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is the trash breaker any good? is it alright to use on a 7month old dog? just wondering, i don't know much about shock collars, what makes the trashbreaker different than the other collars?

Trash breakers are good. But becarfull you can screwup a dog with one!

so are you saying not to use it too often,? like only once or twice? i know it can make a dog stop hunting completely though

Try this.
1st put the collar on your neck and put the remote on setting 2 and let it rip.
Now you know what you’re doing to your dog! You can move forward.
I use a shocker only if the dog holds up and not listens to me. I will use the vibrate mode. They usually come a running.
It sounds like you are using it for the 1st time on this dog. So take it really easy. Take your time with the dog. NEVER burn you dog. Train your dog in the yard not in hunting session. This way you will not get frustrated. Start with the VIBRATION MODE then move to level 1 shock and so on if the dog does not listen. The dog will listen if its the 1st time for him and will come with your commands.
Remember your not only training the dog your training yourself too. Just make sure you keep the collar on the dog during training and leave it on over night if possible. I have a dog that the second you put the collar on he right at my feet for at least 2hr before he relax.
After a couple of days your dog is responding really well he is trained and will listen to the commands you call our. Just keep up the training.

Another thing I would add is to have the dog wear the collar for 3 or for days before you start using it. Just leave it turned off and reposition it on it's neck a few times a day. This way you don't develop a collar wise dog, that only listens while wearing the collar. Most of my young dogs will wear a training collar their first season weather I plan on using it or not. It helps to maintain consistency and reinforces that you are in controll at all times.

Tri-tronics is on there third generation of collars. The first had units as big as a lunch box on them. I have one- the Judge plus and it works just fine even if my hounds chins get scraped from trying to hold thier heads up with them on. The second generation were considerablly smaller and the third generation- called G2 recently came out those units are sweet and allow you to program up to 6 collars on one unit with great range. What that means is if you and a buddy each need two or three shock collars you can coordinate your purchases so all collars are different frequencies and program each into each others units. Which means you or your buddy can then use thier unit to shock your hound off trash if needed. A GREAT FEATURE!!! So if I start from one end of what were hunting with some of our hunters and my buddy does the same from the opposite direction if either of our hounds strike trash despite all our training one of us should be in range to end it with the trashbreaker. If your using them to break hounds off trash then they will naturally come to associate the buzz with the shock and it's easy to then secondarilly use it teach your hounds to come to the buzz when you want them to come back to you. If your using them to just to recall a hound there a pretty expensive butler in my opinion. Also, it's just plain stupid to strap a collar on yourself and let it rip to see what the hounds are feeling- t's kinda PETA like in it's thinking. I know it feels uncomfortable- that's the point and I'm doin it to a dog, not a person. If I do it to my hound I'm fine- if I use it on my kid I'm not. Lets not give our hounds that artifical status of equals the PETA would like them to be seen as. Same goes for the great topic on freeze branding that was posted where the fella talked about doing it to himself so no one could say look what your doing to your hounds. Great instructional article, poor line of thought. Now if he had said he did it just to do it and have a fancy, all the rage tattoo well being a guy I can see that. I understand what the folks are saying by this but to me it's a dangerous line of thought.
Now back to the topic- I usually like to let a young hound get his nose, interest and bearings as to what he, as a hound, is supposed to do before I use a shock collar on him. I put the hound in situations were his chance of running trash are minimized and look at an early deer chase as running/trailing training. As for ruining a hound with the shocker if your working from lowest to highest settings based on the hounds reaction you'll ruin very few hounds. If a hound won't respond to low or middle settings and you need to use the high settings on him and now he won't chase or barked on chase what did you really have in the first place. Last winter I shocked my older hound off a deer chase he had just started and was running half heartedly. I really gave it to him. He hadn't run a deer in over three years and been in plenty of situations to do so. What happened- I'm not quite sure. He ended up jumping a yote later in the day and running it silent for hours. Folks wondered if I'd ruined my hound. Well if an older hound will run trash what exactly have you ruined? Even after an extended time without doing so. If you can't be 100 percent sure of a finished hound not running trash you don't have a complete hound to begin with. He's back to barking on track as I figured he would be and I'm almost as confident about him not running off game as I was before his half hearted, can't help it, too good to pass up, but oh it's so wrong, but feels so good abruptly ended deer chase. Good luck, Paul Conway.

Here Here Paul, Great advise IMHO. Sam

I HAVE THE G2 EXPANDABLE IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO GO. START WITH ONE IF YOU WISH AND EXPAND UP TO SIX...AWESOME!! AS FAR AS A 7 MO. OLD DOG HE IS STILL LEARNING TO TRAIL, BE PATIENT.

just remember you've got to get the Expandable G2 as PRED8R stated. They do make a single unit G2 trashbreaker that will not accept further collars. Paul Conway.