Wolfwill Vibration Collar: The Negatives

I found the concept of a vibration collar potentially useful. But in practice, there were a number of things I didn’t like about the Wolfwill vibration collar:

• It’s marketed as an aversive. The text on the box says, “When you push on a button… He’ll quickly learn the association between his behavior and your correction; in no time, you’ll have a better-behaved pet.” The instruction booklet inside also describe its use as a punishment tool rather than as a positive communication tool. 
• There is no instruction offered about conditioning your dog to be comfortable with the collar before you use it and nothing about it being very inappropriate to use with a dog who is “hiding or acting fearful.”
• The instruction guide is almost incomprehensible. As this product is made in China, the instructions were full of translation errors – annoying, but not insurmountable. Still, it made already difficult-to-follow instructions even more difficult. Due to the poor instructions, initially I couldn’t get the two units (transmitter and receiving collar) to charge. When I contacted the company for help, they wanted to see my receipt before they would help me! I finally figured out what I was doing wrong on my own.
• The collar is supposed to be suitable for dogs 22 to 88 pounds. I wouldn’t even consider putting it on Sunny, my 25-pound Pomeranian-mix, as the receiver box is quite large and the collar is way too bulky for a small dog.
• On two occasions, as I was trying to change intensity of the vibration, it kept sticking. I pressed the appropriate button repeatedly, and sometimes it would change. Sometimes it wouldn’t.
• The product touts its three-function features – vibration, light, and tone (sound) – but in our opinion, only the vibration is useful. The vibration does, indeed, work well. The tone is obviously useless for a hearing-impaired dog and isn’t really loud enough for the human to locate a lost deaf dog unless the dog is very close. We’re not sure why you would need a tone for a hearing-abled dog when you can use your voice or a whistle. The light also seems worthless. It can’t signal anything to the dog, because it’s located on the dog’s neck. It’s too small to be seen by a human from any distance and, on many dogs, would likely be covered by the dog’s fur anyway. 

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