First hand account of using an e-collar with a dog with recall problems.

Back in April I wrote the blog When treats are not enough. Which was about how I had changed my view to using e-collars and funnily the day after I published that blog someone who has one of our pups that is now over 2 years old contacted me saying, "your post on e-collars was very timely. After a year of gundog training and lots of progress in lots of areas, The recall is still awful and it's got to the point where it is too dangerous to let the dog off lead. The dog has ended up in roads and running around car parks and I just can't risk the consequences. I don't think a dog has the same quality of life being on a lead all the time and we all find it frustrating so I have made the decision to try an e-collar with the help of my dog trainer tomorrow.
I've been feeling ever so guilty about it but I hope it might work where everything else has failed. According to my trainer - and others I've spoken to - in most cases you only have to use the actual shock function once or twice before the "beep" function or simply having the collar on is enough of a deterrent. I hope this is the case. Quite simply though I know treats and distraction are not enough and - if it is not successful- at least I will have tried and will know that a lead will be a requirement for the foreseeable future."
I emailed them back with support and they replied telling me a bit about the trainer they were now using and the trainer they had stopped using, "I've been seeing a new trainer since Christmas and he is great - very level headed, calm and measured. I'd previously been seeing a completely neurotic woman who was inconsistent, made me cry most lessons as she'd tell me the dog was hopeless and I should re-home the dog but would then obsess about the dog  joining her gundog display team! Finding the new trainer has been a blessing and the dog is now whistle-trained, proofed from chasing sheep, rabbits and other dogs and overall really great - until the dog decides to bugger off and then there's very little I can do. He only uses e-collars as a last resort but thinks it could work well with my dog as the dog is smart, pick up on things quickly but is very willful."
Note the solution by the positive "neurotic" trainer was to re-home the dog. Give someone else the problem. Thankfully they did not take her advice and found a different trainer. I have been asked to keep the person and the dog's anonymity, as they said when recently sending me the review of the e-collar, "I've written a review of the collars, which I'll paste below. I'm afraid I've been a bit of a wuss and done it anonymously as I've heard of other people getting visits from the RSPCA when they have written things about e-collars or anything other than positive reinforcement training. I know it's very unlikely to happen, but I thought we could still get a helpful message across without putting my name or exact details. I hope that's ok."
Off course it was okay to not publish their name, I totally understand and just goes to show the ignorance out there surrounding the use of e-collars that someone would be visited by the RSPCA for writing about e-collars. Yes, e-collars can be misused, but I wear steal tipped toe capped boots and more dogs get violently assaulted by steal toe capped boots than get physically and mentally damaged by misuse of e-collars. We don't seem to have a problem with electric being used to teach horses, cows, pigs, chicken etc to stay within a certain area and believe me, you get zapped by electric fencing containing cattle etc you will know about it, but use it to stop dangerous behaviour in a dog. The world and it's wife is up in arms, when the majority have no experience of even training dogs. 
​Well, any way finally here is the first hand account of using an e-collar with a dog with recall problems.

"To give you some background, we got a puppy from Jane having previously owned dogs and wanting to give our children the same experience of growing up with a much-loved family pet. Initially training went well and the new addition was soon toilet trained, knew basic commands and had relatively good recall. However, around the six-seven month point that all began to change and she was soon showing a real hunting drive, running off at real speed and disappearing for increasingly long periods of time. Walks became stressful, but I hoped that perhaps she’d grow out of running off as she got older and moved out of the adolescent phase. I was wrong.
I invested a lot of time, effort and money into all sorts of training. I followed advice from books, took her to training in a church hall, moved on to one-to-one sessions at our home and, finally, to gundog training. At one point I was doing four hours of training a week, as well as the daily practice between lessons. I used every type of treat imaginable to try to lure her back. I used a long line to stop her running off and tried to build up distance and trust. I used a retractable lead. None of it offered a long-term solution. She is a high-energy and very intelligent dog and it was incredibly frustrating for both of us to have to keep her on the lead. She needed the freedom to be able to run around, but I simply couldn’t trust her to come back.
The gundog training had the best result and she was soon trained to a whistle and I could successfully call her away from other dogs, people, rabbits, sheep, etc. However, she was still prone to, without warning, belting off. We got into the position where she was, on occasion, running around car parks and into roads. She would disappear for up to an hour at a time. It was dangerous and couldn’t continue.
Two or three people had suggested using a shock collar but I was always completely outraged and said it was something I’d never do as I thought they were cruel. However, when my gundog trainer suggested that it might be the answer to the problems we were having, I started considering it and doing some research. This coincided with a post Jane wrote about e-collars, so I contacted her about it too. She gave me reassurance that I wasn’t being a lazy or unkind owner to consider giving it a try, so I decided to go ahead, although I still felt guilty about it. It wasn’t an easy decision to make.
The collar we used was quite simple: it had a sound function and a shock function, which you could alter across a range of levels. At the lower end, it felt like a mobile phone vibrating, at the mid-range it was like the static shock you get sometimes when you shake hands with someone and the high end was a sharp pain. I tried all of the levels on myself before trying anything on my dog as I wanted to make sure it was safe and to know exactly what she was going to experience. In practice, with the low end it didn’t even register with her, but moving it to low-to-middle she yelped and immediately returned to me. It certainly wasn’t pleasant, but I only had to use it twice on that first walk and she then happily remained close to me.
Since then I’ve put the collar on for every off-lead walk. I’ve had to use it a handful of times when she is in positions of real temptation to run off, but most of the time just using the sound function is enough to get her attention or simply the placebo effect of having it on in the first place. It has made the world of difference and has quickly delivered the results that over 18 months of training had failed to provide. She is really loving her walks again and it has helped build up a better bond between us as we walk together now rather than her running off. She isn’t stressed or fearful and gets excited when I put the collar on her as she knows it means we’re going to go for a nice walk. There have, however, been a couple of times when she has still run off because I’ve become complacent and haven’t triggered the sound function quick enough or recalled her soon enough and she has run out of range of the remote control. However, she now reappears after 5 minutes rather than an hour and as I have had more practice, this is very, very rarely happening.
In conclusion, I would highly recommend using an e-collar if you have persistent recall issues that you can’t address with standard positive reinforcement training. However, I think you need to know your dog’s character – it simply wouldn’t be suitable for a dog that was nervous or for a rescue dog where you don’t know their history. I’d also recommend that you use it under the supervision of a good trainer or having undergone some formal training already. It works particularly well for us because she knows what is expected of her from the whistle training already and this is a tool to be able to reinforce that when she is at a distance and decides to ignore me. You also need to keep a level head with it, use it as sparingly as possible and don’t use it when you are emotional or angry with the dog. It shouldn’t be a punishment, it should be a reinforcement used at the lowest possible level.
There’s a real joy now in seeing her running around off lead, enjoying her freedom and being able to channel her dog instincts, but knowing that I’m still in control. I am confident now I can recall her away from danger (roads, for example, or dogs on leads who may have aggression issues), away from the temptation of things like children with ice creams, and stop the risk of her being injured or stolen from disappearing for long periods of time. For me, that result has been worth the half a dozen times she has had a light static shock that has lasted two or three seconds"

Thank you for writing this for me and for the naysayers just read the bit about how the dog reacts when she knows she is going to have the e-collar on, "She isn’t stressed or fearful and gets excited when I put the collar on her as she knows it means we’re going to go for a nice walk."