chihuahua wont wear a collar

Question
Hello, I have a friend that has a chi. She has had her since she was 6 weeks old, she is now 4 years old. This dog just goes nuts if you even enter the room with a collar. She has to take her to the vet to get her nails trimmed because of the fear of getting eaten up. At the vet they wear leather gloves and put her to sleep to just cut her nails and give her any treatments she may need. At one time the vet put the dog on Prozac! I had never heard of that before but, it didn't help anyways. My friend is in her 50's and she has had lots of dogs thru out her life but, none like this dog. Question is, is there any hope for this dogs attitude? Can my friend do anything to help the dog?

Answer
The best thing your friend can do is find a good positive trainer to help her. The dog needs to learn to be handled (and gently restrained) in a systematic, non-scary way. She has found that being a buzz-saw often gets her out of unpleasant handling, and being heavily restrained at the vets only reinforces her belief that these situations are way scary. The thing about a lot of little dogs is that their snarky behavior is "cute" because they are so small, and they are allowed to behave badly for quite a while before the owner realizes how really out-of-control the behavior has become. If a 60 lb. dog behaved that way, it's a good guess that the owner would have addressed the problem pretty quickly.. Sandy Case BFA MEd CPDT, www.positivelycanine.com