dog’s behaviour and as if you may have to train with an e-collar even though you would rather not, that there is another way to consider these.
When I researched, I saw many comments from people who were frustrated and saying things like:
I’ve seen so many trainers and behaviourists. I’ve done everything they tell me to do and I’m still having problems with my dog. Then I saw another trainer who recommended an e-collar so we are using that now.
The first thing – and I know this is hard to hear if it has happened to you - is that the chances are, the people making those comments were not doing what the trainer told them to do. This isn’t an attempt to shame people in any way so if you do feel a bit triggered by what I’ve said, let’s dig into it a bit more.
When learning new skills, it is normal to suck at them. There is no shame in it. It’s just a normal part of learning. The biggest thing that came out of my published research was how hard it is for people to be successful at doing something new. Over 50% of the people I asked to play with their dog in a new way were not successful. What they needed was more coaching and my experimental design didn’t allow for that.
The great news about all of this is that even if it is hard, you can learn new skills. As much as it sucks to do something and be bad at it, it doesn’t suck nearly as much as forcing yourself to train your dog in a way that you worry will hurt them. Plus, going through the process of learning to do new things will benefit your life overall.
If you are in that situation where you are doing everything your trainer tells you to and it isn’t working, I have some advice.
Make sure you are working with a trainer who is experienced at training high prey drive dogs to be off lead around prey .
Then plan to work with them regularly over a longer period of time. You need time to learn the skills and that won’t happen overnight. Plan to work with them at least twice a month for a year. That way you’ve got time to iron out all of the issues and make sure that you are doing what the trainer suggests. Then you will start to see results.
If you want to get my help, I am more than happy to help you no matter where you are in the world. My High Prey Drive Club is designed to allow members to get constant help and support from me for a year. You can get my help daily if you want it.
I found that many of the people reporting that training with treats and toys didn’t work had young dogs aged between 6 months and 2 years of age. They’d found that at some point during that time in their dog’s life, their previously obedient puppy had transformed into a dog who just didn’t listen to them. Suddenly chasing squirrels, playing with other dogs, running off and generally being disobedient happened way more often.
In fact, it was often that unruly behaviour that had triggered them to see the treats and toy trainer in the first place.
Here’s the thing about dogs between 6 months and 2 years of age. They are busy growing their adult brain. They get a strong need to go off exploring by themselves and feel convinced that nothing bad could possibly happen leading them to take more risks. Not only that but adult feelings like sex and prey drive appear during that time of life.
Probably the hardest part of that stage in a dog’s life is that their ability to control themselves and resist their impulses disappears and doesn’t come back until the final stages of their adult brain developing. For most of those months, you are living with a dog who simply doesn’t have the neurological structures that would allow them to stop chasing that squirrel.
The trick to getting through it is to do three things consistently:
1. Use lots of management to help your young dog get things right. If you know they’re going to chase any squirrel they see, use a lead or a long line when you walk in places with squirrels.
2. Keep training them – but make it easy for them to get it right. Reduce your expectations right down and celebrate even tiny successes. At this stage, a single sit or a wait of a few seconds are wins.
3. Find safe places to give them freedom to run freely and be wild. They aren’t challenging you when they act like that – they are responding to the way that their body and mind feels. It is important that they get to be the young dogs they are whenever you can.
The last thing to note is that their prey drive is not a phase. When it arrives, it is adult dog behaviour. If you do have a dog with a high prey drive, adjust your expectations of what them being trained looks like. The reality is that you are always going to be doing some training with your dog to help them behave well around prey. A huge part of being successful is building those habits for yourself so that it just becomes part of what you do with your dog like feeding them, brushing them and taking them to the vet.
I am here to help you if you feel like you need a hand getting through that stage. The High Prey Drive Club is carefully designed to support anybody with a high prey drive dog in getting the skills and habits that they need for a happy life with their dog.
The belief that an individual dog was different because of the strength of their prey drive led some people to use e-collars in their training. Different things seem to cause people to label their dog as having a super high prey drive.
Sometimes it seemed to be linked to what their dog does with prey. In particular, dogs who kill prey animals or birds were thought to have a super high prey drive.
Sometimes what causes that label to be applied was people feeling like they couldn’t get through to their dog when prey is around.
Sometimes it was applied to the dogs who don’t eat or play with toys when there might be prey around.
Regardless, once that label was applied, what I saw in my research was that it acted to mentally paint people into a corner. They felt as if they had no choice but to use an e-collar because only the ability to hurt their dog at a distance would be enough with a special case dog like their dog.
I always think it’s worthwhile questioning labels. Some dogs who kill prey are pretty easy to train to leave it alone. An intense focus on prey is common in many dogs who just don’t have all that high a prey drive. Some of those dogs will stand at the foot of trees and bark at squirrels for ages – but they don’t have much real drive. Refusing food is common in dogs with a high prey drive. It can seem extreme but on its own it doesn’t indicate an enormous prey drive. And those dogs can learn to accept food as a reward. When toys aren’t offered in the right way, they are often refused and again, but that doesn’t indicate a super high prey drive – just that the dog’s predatory needs haven’t been understood.
This links back the fact that learning new skills is not comfortable. For some people, making the problem be about their dog feels better than accepting that they have things to learn.
The thing is, it is more empowering to learn new skills than it is to bounce from training method to training method looking for the magic bullet that will fix all the problems. There is no magic bullet when it comes to training high prey drive dogs. The magic is inside you. The magic is your ability to learn new skills and to understand your dog better.
If you struggle with feelings that you are not good enough or that learning how to train your dog would be too hard, start with working on your mindset. I have a high prey drive mindset journal that you can buy and work through. It will help you to rid yourself of those feelings so that you can properly focus on learning to get the life you dream of with your dog.
In some of what I came across, the dog’s breed was given as the reason that a particular dog had a high prey drive and had to be trained with an e-collar. Breed comes up again and again in discussions about both prey drive and training. In the UK people who spend their time training working gundogs have a saying:
Labradors are born half trained and spaniels die half trained
Of course breed matters. It makes a massive difference to what you should expect from a dog. When choosing a dog, looking at what they were bred to do is an excellent idea because their breed does matter. But - there is a whole lot of variation within breeds. We do now have some research into this that challenges breed stereotypes and highlights just how much individual variation there is in breeds. From that research, the two traits worth looking at are:
Environmental Interest: Dogs with a high prey drive will have high environmental interest – because that’s where the prey is. That is why it can be so hard to get through to them.
Biddability: Dogs who are more biddable follow instructions from people more easily. The Labradors vs spaniels saying I mentioned above, comes from a belief that Labs are more biddable than spaniels. Independent dogs are less likely to follow instructions.
The research included over 2,000 dogs and didn’t make things as clear cut as that. Let’s look at percentages by breed.
| Greyhounds | 25% |
| Beagles | 13% |
| Cocker spaniels | 36% |
| Labradors | 48% |
| Jack russells | 31% |
| Greyhounds | 54% |
| Beagles | 74% |
| Cocker spaniels | 44% |
| Labradors | 32% |
| Jack russells | 50% |
| Greyhounds | 25% |
| Beagles | 39% |
| Cocker spaniels | 50% |
| Labradors | 37% |
| Jack russells | 64% |
| Greyhounds | 57% |
| Beagles | 42% |
| Cocker spaniels | 42% |
| Labradors | 39% |
| Jack russells | 20% |
Those numbers show that there is some truth to the Lab and spaniel stereotype.
The tricky thing is that one of the things that makes dogs look more independent and more focused on the environment is lack of clarity in training. I work with lots of people who start out feeling as if their dog is just too focused on prey to get through to. Then we start our work together. We find that as the person’s training skills improve, things get clearer for the dog AND suddenly they get much more attention from their dog.
For sure there are some dogs who will never become reliable through training but the only way to find out if your dog is one of those dogs is to improve your training skills and then see what difference that makes.
If you do have a dog who seems stubborn and impossible to get through to when prey is around and you do want to explore the difference learning new skills will make, then you are more than welcome to find a community of support – and get help from me – in the High Prey Drive Club.
This one comes up again and again. The idea is that prey drive is so instinctive for dogs that only pain will stop them.
While researching for this blog I came across a great example that really highlights this way of thinking. The interview was with Temple Grandin who is a world renowned animal behaviourist. She is particularly famous for designing slaughterhouses to make them more humane for the animals who end their lives in them. To my knowledge, Temple Grandin has no special knowledge about training animals or about prey drive other than what she will learned from people who work with livestock. Dogs absolutely do cause great harm to livestock and loose dogs are a huge concern to farmers across the world.
The interviewer asked is she would ever consider using punishment as a way of disciplining an animal. Temple Grandin replied:
There's only one thing where punishment is - you just about have to use punishment and that's stopping prey-drive behavior. Youve got a dog that's killing cats or you’ve got a dog that's killing sheep and they’ve already done it. I absolutely despise shock collars and I despise a lot of the things that hunters are doing with shock collars. I think it's totally wrong. But there's one legitimate use for it: Car chasing, jogger chasing, cat killing, deer chasing, anything that's prey-drive behavior. And this is not aggression and it's not fear. It's a very special other kind of emotion that the animal has. And you'd want to put the collar on, have the dog wear it for two days, and then - because you never want him to find out that the collar did it. And then one day a thunderbolt from the sky blasts him for chasing deer.
The claim here is that because prey drive is a special kind of emotion, the only way to deal with it is to ‘blast’ the dog with a painful shock.
The thing is that because prey drive is so linked to survival in predatory animals, it is something that is modified through learning all the time. A wolf who cannot adapt their behaviour to cope with changes in the weather and the behaviour of the animals around them is a wolf who won’t survive long. Launching into a chase on first sight of a deer is mostly going to result in the deer disappearing off into the distance while the wolf remains hungry.
Not only that but dogs are a species who pay close attention to humans and we know that they can learn to control their instincts. Even the ‘die half trained’ spaniels. In the UK where I live, every year many spaniels go to work on shoots. Most of the working spaniels will have a high prey drive and be particularly interested in using their noses to find hidden birds. That’s why they are there.
Untrained spaniels who are left to their own devices very often catch and kill birds and rabbits. I’ve spoken with many people who’ve been forced to do a walk of shame home with their spaniel who has refused to put down a bird or rabbit that they’ve caught.
Trained working spaniels will search out the birds hidden in undergrowth and get close enough to them so that the birds fly. When that happens, the dogs are expected to either stay still or put their nose down and find the next bird. Chasing or grabbing the bird is off limits to those dogs. Sometimes the hard working spaniels will be sent to retrieve shot birds but often, they’ll be expected to just stay out of the way while another dog does that job.
The difference between the dogs forcing their families to do a walk of shame while they hold a rabbit or bird firmly in their jaws and the dogs who can find but not chase or pick up birds is training.
In the UK almost all working gundogs are trained without e-collars. They aren’t a common part of that culture here. Here we are seeing increasing numbers of people who train their working dogs using treats and toy based training methods.
The claim that prey drive is a special category of behaviour somehow immune to training just doesn’t hold up against the reality of what many people are doing with dogs. Blasting them with a shock would be counterproductive because the trainers want the dogs to find the birds. A dog who avoids pheasants isn’t going to be useful on pheasant shoot.
The difference between the person who happily trains their high prey drive spaniel to work with them around prey and the person who cannot is that the first person spends time learning from people who can help them. They keep doing it throughout their dog’s life. The second person either doesn’t know that they could train their dog or has decided that their dog is impossible to train and so isn’t trying.
If you want help training your dog how to be a working gundog, I would strongly recommend finding a good gundog trainer to help you. If your dog is a pet and you want to enjoy walks with them, you can absolutely come and learn from me in the High Prey Drive Club.
Let’s have a look at what scientific studies say on this subject. I know, I know – that sort of thing can feel irrelevant but the reason to consider some of the science is that while studies give narrow information, they do gather up lots of information and analyse it. What they find is worthwhile knowing about.
I’m going to choose just a few studies. Two that directly compared training with e-collars and training with treats and toys. Two that looked at the information gathered in New Zealand by the Department of Conservation through their Kiwi Aversion Training.
The first of these studies to be carried out was in 2014 by Cooper et al. (if you aren’t familiar, et al. just means that a bunch of researchers did the research and the person first on the list of authors was Cooper). When I’m talking about this, I’m going to focus on the effectiveness of each training method. The researchers also looked at welfare measures but since this is a blog about training, I’m going to focus on that.
The researchers gathered together dogs and dog trainers. To let them compare, they had 3 groups:
Group A: The dogs were trained using e-collars and the training carried out by experienced e-collar trainers.
Group B: The dogs were trained using treats and toys by experienced e-collar trainers.
Group C: The dogs were trained using treats and toys by trainers who belonged to an organisation that does not permit members to use e-collars.
In each of the groups, the dogs were there for training for the same reasons. Mostly the problems were about the dogs not paying attention and not coming back when called – some of the dogs would chase livestock and wildlife.
There were 63 dogs in total in the study split across the three groups so the sample size was pretty good. The training all took place in outside areas and in each location, a small flock of sheep and a small flock of chickens were placed in pens in the training area. The e-collar trainers each used devices they were familiar with.
After the training was completed, the researchers followed up with the owner of each dog. They wanted to see how the people living with the dogs felt about the problem they’d needed help with after the training. Most of the people from all 3 groups – just over 90% were happy with the advice they received. For group A and C dogs just over 90% of the owners reported that the training had improved the problem they were having. Just over 88% of the owners of the group B dogs reported an improvement.
For this study, it looked like training method wasn’t all that important – what was important was trainers who had put the hours in learning how to train helping with the dogs. You can see the impact that honing skills had. More owners reported improvement where the dogs were trained by trainers who were working in their skill set. The group B trainers had to train in a way that wasn’t where their skills lay and owners of dogs in that group reported less improvement.
Let’s move on and look at the more recent study by Johnson and Wynne. This research team were teaching dogs who chase things to come back when called. In their study they wanted to address some of the limitations they saw in the Cooper et al. study. They made the following changes:
The same two dog trainers did all of their training. Both trainers are highly experienced e-collar trainers, one of whom has huge success on the competition field with his dogs.
They used the same location for all of their training.
They started with much higher levels of shock from the e-collars for every dog. The trainers who worked with Cooper et al tended to start at a lower level and then increase if they needed to. Johnson and Wynne felt that made the training less effective. So they started at a higher level – in a way that was similar to Temple Grandin’s "thunderbolt from the sky".
The training sessions for these trainers was done using a mechanical lure on a training field free from wildlife, livestock and the general public. The dogs were permitted to chase the lure. Only dogs who would chase the lure were included in the study.
This study also used three groupings:
Group A: An e-collar was used and the lure was moving at full speed.
Group B: Food rewards were used and the lure was moving at full speed.
Group C: Food rewards were used and the lure started at a slow speed with the speed gradually increased.
This study had a total of 18 dog which meant that each group was small.
The trainers used a protocol with the e-collars that they were familiar with. The dogs chased the lure one day. The next day, when they chased the lure, the trainer said ‘banana’ and then if the dog didn’t stop chasing and return to them, the dog was shocked.
All of the Group A dogs yelped in pain during training. This is worthwhile noting because one of the things that is often said about e-collar training is that it does not hurt the dogs. This study used trainers with huge experience at that style of training and the research team also have decades of experience at studying dogs. We can trust that if this study reported the dogs yelping in pain, that they were indeed feeling pain. It is worthwhile bearing in mind therefore that if you were to choose to use an e-collar to train your high prey drive dog, you are almost certainly going to have to hurt them.
The training of the group B and C dogs was interesting because it was so poorly executed. The paper described how to train dogs to return when called if they are chasing something but then the trainers did something entirely different from that. The trainers let the dogs start chasing, said their word ‘banana’ and then dropped a single treat into a metal bowl behind the now chasing dog.
Not surprisingly, none of the group B and C dogs learned to return to the trainer when they heard the word ‘banana’. They all continued chasing. This situation is a great example of what happens when people are asked to do something unfamiliar as I did in my research. In spite of being experienced dog trainers, when asked to train in a way outside of their skill set, the attempts they made were done so poorly that it would never work.
Anyway, the group A dogs all learned to return when they heard the word ‘banana’ although it is worthwhile noting that a quarter of them had to be removed from the study because it took over 20 shocks to get them to respond. For ethical reasons the researchers had agreed that none of the dogs would receive such a high amount of shocks. So when the videos were reviewed and it turned out that a quarter of the dogs had been shocked more often than had been agreed, those dogs were removed from the study.
Then the training was tested. The dogs were taken to a different area of the same sterile training environment and the lure was replaced with a soft toy. When that happened, 67% of the group A dogs chased the lure.
This training took place in a sterile area. No members of the public with children kicking balls or other dogs running around. No prey. Nothing exciting. Excitement and real prey changes things for dogs. It makes chasing much more likely. I would fully expect that if confronted with a deer or a squirrel that more than 67% of the group A would chase.
There were two articles published by the same research group, Dale et al. – one in 2013 and one in 2017. They were able to access large amounts of data about e-collar training and prey drive. At the time of the research, the Department of Conservation in New Zealand were attempting to boost kiwi numbers. Dogs pose a threat to the birds but having them hunt with people in areas where kiwi live can help the birds by removing animals who damage the environment like feral pigs, deer and goats. The kiwi aversion training program was put together with the aim of having the dogs hunt animals other than kiwi. Anybody wishing to hunt with dogs in areas with kiwi had to get a certificate showing that their dog had gone through the training.
The training sessions used e-collars and kiwi substitutes – dead kiwi that had been stuffed or frozen. The dogs were given a shock if they made contact with the substitutes. They would pass the training when the dog started to avoid the substitutes. The idea behind it is simple – to get the dogs to associate the sight and scent of kiwi with a painful shock.
The 2013 study involved the researchers observing the training of 120 dogs. That study showed that the training made the dogs avoid the substitutes and that most dogs kept avoiding the substitutes for at least a year after going through the training.
For the 2017 study the researchers looked at information gathered for 1156 dogs for all training sessions between 1998 and 2007 at one of the training locations. In that study, the researchers describe the training as “less than completely effective”.
In both studies, they noted an additional and significant concern for anybody with a pet dog who they take out on walks. The training was all done using kiwi substitutes. They had no way to find out if the training was reducing the amount of kiwi killed by dogs. Nor could they tell if the training translated from the substitutes to live kiwi. Prey substitutes are commonly used when training hunting dogs in the UK and in other parts of the world. A range of pelt covered articles are available to buy as are bottles of animal scent and mechanical devices that mimic prey.
Substitutes are widely used in training especially by people training dogs to find birds and then not chase or grab them. However, most dogs then need to be trained around the live prey as well. The substitutes can only take training so far because they don’t move like live animals or birds and they don’t smell like real live prey. If the only training I had done was with a rabbit pelt being dragged across the ground in front of my dog or with a rabbit skin toy that put on the ground somewhere, I would expect my dog would still chase a live rabbit. If I wanted my dog to ignore running rabbits, I would train around rabbits and would not rely on using substitutes.
In my quest for information on this subject I found many questions posted in various places from people with dogs who were often described as having a super high prey drive asking how they could better use their e-collar to stop their dog chasing.
The issue that was described again and again was the need to turn the collar up very high and shock the dog for long periods to get them to stop and even then, the dog would take off again after something else a few minutes later. Some people were in a worse situation because their dog would ignore even high levels of shock and continue chasing – sometimes for long periods of time. People who had trained with e-collars were still struggling to have their dogs under control around prey.
The advice from people offering help was all along the lines of:
Learn to observe your dog better because once they are chasing, their adrenaline levels will kill any pain from the e-collar and the dog will ignore it.
Train a recall using treats and toys. Then gradually introduce distractions and gradually work up to using prey as distractions.
An e-collar is not a safety net that will bring a badly trained dog under control.
Work with a trainer to improve your dog training skills.
This does not surprise me at all. The challenges with prey drive are not linked to dog training method. The one thing I’ve consistently noticed in my years of working in this area is that the people who struggle less with high prey drive dogs are all doing the same thing. They all learn great dog training skills, they all train their dogs often, they are all good observers of their dogs and focus on their dogs when they are out with them.
From looking at all of the above, it seems to me that while people focus on different things, the challenge is the same. The e-collar people worry about levels and how high to turn the collar up. The treats and toys people like me worry about what we can offer that is of value to our dogs. But it is the same problem – how to handle instinctive behaviour when your dog’s instincts make them tune you out?
I know that I’ve said this many times already but the way to do it is to learn to be a better dog trainer. There are no shortcuts when it comes to training high prey drive dogs. That’s great news because it is so empowering to learn how to do things well.
I’m going to go ahead and assume that if you are reading this blog that you are considering using an e-collar with your dog because you’ve been told it’s essential but you are hesitant about it. If you’ve been hesitating because it doesn’t sound like a training method that you’d like to use, then I hope I’ve helped you to see that an e-collar won’t fix your prey drive problems any more than any other training method you might choose.
That’s because you need to do more than just train. There are 6 things to be working on to get your dog’s prey drive under control.
High prey drive dogs need to know three things.
1. Stop: A signal that they should go still.
2. Turn: A signal that they should change direction.
3. Recall: A signal that they should return to you.
You can train all of those with treats and toys and in fact, most of the e-collar trainers I watched videos of or read advice from recommended doing just that.
No matter how you are going to train your dog, developing your observation skills is essential with high prey drive dogs. You need to learn how to monitor your dog’s body language to tell how well they will be able to listen to you. You need to learn to read the place where you are and understand what your dog is likely to do there. And you need to be able to put it all together to know when you can push your training on and when you need to take a step back.
Your dog needs to learn how to control themselves around things that are exciting. The great news is that the ability to control themselves around prey is something that most predators can learn. Being able to control themselves and wait for the optimal moment helps them to stay alive. There is a great chance that your dog can learn to control themselves too.
Your dog’s prey drive is part of who they are. To stay happy they need to be able to perform prey related behaviour. When you know how to do it, toys and food can stand in as substitutes for prey where needed.
High prey drive dogs easily develop behaviour problems if they don’t regularly get outlets. Things like resource guarding, obsession with prey on walks, being destructive in the home, barking loads and aggression toward other dogs are all problems that happen when our dogs don’t have their innate needs met.
This is another piece of the puzzle that you’ll do no matter what training method you use. If you have a high prey drive dog, there is no short cut to training them. To maximise your training efforts, it is important that your dog isn’t regularly going off after prey and practicing the very things you are trying to stop them from doing. Management just means using fences, leads and taking care around the doors of your home so that your dog isn’t routinely undoing all your training by taking off.
This is something for you. No matter what you do, you are going to spend time and effort on this. The process of learning new things is not easy. Working on your mindset is what will get you success.
If you need help with all of this, the High Prey Drive Club covers all 6 of these areas and you are welcome to join as a member.
If you feel like you might not be ready to tackle upping your training skill level, you can also check out my high prey drive mindset journal It will help you deal with the mental blocks that are stopping you increasing your training skill level.
From all of this research that I’ve just written up here, my conclusion has to be that I cannot find evidence that e-collars are a necessary piece of equipment when it comes to training high prey drive dogs. The limitation with all training for dogs with high prey drives is that most dogs are more aware of prey than most people are. When we take them out and walk them, they encounter prey on most walks. That’s why training is not just about training but about all the other parts I mentioned above too.
The great news is that means that if you don’t like the idea of e-collars, there is no need to use them and no need to feel as if your dog would be safer or more free – or any of the other things that people selling e-collar training talk about – with one than they are without one.
The training method is not what gives you success. What will give you success is inside you. It is your ability to learn, to gain new skills and develop new habits. Train in a way that feels right to you and start finding professionals who can help you learn everything you need to learn.
Cooper, J.J., Cracknell, N., Hardiman, J., Wright, H. and Mills, D., 2014. The welfare consequences and efficacy of training pet dogs with remote electronic training collars in comparison to reward based training. PloS one, 9(9), p.e102722. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0102722
Dale, A.R., Podlesnik, C.A. and Elliffe, D., 2017. Evaluation of an aversion-based program designed to reduce predation of native birds by dogs: An analysis of training records for 1156 dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 191, pp.59-66. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2017.03.003
Dale, A.R., Statham, S., Podlesnik, C.A. and Elliffe, D., 2013. The acquisition and maintenance of dogs’ aversion responses to kiwi (Apteryx spp.) training stimuli across time and locations. Applied animal behaviour science, 146(1-4), pp.107-111. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2013.04.006
Johnson, A.C. and Wynne, C.D., 2024. Comparison of the efficacy and welfare of different training methods in stopping chasing behavior in dogs. Animals, 14(18), p.2632. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/ani14182632
Morrill, K., Hekman, J., Li, X., McClure, J., Logan, B., Goodman, L., Gao, M., Dong, Y., Alonso, M., Carmichael, E. and Snyder-Mackler, N., 2022. Ancestry-inclusive dog genomics challenges popular breed stereotypes. Science, 376(6592), p.eabk0639. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abk0639
Temple Grandin: The Woman Who Talks to Animals. (2010) NPR, 05 February [online] Available at: https://www.npr.org/2010/02/05/123383699/temple-grandin-the-woman-who-talks-to-animals, [Accessed: 14 February 2025]
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I am the founder of Best Dog Learning and Stuff and a massive prey drive enthusiast. I've lived with high prey drive dogs for over 20 years and I love them. I run the awesome High Prey Drive Club where I help my members learn to have fabulous walks and happy lives with their high prey drive dogs.
I am a published researcher in my field with both my original research and my review of the literature looking at prey drive in dogs being published in the respected journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
I peer review for Applied Animal Behaviour Science to help bring quality research into the world.
I am the author of Canine aggression: Rehabilitating an aggressive dog with kindess and compassion.
I want to show you how easy and fun it can be to have a high prey drive dog.
If you'd like help with your dog, I'm ready to help you right now.