ME-300 Series

Update August 2015We have now used this, almost every day, since December 2013 and it continues to be worth its weight in gold.Our German Shepherd is a working dog, and does good obedience and personal protection (he also does some agility), and lives indoors with our family.We learned the "low stim" training method of Lou Castle, and the recall, alone, is a life saver for dogs! Lou's simple, pain free method of instruction is amazing. The stimulation level for this 90b very strong Shepherd is a level 9. I cannot feel it on my fingers, but he senses it, and wherever he is, he comes to me.The obedience is so necessary, not only for liability of a dog who protects, but that we live on a main street with much traffic. He will recall, due to Lou Castle's method, from chasing a squirrel!The product, after heavy use in more than a year and a half, works like new.Having been out of dog training for many years, I am pleasantly surprised with the advances in training (so much is now 'marker' training with positive reinforcement!) and it is great to see that an American company has kept up with the changes!This is easy to use, and now the 'tingle' feeling is used at very low levels, some imperceptible to humans, to train the dog in positive steps. I love the "tapping" feature, which is nothing more than a vibration and buzz, similar to your cell phone, which can be used to painlessly disrupt the dog's errant behavior. We are currently using this vibration feature to stop unwanted teething on human hands and legs as well as food stealing. A verbal reprimand, with the quick vibration button, and the pup is learning quickly.When he is older, we will use the stimulation levels for the recall, which may save his life one day. Humane, this is an excellent tool for training and brining a dog under control. A dog under control is less likely to be hit by a car, or bite a neighbor's child. This company has designed the unit with the general public in mind, including waterproofing the remote and the collar itself, fitting it nicely to the human hand, and giving us the options of 100 levels, with easy changes. There are some excellent DVD trainings available at Amazon. The unit is not only well designed, but well made, and has quality feel to it. Customer Service has been excellent. This is a vastly improved tool from years ago.

I can't recommend this E collar enough. We have a now 1 year chocolate lab (named Mocha) and right around the 8-10 month mark she became very testy with us. It was like having a teenager in dog form lol. Anyways I used the E Collar orginally for off leash training with Mocha and it worked extremely well. As long as you know how to use it properly the dog will catch on very fast.To train Mocha on it I followed these steps...1. I made sure Mocha had a solid foundation of training commands in the house such as sit, down, come, stay and so on. Inside is easy compared to outside with the many distractions and smells outside.2. I then took her outside using a 100ft drag line and basically repeated these commands. Every time she listened such as coming to me I would give her a treat. If she didn't respond on the fist time, I would vibrate her and give her the command again. At this point, if she didn't listen after 2 attempts at the command she would get shocked with the command again. Believe me I can tell you how many times (handful of times) I have shocked her because dogs quickly understand they need to listen to our commands and they don't want to be shocked. The shock function goes up to 100 and I originally started it with level 12 but we leave it at level 29 which is the "sweet spot" for Mocha. Mocha is approximately 60+ lbs and is extremely active so she needs a little bit more "umph" to affect her and get her attention.3. Within days, I didn't even need the drag line because Mocha knew she wasn't going to just run off, she quickly paid attention at all times awaiting commands or playing fetch with a toy.4. I used this exclusively for recall training at first but ended up using it for Mochas teenageness as well lol.Now for her testiness that was the teenager phase as my wife and I called it...in the house when she would for the lack of a better phrase get bratty with us. We would simply pick up the E collar remote and she would quickly listen or stop doing what we were telling her to stop doing. Every now and then a vibrate but its extremely rare she gets shocked because she knows the vibrate is her warning.Anyways Mocha is a completely different dog within just days of having this E collar, she listens, she doesn't test her boundaries anymore (partially because she's grown up too) but now we have complete control over her. Like I said earlier in this review, if you the E collar properly, there is nothing inhumane about it. Its not a punishment tool, its a reinforcement/ attention tool.Also your dog needs to know what your asking of them, so they need to have the solid foundation of commands from the get go. And you need to work that in with using the E collar so your not just telling them to sit and shocking them for not listening, then they wont get it. Kind of hard to explain, but for people who use this and know what I am talking about, know. Seek professional training advice if you need or use Youtube which has plenty of videos teaching how to teach your dog tons of things!I know this E collar is expensive, BUT I have tried 2 of the cheaper ones and they never really worked. As soon as I got this one, it worked right away and the battery life is phenomenal! I end up throwing on the charger every few days but I have found it charges so fast that I dont even need to throw it on that much. Mocha wears this collar pretty much all day when my wife and or I are home. If your serious about your dog training, this is worth every single penny!The collar band is decent, but kind of a pain, I have never been a fan of the belt style collars for dogs, I like metal snap buckles or cobra buckles. So I upgraded the collar to a k9tactical E collar which was only $25 and it has a cobra buckle simple easy on and off. I love this E collar even more because of it!Turning the collar on and off is actually pretty neat, it uses a magnetic part on the remote which is a little red cirlce then you touch the remotes little red dot to a little red dot on the collars receiver thus turning the receiver on. The remote turns on and off buy a button easy peasy.The other buttons are extremely intuitive, one side is one button which is the vibrate and the other side is 2 buttons which you know are the shock buttons when using the remote meaning you don't need to look at the remote when you use it.Update as of 8/3/2020:Collar and remote are still going strong. The antenna has a couple chips of plastic missing but we also abuse this remote/ collar. It goes on hikes, swimming in lakes, rolling in the grass in the snow in all weather conditions whatever mocha throws at it lol still couldn’t recommend it enough! The only thing I wish it had was some sort of battery level indicator for the remote and collar but otherwise it’s still running great!