“a shock collar may be the answer to essentially retrain him”
Please pimp you product somewhere else. I don’t think inflicting pain on a dog who is in fear is going to break that fear or re-train him. It is only going to reinforce his fear in the situation. If a child is fearful in a situation will a slap from a parent change that? No, it will only make the child more fearful of a future, similar situation and make him distrust the parent. Take psych 101 and get back to me.
And for the record, while I’m not a big fan of shock collars per se, I do recognize they can and do have a use in training under proper conditions, e.g. they’re great for training hunting dogs when they’re off and their owner isn’t at their side and a correction needs to be made. Punishing fear is only going to reinforce it, however.
There’s no need to be rude. I was making a suggestion based on comments you had made. Shock collars don’t work based on pain. They work by reinforcing commands and are especially effective with stubborn dogs and/or undesirable behavior such as what you described. They are an extremely effective training aid and are not cruel or inflict pain if used properly (some collars are combo tone/shock so the dog learns to respond to the tone). If anything they greatly benefit an animal who is not happy or in fear/disarray under certain circumstances. Do not make a judgement when you really know nothing about how they work.
Secondly, I’ll reiterate what I said about you and Alpha. Based on what you posted, your dog obeys you but only up to a point, he is constantly showing dominant behaviors which you “let him get away with” because you attribute human thoughts to your dog- nosing you when he knows he’s supposed to leave you alone, putting his feet inside the room he is not allowed in, etc. To you as a human it may be funny or cute, but to the dog, he has won. He’s not allowed in, but his feet are. Dog scores.
Well, I’ll just leave it at that. Like I said before, I hope it all works out.