The collars would be used on stock dogs. I would like them to be able to reach a couple hundred yards if possible, be able to connect to a couple different dogs at the same time,What collars do you recommend? my budget as of right now is about $200, is that enough to get me something decent? Thanks

IMO no. Dogtra and Garmin are your two main choices with Dogtra coming in cheapest at $329 for 2 dogs. But that's JUST shocking and not GPS or invisible fencing or any of that.

Get one of the sportdog collars. Tractor supply or amazon has them for under 200 bucks. Some have 500yard range. I have one and it works well. This is not the tracking collar but a training collar.

I've been a Trial-tronics (now Garmin) fan for a long time and they are super duper.
Depends on what you want your unit to be able to do, but you're budget is pretty small if you want reliability in GPS and training modes.

Blessings,
Mark

When we picked up our latest pooch a few years ago my Lovely Wife did a ton of research and came up with a brand that I'd never heard of. I was skeptical, but I have to admit - this thing works pretty slick.

Educator EZ on Amazon

It's $225 on Amazon. I like that it has vibrate/tone/correction, it has an LED light that you can activate to find or keep track of your pooch (handy when setting out field decoys for example, and the range of adjustment for shock/correction is 1-100. And it has a "squirrel" button that you are able to pre-program at a higher correction setting. That's a smart feature. It works like this - after you learn that your dog will respond to a mellow setting (like 8 or 9) when everything is chill and you're just doing some training in the yard or something, you can't realistically expect that he/she will even feel a correction at that level when something AMAZING is going on. Like a squirrel running out in front of you. Or the FedEx driving pulling into the driveway. Instead of having to impulsively crank up the intensity of the correction, you already have that pre-programmed.

The battery life has been great, it's a great unit. Check out the reviews.

X 2
Their service is outstanding also.

I have a Garmin Alpha system, it blows the budget of $200. It has GPS and training. I can see my dogs speed, how far, its bark cadence count per minute, which direction its moving and see the recorded tracks and how many miles the dog has traveled. I have them on each of my rabbit dogs and can follow 12 dogs. My rabbit hunting buddies thought i was crazy at first but now they all have the system. Best investment for keeping up with my beagles.

I use a Garmin Tri-Tronics Sport Pro. I've had it for about 5-6 years and I am very happy with it's performance. It has lots of features, the usual, vibrate and tone, ten shock settings plus momentary and continuous settings. The collar has dual LED lights built that are bright. I really like that feature for spotting one of my labs who occasionally likes to wander up to the neighbors deer feeder when I leave him out at night.

It's expandable, up to three collars can be controlled with the same hand held unit. Both the handheld and collar units are completely waterproof. And it has really good battery life.

I see where they are selling for $299.00 from various vendors.

It does not have GPS tracking.

Has been a long time since I used a shock collar but Tri-Tronics served me well

Just like any other tool, look at it as an investment and break down cost over years of service you can expect

Horsewr just asked about shocking, not gps collars. If you don't need a tracking feature just the shock collar, then this is a lot cheaper. In particular because you don't have to buy an expensive reciever. Plus the battery life is much better on such collars. Tritronics has been the leader forever, and they were bought out by Garmin a few years ago. Which means you get Garmin customer service now, which admittedly has improved vastly in the last few years, but is still nothing to write home about. Also be prepared for Garmin to come out with a new model and immediately quit servicing/repairing the old model. That is a business practice they are notorious for to force people to buy new products. Unfortunately their competition lags far behind in many aspects so they are still your best choice. Sportdog is their main competitor, and I've heard quite a few good reviews on their shock collars, and known some guys who liked them, they were usually one or two iterations behind Tritonics. One time in the past when I had issues with Tritonics I ordered a system from Sportdog. Unfortunately I can vouch for the quality of their customer service and warranty, because they didn't work and I ended up sending them back.

I would look at Garmin/Tritonics and they have a bunch of models, most that are expendable and vary in range, features and price.

I have been a tritronics user for over thirty years, as said now garmin, quality product. No 200$ is not enough.

Used market is pretty strong for training collars. Look around you’ll find something. And most, I know Garmin does, allows multiple collars to work on the same controller…at the same time.

If you buy used be sure to test it out, and post pictures. LOL

I have an older TriTronics collar it still works well. I will take $100 for it you pay shipping. Its good for 1.5 miles. We used it for our coondogs.

The more setting's the better use the very lowest setting he'll respond to also a noise/ viberater.

Thanks for the input everyone. As Bearcats said I don't really need a GPS set up as my dogs shouldn't ever be more than a half mile or out of sight. If using a set up with no GPS tracking and under 1/2 mile, what would be the difference between a $50 Petspy set up and a $200 sportdog set up? Thanks

I had a blue heeler about 9 months old that was very stubborn. She thought she was the pack leader. Put a collar on her for about ten days. Got her attention. Then I took the collar off but showed her the remote that I carried. That worked just as well. By age one, she was very obedient. She was not used around stock however.