GPS-controlled electric shocks? Garmin buys Shocking Dog Collar company TriTronic and we're worried
People invent all sorts of weird crap all the time. Did we mention the burger-shaped USB hand-warmer recently? But this weird crap is also slightly sadistic. It’s an electric-shock collar for dogs.
The idea has been about for a while, but one company who makes them Tri-Tronic has just been bought by Garmin – the big-name Swiss SatNav makers.
When GPS experts hook up with the makers of electric collars it makes me think about gps-controlled electronic tagging: you know – when there are electric shock penalties to straying beyond a certain area. Sort of “Battleship Royale” style. I’ve heard this idea mooted before as an extension of the current tagging of prisoners system.
In the basic concept, straying beyond the allowed parameters wouldn’t just alert the police to your transgression – it could also give you an electric shock, or a pacifying injection. Pretty nasty.
Obviously we’re not there yet, thank god, so back to the dog collars: I’m no expert in dog behaviour, but if you electrocute the poor thing through the collar, surely it means the pooch is going to really hate the collar, and quite probably you.
Of course you need to discipline pets, but maybe not like this.
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2 comments
Anna Leach: – wondering how you keep a job with these kinds of articles. If you did a just a little research you wouldn't have to be an “expert in dog behavior” to report facts rather then illogical and unsupported opinions. Very shabby journalism – my opinion. Imagine a world where farms were not allowed to use electric fences to contain livestock. Ever hit a full grown black cow that wondered into the road? – probably not.
FYI – training collars and electric fences for dogs, pigs, cow, horses etc have been successfully used with amazing results for YEARS. My dog has a boundary collar. She loves it, loves me, loves the amazing freedom she has without putting herself in danger. My previous pet didn't have a shock collar and he also loved me. He jerked out of my young daughter's grasp and chased a neighbor's cat out of the yard and was subsequently mortally injured by a passing car. The sound of screeching tires, the thump, and heart wrenching cries from your pet and your child is a memory you can't shake. So before you bash something you admittedly know nothing about, maybe you should do a little research or actually talk to pet owners who have used this technology. There is an old saying I will leave you with, “it's better to remain silent and have people wonder if you are an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt”.
Ditto, Anna! I have 2 german pointers, 3 acres suburban property and Innotek in-ground perimeter electric fence. When dogs approach boundary their collars first beep, then, if dogs turn around, start delivering eleltric pulses of increasing strength. Each morning my dogs run to the place where their collars are charged and pant in happy anticipation of “collars on – out of the door to roam their “kingdom”. Fence gets broken often by wondering deer, coyotes, flush floods so I am looking for GPS based solution.
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