How The Cold Effects Your Electronic Collar System

Severely cold weather slows everything down. In fact, it even slows equipment down. Very cold air temperatures cause undesired operation in many electrical and mechanical devices. These changes can range from rendering the component completely inoperable, to causing fluctuations in the designed function of the equipment. With electronic dog training collars, the case is no different.

The reason that cold weather can adversely affect your system is because it acts to slow down the very molecules in components themselves. In fact, if liquid molecules are slowed down enough they actually freeze. This makes it easy to visualize why cold air would cause electrical and other components to operate abnormally.

The most pressing issue that could be caused by cold weather would be a lack of communication, or reduced communication, between the transmitter and receiver. In fact, the colder the air temperature is, the greater the chance for undesired operation. This may be most prevalent in the transmitter itself. LCD screens or Liquid Crystal Displays are especially vulnerable to cold weather. The display may become partially obscured, or disappear altogether. Other times, the display may be slow to display a reading after you have changed a function. While this may be a temporarily disconcerting problem, in most cases it will not affect your ability to issue a corrective signal to your dog. You should keep in mind that sometimes the intensity level will get stuck on whatever level it was on when the unit "froze up." If this is the case, wait until the unit has warmed again, or be prepared to only issue corrections or warnings in that intensity level.

Sometimes, very cold air temperatures may decrease the effective range between the receiver and the transmitter. This is even more pronounced in snow, rain, or fog. While there is no specific remedy for this while in the field, you should at least be aware that this may be the case. This might mean discontinuing the training session, because if you cannot be fully certain what kind of stimulation your dog is receiving, then you should not be using the system until you can.

Another essential part of your electronic dog training collar system are the batteries; both in the transmitter and in the receiver. Very cold weather causes batteries to discharge much more rapidly than under warmer conditions. This means that a trainer or handler will often be caught off guard when the batteries in one of their units dies before it rightly should have. For this reason, carrying an extra set of batteries for both your receiver and transmitter during cold weather is a wise idea.

If you are in the field or on the hunt and your electronic dog training system begins to operate abnormally as a result of cold weather, you can try removing it to a warm area. By placing it in a heated vehicle, or inside of your jacket for ten to fifteen minutes, you may be able to restore full operating capacity to the unit again.