There’s a tool that I’d like to tell you about, and that is the Tri-Tronics electronic collar for horses - ViceBreaker. Electronic collars have been around for many, many years in the dog industry - especially for hunting dogs and competitive dogs. It’s a way to make the dog feel uncomfortable when they’re doing a behavior that you don’t want them to do or to reinforce a known command.

For example, if a dog is chasing something you don’t want him to chase or running across the street, you can’t stop him. A lot of the time the dog is too far away for you to reach him to keep him safe. Or if your dog is not consistent in following known commands you can use the collar as a reinforcement tool. The use of an electronic collar in the dog industry is not new by any means. But it is relatively new in the horse industry.

There are a lot of misconceptions about “shock” collars with dogs and horses and it’s that somehow you’re mistreating the animal or abusing them.

One thing I’d like to tell you - every tool in the world, whether it’s a halter, a lead rope, bit, spurs, a whip, anything that you use on a horse can be used for mistreatment. It’s not tools that mistreat horses or are abusive. It’s the hands and the attitude behind those tools. 

For example, I could have a very severe bit on a horse, and if I have very light hands, that bit is not very severe at all. I could have a very mild snaffle bit in a horse’s mouth, but if I yank and tug on the horse’s mouth, I could make that horse bleed and be very uncomfortable.

I like to use the ViceBreaker for correcting behavior problems that are not related to humans. For example, horses that weave in stalls, bite other horses over the fence, kick other horses when they’re walking past the stall, or any type of behavior that involves one horse to another horse or a horse by themselves. I don’t use it for things that affect the relationship between horse and human.

People will say, “Well, Clinton, horses that weave in stalls, or horses that crib, or horses that constantly paw at the fence - it’s because these horses are locked up in a stall all the time and they don’t get enough exercise and they don’t get enough socialization with other horses.”

I would be the first to agree with that. In a perfect world, everybody would have 40 acres to live on. Everybody would have three horses, so that whenever you took one horse away, there would always be two horses left in the pasture. And every horse would live outside and have a shelter to get into whenever it was hot, or raining, or windy, or cold, etc. But the bottom line is, we don’t live in a perfect world. And we’re not going to live in a perfect world any time soon.

Most of us don’t have a lot of acreage so we either have to keep our horses in stalls or you have to board your horse. A lot of people have show horses and have to keep the horse in the stall to keep them looking nice and protected from injury.

I’ll be the first to agree that prevention is better than cure. A lot of these problems like cribbing, weaving, stall walking, biting, etc. - it’s because the horses have a lot of penned up energy and no place to put that energy. They’re overfed and under worked. Giving horses more turn out time and more socialization with other horses is important.

A lot of studs become very aggressive because they have no interaction with the herd. If you let that horse have more interaction with the herd - especially with the mares that are already pregnant and bred - that stallion would have to mind his manners, mind the herd dynamics, and learn the pecking order. It would make a lot of stallions a lot less unruly and a lot more manageable.

What I like about ViceBreaker, is if it’s used in the right way (and that’s the key), it can be a tremendous tool for things like cribbing, stall weaving, stall walking, pawing in stalls, horses kicking stalls, horses being aggressive to other horses in the pasture, etc. 

I want the horse to think that they’re actually doing it to themselves. Or, basically, they’re making themselves feel uncomfortable. There’s a name for this, and it’s called “counter conditioning.” Any time my horse goes to kick the stall wall, and I press the button, I want the horse to think his kicking caused him to feel uncomfortable. Every time the horse goes to crib, if you’ll press the button on the ViceBreaker and give that horse a stimulation, he’ll think it was his cribbing that caused it.

The ViceBreaker has different intensity settings. A lot of people think that this collar is just some big piece of electricity that if you press the button, your horse is going to fry, and his eyes are going to pop out of his head, and steam is going to come out of his ears. That couldn’t be further from the truth. It has six different intensity settings on it because each horse’s sensitivity level is a little bit different. For example, I can’t even feel the first three settings. The number four setting feels like a mosquito bite. The number five setting feels like twice as much as that. And the number six feeling is a little bit more than that. Some horses are very sensitive, so it’s only like a very small level of that electric shock collar that you need to put it on.  Some horses, with just a little bit of a buzz, they just throw their head in the air. That’s enough to cause them to feel uncomfortable and not to want to do it again. There are other horses that are very lazy, and have been doing ingrained habits for a long time - like cribbing - that you might have to put it on number five, or even number six to make them feel uncomfortable enough. You start at the lowest level of intensity and you step up to the next level until it is just enough to stop the behavior.

For a cribber, every time that horse cribs, as soon as he goes to crib, if you’ll press the button he’ll get a little bit of a shock from that - it surprises him, and makes him feel uncomfortable.

Don’t press that button again until he cribs again. It’s very, very important to only do it when the horse makes the mistake. You are trying to train the horse into thinking that he is doing this to himself. So, of course, it takes a certain amount of dedication, time and energy for you to be around when the horse is doing this.

A lot of people will make the mistake of letting the horse know they are the ones pushing the button. If the horse goes to crib, they’ll go “Aahh! Don’t do that!” And at the same time, they’ll press the button. The trick is, you don’t want the horse to know that you’re pressing the button. You want the horse to think that he’s doing it to himself. You don’t even want to look at the horse when you press the button. You just want to be around the corner or maybe poke your head around the corner or look through a window. If your horse gets smart and he
realizes that you’re the one making him feel uncomfortable he’ll only stop the behavior when you’re around. When you’re not around he’ll go back to doing the same behavior again.

What I don’t recommend that people do with the collar is use it to solve what I call horse / human relationship problems. For example, horses that bite human beings. To me, that’s a lack of respect. You need to go back and get control of the horse’s feet. Move him forward, backward, left and right. Do the groundwork. And pretty soon, your horse won’t want to bite you.

I don’t look for the collar to stop any sort of training problem between me and my horse. I look to it for things like cribbing, stall walking, stall weaving, horses that want to bite horses over the fence, horses that want to attack each other, aggressive stallions — when you lead a horse past that stall, they whinny out and get “studdy.”  I want it to be where the horse is reacting in a negative way, either by himself or toward another horse. Not toward me personally, because I believe that training can get rid of that, rather than a collar.

This is something that is used for habits that are very ingrained in your horses. Horses that have been cribbing for years and years on end are pretty much incurable unless you use ViceBreaker. Some horses you may not be able to completely eliminate it, but for most horses when you c an either eliminate a lot of it or completely get rid of it. But you have to put time and effort into it.

The thing I like about the collar is that the transmitter will work up to a half-mile away, so you don’t even have to be anywhere near the barn.  Some people put video cameras in their barns.  Other people look out the window of their house.  Some people will be around the barn when the horse is whinnying or kicking the stalls, or things like that. So, a lot of the time you can set up the situation to cause your horse to do the negative behavior that you want him to do. Then you can press the button and correct him.

People might walk up to me and say, “Well, Clinton, isn’t this an abusive tool? Couldn’t somebody abuse this?”

Yes, they could. But that’s no different than buying one of my bits or spurs or a whip or a Handy Stick. Anybody can abuse any tool, if used incorrectly. Any tool can be misused in the wrong hands.

One time I had this lady walk up to me and she said, “Clinton, I can’t believe that you would promote the use of a shock collar.” She said, “I think that’s inhumane.”

I said to her, “Do you have electric fences?”

She said, “Yes.”

I said, “So your horses live in electric fences?”

She said, “Yes. All my fences are electric fences.”

I said, “Do you mean to tell me that you let your horses live in an electric force field? What kind of a sick owner are you?”

She looked at me and she said, “Well, you’re being stupid. That’s a different example.”

I said, “How is it different?”

She said, “Well, that horse only gets zapped when he leans on the fence.”

And I said, “That’s true. I only press the button when the horse goes to crib, or the horse goes to kick the wall, or the horse acts aggressive toward another horse. I don’t press the button unless the horse makes the mistake first.”

And she said to me, “Well, there’s a lot more room for a person to abuse this tool.”

I said, “That’s true. But you know what? People can abuse any sort of tool, if they get mean or mad.”

You can’t stop people from misusing something. What you can do is try to educate them on how to use a product correctly. 

A tool is only as good as the person and the education behind it. That’s why I recommend people get the free video from Tri-Tronics and watch it and study it. When you purchase a ViceBreaker read the Owner’s Guide. If you do all these things, your chances of success are high.