we just brought Jeter home last Friday and he is 9 weeks and 4 day's old. He hates his collar too but I keep it on him because it has a bell on it so w can hear him while he is out and about the house. He will dig at it and all that trying to get it off of him but over the day's he has done it less and less. If he is playing his mind is totaly off having the collar on at all.
Jeter is too small for his harness, he can walk right out of it
and I have it on the smallest setting it can go. He is to little right now for taking for walks so thankfully I do not have to worry about taking him for a walk yet.
I was going to look for a smaller harness for him this weekend, maybe even look into a harness for a ferret If I have to!
Good luck getting your little one used to the collar. I think that you best bet would be to just keep it on him like I did with my Jeter. We have to have tags on the dog at all time too in the county that we live in. Any dog 3 months or older have to have them displayed, they had an article in the paper recently to reminding people that it is time to renew them.