Training

Wolfwill Vibration Collar: The Negatives

Published: October 27, 2019 Updated: October 28, 2019

spud — Spud is a deaf double-merle French Bulldog. In our one and only testing session with him, he never developed a positive conditioned emotional response (CER) with the vibration and treats. Further, with more trials, he began to grow anxious, so we ended the testing.

I found the concept of a vibration collar potentially useful. But in practice, there were a number of things I didn’t like about the Wolfwill vibration collar:

It’s marketed as an aversive. The text on the box says, “When you push on a button… He’ll quickly learn the association between his behavior and your correction; in no time, you’ll have a better-behaved pet.” The instruction booklet inside also describe its use as a punishment tool rather than as a positive communication tool.
There is no instruction offered about conditioning your dog to be comfortable with the collar before you use it and nothing about it being very inappropriate to use with a dog who is “hiding or acting fearful.”
The instruction guide is almost incomprehensible. As this product is made in China, the instructions were full of translation errors – annoying, but not insurmountable. Still, it made already difficult-to-follow instructions even more difficult. Due to the poor instructions, initially I couldn’t get the two units (transmitter and receiving collar) to charge. When I contacted the company for help, they wanted to see my receipt before they would help me! I finally figured out what I was doing wrong on my own.
The collar is supposed to be suitable for dogs 22 to 88 pounds. I wouldn’t even consider putting it on Sunny, my 25-pound Pomeranian-mix, as the receiver box is quite large and the collar is way too bulky for a small dog.
On two occasions, as I was trying to change intensity of the vibration, it kept sticking. I pressed the appropriate button repeatedly, and sometimes it would change. Sometimes it wouldn’t.
The product touts its three-function features – vibration, light, and tone (sound) – but in our opinion, only the vibration is useful. The vibration does, indeed, work well. The tone is obviously useless for a hearing-impaired dog and isn’t really loud enough for the human to locate a lost deaf dog unless the dog is very close. We’re not sure why you would need a tone for a hearing-abled dog when you can use your voice or a whistle. The light also seems worthless. It can’t signal anything to the dog, because it’s located on the dog’s neck. It’s too small to be seen by a human from any distance and, on many dogs, would likely be covered by the dog’s fur anyway.

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