You know years ago, if I heard something like this I would have laughed and shook my head. However, groups like this are no joke as Quebec is passing legislation to ban shock (e collars) and the use of pinch collars. In my opinion there is so much legislation in this country it is getting to be a joke. There are groups like this in B.C. which would take great enjoyment on banning e collars in this province. E collars are a great training tool if properly used and I for one will vehemently oppose any legislation to ban them in this province.
It seems that people nowadays are often WAY to eager to get behind someone's cause and sign their papers. All because 'on the surface', it feels good and/or they're worried about hurting their feelings.
Well, it was a Pet "Lovers" Show, not a huntong show, so you have to expect there would be a number of groups that have a variety of opinions, be they right or wrong. There were also people campaigning against the use of dog fur in clothing and against the use of animals in medical research. Had an interesting, and polite discussion with the medical research lady as our Daughter, who used to be a Vet Assistant is now an Animal Tech at a Bio Lab where yup, they use rodents. The discussion revelved around my assertation that although sometimes the research involves what some might consider unethical use of an animal, the results often excuse the methods.
That's basically how I feel about shock collars. Used ethically as a training method, not as a punishment then I'm OK with them. Have seen a trainer, highly regarded in many hunting circles, have a dog doing the funky chicken during repeated "corrections" and that wasn't fun to watch. Our two dogs wear beep collars where we can use tones to distract them and a shot of citronella as last resort. They work 95 % of the time which is sufficient for us. One dog runs up, tail wagging as she knows collar = a fun walk in the wilds. The other guy, he kinda slinks up as he equates it with a shock collar as was used in some professional training he received at an earlier age which wasn't succesful.
Training of a dog is subjective - at a CKC Receiver meet a few years back an owner of the same breed as us simply walked over to his dog's kennels and kicked the kennel, with quite a bit of force, to quiet his dogs down. Seemed to work. Some might consider that abuse, some might consider that training.
I hope the one group that you mentioned did not want to feed the dogs a vegan diet. I have met people who feed their dog vegetarian (even Vegan-gasp) fare only- now that is cruelty! If those dogs could write, there would certainly be petitions against their owners...
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