bahamutt99

If your dog is genetically sound, you wont need to hang weight around their neck. I was not one that said that it breaks down muscle, so I don't know if it does or not, although I know that overwork without sufficient rest will do that. My big hangup is "does the benefit outweigh the risk?" I haven't seen anything to indicate it does. If people can get their dogs in top-notch shape with hand-walking, flirtpole, maybe a little treadmill, then hanging weight around a dog's neck seems the lazy way out.

If I had two dogs that were bred similar and the same sex, I'd put them both through a conditioning routine -- one with and one without a weighted collar -- just to see if there were tangible benefits with my own eyes. But as I've said ad nauseum, if the competitive conditioners don't use weighted collars, that's good enough for me.

And Sampson, you're cute. Sorry you seem to be pretty much against any measure to make a dog safer. I can't keep a mess of dogs and quickly replace one that gets broken, so I take a few precautions to make sure the ones I have are safe and healthy.

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roleary

ok, I give up.

SadieBlues

I'll toast to that

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I survived because I was tougher than anybody else. ~ Bette Davis~

bahamutt99

I getta be the one on the right that falls over.

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cane76

a weighted collar used responsably will cause no more harm then drag weight training,how can one be beificial and one be potentialy harmfull?
The argument is stupid,drag weight training will have as much or more harmfull effects
as working a dog with a weighted collar,and both should have little effect on a solid dog,jmo......

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I LoVe WoRkInG dOgS,iF TheY wORk,ThErE wOrTh FeEdInG!

bahamutt99

You don't see the difference? If I pull my dogs with 30 lbs, they aren't supporting that weight with their bodies. If we follow your train of thought, then a local puller who told me he has one of his dogs do about 200 lbs of chain should just hang that weight on the dog's body. There is a big difference, physically, between a weight that rides about 6 feet behind the dog on the ground, and a weight hanging around a dog's neck. Add onto that, when a dog pulls drag weight, they do most of the work with their rears, wheras a weighted collar is pulling down on the neck. It's a totally different kind of exercise.

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