There are dog training collars on the market today that give warning and praise through the collar as opposed to stimulation collars. Even though stimulation collars have proven to be effective as a way of training your gun dogs, there are still those out there that think that they can do everything electronically, including praise and warn dogs with beeping and buzz tones rather than stimulating them.

Many critics of stimulation collars feel that the electronic correction that a dog gets from these type of training collars is "cruel" and hurts the dog. They still call them "shock collars" and feel that they are inhumane. They are usually not up to date on the training systems that are available today. Today's stimulation correction collars are not inhumane. They have different levels of stimulation that can be gradually increased if a dog continues to disobey a command. A dog who cannot heed instructions can be a danger to himself and others. Especially in the field.

While you can use the collars that give a buzz or warning to the dog if he is not behaving as he should, the problem comes in when you are training more than one dog at a time. Because these signals are picked up by radio frequency, the buzz collars will buzz all of the dogs at the same time, making them think they are doing something wrong and are about to be corrected. Even though you can only correct one dog at a time with these collars, it can make your dogs very nervous and may undermine some of your training.

Using the collars as a form of praise is also widely criticized by many dog handlers. Praise is one of the most effective methods that you can use for training any dog. A dog is a social animal that lives for that praise. But getting it from a collar instead of you underscores the praise for the animal. It is always better for you to praise the dog yourself for better bonding between you and your buddy.

Dog training systems that offer stimulation as correction have different levels and also come with momentary stimulation, which works best in most cases, as well as continuous stimulation. The continuous stimulation would be used if the dog was doing something dangerous to himself or others, but will time out after about 7 seconds. The momentary stimulation gives your dog a "nick" and will not hurt your dog. It is used if he fails to obey a command.

Training your dog or dogs still requires patience and the human touch, even with today's modern equipment. The trick to training any dog is to get him to realize that you are the "top dog" in the pack. It is in his instinct to please you. The top dog should not be a training collar but you. While you may find beeper collars and non stimulation collars to be effective on smaller dogs and a way to train pets, using them to train multiple dogs and especially gun dogs who are out on the field and can very easily get lost or injured if they are not obedient, may not be an effective way to train your hunting dogs.