How to Properly Fit Prong Collars and Flat Collars for Your Protection Dog

A quick reference video for how to properly fit your dog’s prong collar and flat collar. There are lots of ways to skin this cat (pun intended), so do what works for you, but the K9 training that Uncensored Tactical now provides operates under the training system that *Fortress K9* manages. This collar setup is chosen for a particular purpose and fits within a system. See how I wrote that word twice now, in italics? More on that shortly.

Flat Collars

In our system we use flat collars a few ways. The collar should be stiff, flat material, and for medium and large dogs it should be wider than a standard 1″ collar since your dogs may be putting a lot of force on their flat collars on occasion.

Placement should be low on the dog’s neck and fitment should be tight enough that you can fit four full fingers between the dog’s neck and the flat collar and it should be pretty snug still. If your dog is off lead (leash) for some reason and you need to grab control of them quickly (and don’t want to injure your own fingers in their prong collar, or to issue the dog a corrective feeling with their prong collar) you should be able to quickly scoop your four fingers up underneath their flat collar, quickly.

Tie-outs. When we tie a dog to a hard object for whatever reason, we usually place our dogs on their flat collars (meaning: we unclip our dogs from their prong collar and connect the leash/lead/chain etc. to their flat collar). There are exceptions but the idea is that we don’t want the dog running around and jumping and lunging away from their post and receiving “corrections” from their prongs when then get to the end of their chain/lead while they have their free time / play time etc.

Bite work. Again, exceptions exist but, when training our dogs to do protection and bite work, and scent tracking, we don’t want to tell them to lunge and then for them to feel the correction from their prong collar after doing what we commanded of them. So, in training, we usually place them on their flat collars.

Prong Collar

Prong collars are NOT supposed to cut, slice, puncture, or injure your dog’s neck. If you buy cheap knockoffs, they may be manufactured by slicing the edges of the metal prongs, leaving them sharp to the touch. I recommend the “Herm Sprenger” brand. They are a quality product and the tips of the prongs are rounded as they are NOT supposed to be a sharp point.

In the FortressK9, system we use the prongs in two ways, first is as a communication device – when the dog feels pressure on a certain part of their neck they have received a message that tells them which direction or which action they should to; second is as a corrective device – when needed, we can “snap” the collar sharply so that the dog feels more pressure and becomes uncomfortable (not injured). I have held my dog up off of the ground with just their Herm Sprenger prong collar and the second I let her down to the ground she was happy, calm, safe, and uninjured… and her happy self.

The prong collar should be above the flat collar (the flat collar helps to keep the prongs high up on the neck affording a much better communication and correction position of leverage). The fitment should be three parts, as seen in the video above:

    The collar should be tight enough to NOT slip forward over the dog’s head.

    The collar should be loose enough to be able to spin around the dogs neck with not too much effort. (As seen in video).

    You should be able to fit your fingers between the prongs and the dogs neck and it shouldn’t cause pain to your fingers from being too tight.