Customer Reviews

PetSafe Yard & Park Remote Dog Trainer, PDT00-12470

5 star:		(66)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Four years ago, I purchased the PDT00-10603 generation of this product and I continue to be an avid consumer of this product. I am pasting my prior review below. But, I would like to provide an update on concerns over cruelty, which I go into with the prior review.

I use the trainer to control my dog during hikes and it works. When I pull it out and place the trainer on the counter, my dog jumps up and barks with excitement. While it charges, she lies down and "baby sits" the charger. This demonstrates, in part, that Tobi does not have any issues with this device or concerns over cruelty. It's a great tool!

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Subject: Wonderful tool; fixed a critical issue

My wife and I love to hike with our German Shepherd. However, her (the dog) behavior had become an issue. Whenever, she sees another dog or horse, she loses her mind, and we lose control of her. We did not want to resolve ourselves to hike with her on a leash.

Now that we have this device she "comes" on command, and not on the second or third time we call. She comes the first time, and to my hand. Now we can hike with her, and gain control when we see dogs, horses, and those who do not share our enthusiasm for dogs.

I like to add this devise is not cruel in any form. It has a dial of 8 settings. I tried it on myself. I could not feel "1" at all. "2" and "3" tingled. "4" felt uncomfortable (not painful), and that is where our dog is set.

The only issue is at home. We have an "invisible fence", which works on a very similar principle. The issue is that when I "beep" her or "zap" her at home, she becomes very confused. Hence, we only use it primarily for our hikes, which was our desired goal anyways.

The conclusion is that I highly recommend it for hiking or rather "off-leash" walks. You may have mixed results at home, if you have an "invisible fence". Although without the "invisible fence" issue, I believe it would be very effective for any sort of training.

Bottom line is that it works and I wish had I bought this tool earlier.

My rescue dog is a Flat Coated Retriever. She has become more and more disobedient over the months since I have gotten her. I love her very much, but was at the end of my rope and was ready to return her after she repeatedly ran into the 55 mph road right off my acreage. She also found it necessary to run into the farmers field adjacent to my yard so she could entice the neighbor's 3 border collies in an aggressive attempt at dominance. Although I have huge yard, it would not be cost effective to fence in 12 acres. Let me also say that my dog KNOWS the commands, "come", "sit", "stay", "drop it", and "no". She would obey these commands indoors, but once we got outside, no amounts of cut up steak would entice her into obeying if she had seen or smelled a squirrel or rabbit. I had also attempted to change her behavior by asserting my dominance as the pack leader. If she disobeyed me, I would immediately tell her "NO", and make her lay down on her side for 10 minutes while I held her there. Obviously, this only worked sometimes and was difficult to do if I had my 3 year old with me outside in the snow at cold temperatures.

I have to say that, for some reason, there is a general societal consensus that shock collars are bad. I subscribed to that until I adopted my Flat Coated Retriever. I had successfully trained an Australian Shepherd and thought getting a rescue dog would be the same amount of ease to train. I was wrong. My rescue dog was a 3 years old retriever with an unknown history and didn't have one ounce of shepherd tendencies. She is a hunting dog and likes to chase EVERYTHING that moves. After reading an article online written by Lou Castle, who is a police dog trainer, my mind was changed. I highly recommend his website to anyone wanting a well trained dog using "ecollars". []. Needless to say, I got this shock collar and it changed my dog in 1 day! The first day I used it to stop a chase into the road and to stop the aggression with the neighbor dogs. I also learned that my dog had already been "etrained". Once I used the shock collar, she was a velcro dog, continually heeling at my side. It was magnificent.

Finally, for anyone wanting to buy a shock collar for their dog. There is definitely a right and a wrong way to use a shock collar. Please do your research before you decide to correct behavior. You have to give an alternate command when you shock so your dog knows what is expected instead of the bad behavior. When my dog starts chasing, and is given a light shock (we only need to use the sound now without the shock) we would say "come" at the same time so she would know what to do to make the sound/shock stop. Once she takes 4-5 steps toward me, the sound/shocks stop and she is praised when she gets to me with a pat on the head and a few "good girls."

We got a young female hound mix from the ASPCA, and couldn't keep her in the yard. You know hounds: nose down and they're off. A neighbor suggested a radio collar.

We bought this one. I didn't go through the training regimen. She was too timid to work with. All we did was walk her around the yard on a leash some, giving the negative tone and negative voice tones when she tried to leave the boundary. Within two weeks, I started using a long lead and giving a low setting shock along with the negative voice. Within a month, she ran free with the collar and no lead.

It has been 8 months since we started with this product. We shocked her maybe 10 times TOTAL on setting 4. For the past 6, she hasn't left our property. We put the collar on every time she is out and not tied up. She rarely even tests the boundary, but a negative voice is enough to break her from a scent, another dog, or a person and have her head back to the middle of the yard with her tail tucked. She walks right along the unfenced boundary but doesn't cross. I've even taken her to a public park and she listens to the tone and negative commands. She comes when called.

Great product. Use the collar right; making sure it is snug and the electrodes are on the skin, so a low dose is felt. Use TLC with the dog. There should be no need to shock many times.

This trainer kit is very, very well made, and works as advertised. The instructions are clear and very helpful. The remote control is small, and has many programming options (though I elected to stay with factory defaults).

It really is waterproof, and it even comes with two extra rubber covers and screws for the charging ports -- nice touch, PetSafe! The transmitter range is good. (I don't think it's 400 yards -- more like 400 feet -- but it's enough.)

The best feature is the rechargeable batteries. Many electronic collars take special batteries that last only 10-15 hours and cost $10 each; I know, because I bought (and returned) one. So, the lithium-ion batteries in this setup are a huge money-saver.

Finally, the price: Amazon's price is very, very good -- this is definitely a "best buy" among training collars.

I ordered this as a replacement due to running the remote for the last unit through the washing machine. It was sufficiently close in price that I just bought a whole new set rather than replacing the remote. I was quite pleased with the original unit and this would give me a spare collar and charger.

I could tell on unpacking it that things had changed and the collar appeared to be more cheaply made now. After using it for a month the battery life on the collar started to degrade rapidly. The prongs on the charging unit broke and would have rendered things useless if I didn't have the charger from the old unit. Now the collar won't charge at all, just three months after having received this new unit. It appears that they've cheapened the build quality a great degree on this product and I'm horribly disappointed. I would not recommend this product at all and I'd be suspicious of anything that PetSafe is putting out these days.

We have a 65 pound, very stubborn dog that will only listen when he wants to. We had put him through obedience classes and while I think they were great he only listened to commands when it was convenient for him. This product has changed all of that and he is now very obedient. The first time I used the product I had to turn it up relatively high before I ever got a response from him (6). But after only one time of zapping him at that level I have never had to zap him ever again. Now just the warning sound and he will listen to any command I give. He does get scared when I put the collar on him but it is just a mental thing and I hope to break him of this. So I would take the advice of others here and put the collar on 1/2 before and 1/2 after a training session and do fun activities with it on so your dog doesn't associate the collar with negative feelings.

I like the quality of the product as everything feels really sturdy and doesn't feel like it will break. The fake-leather collar is sturdy and very adjustable. I like the option to only give a warning message as I don't want to zap my dog. The charger will charge both the collar and the handset at once and no batteries are needed (This is essential). I don't have any battery issues like other people have reported and the charge seems to last forever.

I did a fair amount of research when looking for a good training collar. When i read the negative reviews about this collar and remote becoming deprogrammed, I thought those buyers were just unlucky or didn't know how to work the thing. Wrong. After careful charging and setup, the same thing happened to me at least once every time i tried to use it. Lesson learned. Don't get overwhelmed by the positive reviews, apparently the quality is very unpredictable.

This has been great for my young and energetic beagle mix. I bought it initially to discourage her from chasing squirrels but it has enabled us to go hiking in woods and walk feet away from wildlife without the dog dashing away never to return. A couple of days after introducing the beep and zap corrections, the dog very has picked up the habit of actually hearing when I call and return to me from an off-leash sniffing adventure. Most times I don't even have to push the beep button. She would of course ignore me 90% of the time before getting this collar so she did not have many opportunities to walk off-leash and enjoy the scents and sights. This is a must have for hunting breeds. My dog is not poorly trained or spoiled, she does obey me indoors, but outdoors there are many distractions and she was bred with very strong instincts to follow scents and hunt. When she sees squirrels, her instincts to chase kick in and positive training methods like a piece of chicken will not work to distract her. Those people who hate using any aversive training, think of your own life and the aversive corrections you get, eg. would you willingly get out of bed at 7 am every day if you didn't fear losing your job and having no place to sleep next month?
I've had no problems with battery life - every other day recharge + turning the collar off at night seems to work.
Some negatives: 1. the collar makes a beep when turned on and off which should be good feedback that it's now on/off but it's really a bad idea. This beep is the same as the negative correction tone so if I were to turn it on while on the dog's neck (or maybe want to shut it off temporarily without taking it off her), she would not understand what she's doing wrong. This beep can create a negative association with putting on the collar.
2. zap setting 1 was unpleasant to my hand and zap setting 2 made my boyfriend literally jump. We haven't tried any higher settings. In the heat of a rabbit chase, we zapped her as high as 6 to get her to stop, and it's true that they don't feel the pain as much when they're that distracted. Still this collar can inflict pain if not used properly. In the initial training stages, the dog can panic when zapped and may take a while to understand the punishment and start doing the desired behavior.

We have a very stubborn 1 y/o American Bulldog/APBT (Brewski) that loved to take off in full sprint three blocks down the street any chance he got (including everytime he SNAPPED cable leads before I put him on a chain). Then he would proceed to play "tag" when you would try to get him, and meanwhile terrorizing anyone who would happen to be walking their dog in the neighborhood.

First time I put this on Brew, we did some simple stuff around the house (sit, stay, come, etc) to get him used to the tone. Then I set him up by opening the front door onto the porch, (something I could do without him taking off six months ago). Sure enough, he took off. Verbal correction: nothing. Tone: nada. One second static correction at level 2, and he slowed but kept running away. At 100 yards I gave him a 2-3 second correction at level 4, and that REALLY got his attention. He turned around confused. After another verbal command and a tone, I gave him one last 1-second correction at level 2. That's when things suddenly clicked, and he came running back.

After a fifteen minute break inside and plenty of praise for another round of indoor sit-stay-come commands, I wanted to see the results. Opened the front door, and Brew would not go outside of 10ft of me. We walked together off the lease around the house. Suddenly the neighbor lady comes our of her house just as we started to back around to the front yard. Brew starts into a trot in her direction, I give a verbal command and one second correction at level 2, and Brew turns right back around and walks to me. We practiced this routine two or three more times throughout the day (each time I would check down the street for anyone coming just to limit distractions) and each time he would calmly walk with me and stay within the confines of the yard.

Well worth the money. In a day or two, we'll be moving on to this bad habit of jumping on people when they first walk in the house (one thing as a time).

ONLY complaint - the picture shows a black collar. Mine came in red. Not that big of a deal, I just have a pet peeve when a product doesn't match the picture, as if I had bought locally, I would have known exactly what I was getting, and not be some surprise as I open the box (not a big fan of surprises).

Well, we had reservations about training a dog with a training collar, but we had a hard to train mix breed we rescued from a litter a friend found last winter. he's some kind of border collie, black lab, terrier mix, very smart, but aggressive, and his own man. We've raised several dogs in life including certified companion dogs, but never one with such a spunky attitude, with aggression! (Dog size 40#, 14" neck, 21" shoulder ht.) 8+ months old at the start of training.

All in all, this training collar has helped tremendously in stopping bad behavior, and rewarding good behavior.

No issues with it, charges well, works well, never lost connection as some people report, we've used it every day for a month so far, 100% perfect. Never had to reset it, change settings, etc. Range is great 400 yds. (we have 3 acres, and we've used it up to 100 or so yards so far.)works great indoors and outdoors !


Make sure contacts are contacting neck area, but not restricting. we have used level 2, and level 3 for major corrections. I've shocked myself up to level 6, it's a firm jolt, level 2 is just enough to tickle and correct for our dog. He looks forward to putting it on every day, and enjoying his training, we are probably half way through with training with him.

Best advice: Please, Read the manual completely, from charging it, to using it, and you'll be completely satisfied too !!



PetSafe Yard & Park Remote Dog Trainer, PDT00-12470