To Shock or Not to Shock: A Commissioner Ponders the E-Collar Debate

Note from the publisher: Bay Woof does not endorse or support aversive training techniques or equipment, including shock collars.

The San Francisco Animal Commission is addressing the possibility of a shock collar ban in the city.

If you read last month’s Commission Tails, you know that the commission ended the year on quite a cliffhanger. The proposed shock collar ban had seemed like a fairly straightforward bit of prospective city legislation, and the commission had already voted to support it. And yet, as the commission prepared to approve our letter of support, we were–well, I don’t want to say that we were shocked, but we were definitely surprised to have so many people dialing into the public commentary portion of our meeting to protest the suggested ban. At one point, we had something like 114 people on the line. 

As people took their two minutes to passionately argue for the use of shock collars, I realized that I couldn’t, in good conscience, make an informed recommendation to the Board of Supervisors on this matter. The opposing viewpoints seemed incredibly polarized and I could see that we only had part of the story. Are shock collars (e-collars, stim collars) inhumane and harmful to dogs? Or are they “incredibly useful in certain situations where other methods are ineffective?” Is a city ordinance the only way to stop the use of these devices? Would the ban be a victory for animal rights or would it result in an increase in dog euthanasia?

I didn’t know the answers to those questions. And with no canine companion of my own, I literally have no dog in this fight. (While I used that idiom to be clever, I’m happy to say with considerable relief that dog fighting–and animal fighting in general–is illegal in all 50 U.S. states.) This is why I voted in favor of putting approval of the letter on hold at our last meeting of 2022. I wanted to do more research. 

Before I go on, I want to reiterate that the commission does not have the power to enact or enforce city ordinances. We are an advisory body created to “hold hearings and submit recommendations regarding animal control and welfare” to the Board of Supervisors and city administration. Those recommendations can include policies, procedures, and additional legislation to do with animal welfare, but we can’t put anything into law. The Board of Supervisors will consider our recommendations, but it may well act against them. I bring this up because there were a number of confused commenters during the meeting, and I’ve seen a bit of misinformation online in the period since. 

Anyway, I have been doing my research, which includes talking to my friends who are dog people about the sort of training they do with their pups and whether they use a shock collar. Everyone I spoke with loves their dogs, considers them a full family member, and would never do anything to harm their dogs. And yet it ended up being about a 50/50 split in the collar vs. no collar debate, though that included people using a citronella spray collar (which is part of the suggested ordinance) and a vibrating collar (which is not covered by the ordinance). The “pro-collar” stories tracked with various comments we’d received before and during the commission meeting. 

Of course these are personal experience narratives that don’t necessarily correlate with scientific findings. Thus, I have gone further and further down the research rabbit hole, uncovering more questions along the way. For example, why aren’t we also trying to create a citywide ordinance to ban choke/prong collars? Choke collars can actually smash a dog’s windpipe or worse. Prong collars are illegal in a number of countries (which overlaps with the countries that have banned shock collars) and are already locally banned by the SF SPCA. So why aren’t these collars included on SF Shock Free’s initiative? This is not a facetious question - I’m genuinely trying to understand, and I plan to reach out to SF Shock Free to find out more. 

This whole situation reminds me of the cat declawing ban, which the Animal Control and Welfare Commission was very deeply involved in. In 2003 (20 years ago!) the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution strongly urging veterinarians and pet guardians to discontinue the practice of declawing in the City and County of San Francisco. It later proved that a strongly worded resolution was not enough, and in 2009, the commission voted to recommend that the Board of Supervisors ban declawing. The Board passed the ordinance in July 2009, making San Francisco the first major city to ban the declawing of cats. And now we’re on track to ban cat declawing statewide, pending California Anti-Declaw Bill AB 2606 getting through the state senate. 

Back to the shock collar issue–as I prepare for the January commission meeting,  I’m still doing my research. What’s ultimately at stake here is the welfare of the animals who cannot advocate for themselves. And I hope that everyone can at the very least agree on that.