Review: The Absolute Worst Pet Products

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Ladies and Gentlemen – May I present to you two of the most useless training devices ever developed for our little westie, Beary White. First in order, we have Petco’s 99 cent clicker for training your dog.After I watched an awesome training video online of a dog trainer using it on one of his faithful companions, I thought to myself, “Perfect! I don’t want to choke the little guy and certainly don’t want to train him the way the cleaning lady did (“One time my dog was chewing the lamp cable, so I rolled up a newspaper and hit him! He never did it again.” ick.), so this seems pretty cool.”

The trainer used the clicker with the reward association method and it looked easy enough. I headed straight for Petco, purchased the clicker and had the YouTube training video on standby for live training aaaaaaaaand…. *click* Beary runs darts with his tail between his legs! I had the treats right there in my hand, but every time I did the introductory click, he scrambled. POS. So much for the clicker.

The second training device, a nylon choke collar, was my desparate attempt to get him to walk better and heel. Every time Shannon, Beary and I went for a brisk walk, Beary would naturally wander off to the bushes, stop walking or head the opposite way. I know what you’re thinking, but this time I didn’t go on YouTube to search for more training tips. This time, I watched a “real” training DVD on leash walking and the trainer prefaced everything by saying that you had to have the right equipment.

He had a leather thumb leash with a chained choke collar for his large-sized dog and, well, I had a 15-pound westie whom I didn’t want to have on some metallic, prison-like collar. Instead, I opted for the adjustable nylon collar from Petsmart and as soon as I got home, I had already encountered my first problem — Beary and I weren’t even outside yet! It took about five minutes to adjust it to get it around his neck. Then, once I walked him outside and did the quick jerk on the leash for the heel command, it didn’t do squat. In fact, I’d like to believe it made it worse. It was kind of a blur, since Beary despised the collar and I just wanted to get him back home. Once back on home turf, it took about a good minute to get that stupid contraption off of him. Since it drove me mad, as well, I decided the only fair thing was to have Beary take a go at it, haha, which lead to him chewing it in half! Good boy… you’ll get the walking eventually.

Pros: Clicker sucks. Nylon choke collar sucks. Nothing.

Cons: Everything. Save your money. Go on iTunes and purchase a song instead.

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