Transition from CC to ECollar - Vibration v. Stim

[REHunt]

Folks,

First post, but have been stalking the forum for awhile. Any help, guidance, advice, criticisms are welcome.

As a bit of background, I have a 13 month old male GSP who very recently has just started the process of moving from the CC to an ECollar, Garmin Sport Pro. He's been wearing the collar for awhile to get used to it with no use on my end. I started laying the foundation for obedience once he turned 6-7 months old and have been consistently working on recall, whoa, and heel. Started with the Smith Wonder Lead and progressed to the CC. While on the CC in the backyard and/or field, he is efficient at responding to the three commands above despite distractions.

My question is in regards to which Ecollar function I should use as his base level for training. As instructed by the manufacturer and professional dog trainers alike, I tried to determine his base level. I started with Stim level 1 (the collar has 10 levels of stim, vibration and tone) and he reacted with a noticeable head jerk/surprise, but no vocalization. I thought that may be too much, so I lowered the level down to vibration. Applying vibration got his attention just fine with no visible head jerk. For the last day or two, I've been using the vibration function to re-inforce his recall with no problems, and he appears to understand how to turn off the vibration in responding to "come."

In perusing the ECollar topics on this forum, I understand that some folks say not to use the vibration function in collar conditioning a dog and recommend the lowest level of Stim to condition the dog and get the dog to understand how it can deactivate the pressure. Reason being that it may lead to "bolting" and other unwanted behavior in the field.

What's the members' opinions on using vibration for collar conditioning and reinforcing known commands? Am I setting up for potential disaster later on?

[gonehuntin']

It is electric collar conditioning, not vibration conditioning. The purpose of ecollar conditioning is to teach the dog to first accept, then to perform tasks while submitting to electrical stimulation. You apparently haven't watched any good dvd's on collar conditioning a dog? Once he is thoroughly collar broken, adding the vibration is no problem at all. The key is to get him correctly collar conditioned in the first place; to teach and force him to work THROUGH the electrical stimulation.

[Sharon]

That's right. I have never even bothered with the stimulation feature.