excessive barking ultra sonic bark collar

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Barb, in this scenario where are you when your dog is outside?

I agree with Sheltieche that if your dog has a fence barking issue, he should never be allowed outside unsupervised. You can't help control the situation and train your dog if you're not there to help him. Every time he is outside and barking by the fence it is only making it more obsessive for him and much harder to break.

I would be outside with him. I would put him a long leash on him. My goal would be to change his association with the dog on the other side of the fence. Right now he has negative feelings and when you use a sonic collar or canned air type device you are only encouraging those negative feelings. We'd all like to think that when we use a sonic device our dog will think "oh every time I bark, this annoying sound goes off. I don't like this sound, so I will stop barking." Even if you use it to distract your dog for a second, so you can reward him for being quiet, you're negatively hurting his ears in order to do something positive. So, he will still retain that negative association toward the dog on the other side of the fence. Negative will triumph the positive. He may also think "oh when I bark at the dog, mom calls me and I get a treat. awesome!" so it's possible you have enabled the problem. I've been there...

The side effect of using sonic, citronella or vibrating devices is you have no control over what your dog will associate it with. For example, my dog is very territorial and also fence barks. I was frustrated and tried the sonic bird house. I am not proud of it, but nothing at that point worked. The sonic bird house did make my dog stop barking for a second, but instead of associating the sound with her own barking, she associated it more with the stimulus on the other side of the fence. It made her even angrier and her bark became more aggressive. She thought the stimulus on the other side was controlling the sonic sound. Well it didn't last long because within 5 minutes she figured out how to lower the pitch of her bark and bark without setting it off. :rolleyes2:

Ok now I'm babbling on... here's what I would do. 1) Dog is not allowed outside unsupervised. 2) Dog is on long leash, so if he doesn't stop barking, he gets taken into the house. 3) Create a positive association with the dog on the other side of the fence.

How would I try to create that positive association without anything negative? Treatssss! I would make it rain with glorious, glorious treats. Turn it into a game. During that calm millisecond between my dog noticing the other dog and when her barking starts, I would toss a bunch of treats onto to the ground in the opposite direction of the fence and tell her to "go find". If your dog is a food hound, he will search for all those delicious high value treats. I would keep tossing treats until the dog on the other side of the fence is gone. Hopefully, after a few weeks of this, my dog would begin to associate the people and dogs on the other side of the fence with the "go find" game. A nice positive association. The key is the treats have to be amazing, so they are more enticing than barking at the other dog.
 
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Everyone's personal situations are different. In our case our front fence is on our driveway and is a chainlink gate fence that opens for entrance to our garage so impossible to change. I do go out with my dogs but as a home daycare giver I do have to let my dogs out on their own at least twice a day, again a situation impossible to change. Our girl is leash aggressive when other dogs are around so to have her on a long leash to control her is not a solution as she becomes anxious when she cannot visit. I sound like I am defending my methods but as I said personal situations control our methods and people shouldn't judge others :hide,on their techniques unless the dog is ill treated verbally or physically. We all know our dogs and what works for them. Ours are showered in treats, have training sessions daily, exercised and loved so very much. Sorry, enough of my ranting.
 
Yep, I have to let my dogs out on their own as well. Though I hear what you are saying, Shelti-Che. Perhaps if I can catch him misbehaving in daylight hours....it might help the dark hours when I'm loathe to got out with him.

But I'm sorry, I'm just not up to getting dressed at 6 a.m. in the pitch black to stand outside with my dogs while they go pee in the frigid cold. Maybe I'm a bad Mom, but that's the reality.

But I'm going to say again, that doesn't mean that electronic corrective devices are wrong.

So, Shelti-Che, when you are outside with your dog and he starts to bark.....do you correct him? Yes, of course! That's exactly what you are doing. And then praise and reward him when he stops.

So how is it different?? I'm trying not to obtuse here. But that there seems to be a varying levels of what is ok correction. Verbal, physical, ultrasonic, static?????
 
BarbV said:
Yep, I
So, Shelti-Che, when you are outside with your dog and he starts to bark.....do you correct him? Yes, of course! That's exactly what you are doing. And then praise and reward him when he stops.
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Barb, here is the thing-
I do not have to.
The more I practice model I described

1. Check if all needs are met- food, shelter, water, mental and physical exercise
2. Modify environment to decrease probability of the behavior
3. Reward heavily for behaviors I want
4. Create alternative, incompatible behaviors to the behaviors I do not want

the better it gets.
Instead of letting my dog see other dog, run to the fence, start fight, me screaming and yelling No, getting my dog to come back, reward for coming and sitting here is what I do...
I see my dog flicking his ears and get his posture body tense and forward- I know there is dog on opposite side of fence, my dog is on leash, I take nice relaxing breath, my pup looks at me, I smile, ask for sit, reward with warm praise and have good satisfying play of tug... the more we do it, the less my dog wants to do anything with dog behind the fence because it is soo much more fun and rewarding to play and be with mama...
and when mailman comes to the door, my boy will let soft whooshy woof and I put my hand on his neck and I say "I got it, thanks buddy" which tells my pup I got it covered, thank you for doing your job, I appreciate you do what you were bred to do, but I have your trust and I will take care of it... and my puppy will peacefully stay on windowsill supervising the world...
Don't misunderstand me both of my boys are reactive and always will be seeing world as the world that needs to be taken care of:cool: so we have our moments:ick BUT
it is HABITS that are hard to change... if dog used to run and fight fences for years it is well rehearsed situation which might take a whole new level to deal with...
BEHAVIOR you can change on a dime. Something that SG taught us in the beginning- look for the behavior- you like it? Is it naughty but cute? Do you wanna see it again? Do you wanna keep it? If not make sure you never see it repeated...
 
Ok, I'm taking a deep breath cleasing breath here. Can we have a reality check here?

I think many of us have said it and bi-black most recently.....the reality is that many of us don't have the luxory of time in the morning to look for a "flick of the ear" to cue if our dog is ready to take off.....It's pitch black outside because its winter and the dogs want outside 6 a.m.

Dogs are house trained, so don't need to be escorted to go pee and told they are "good boys".

According to you, I would have to go outside in my PJ's to supervise my pups in -20C wheather, in case one of them flicks an ear, so that I can correct him before he starts barking out something out there?????

I'm missing something I think​
 
Sometimes we deal with less than desirable situations such as bad weather or something else out of control. That still doesn't make it any more excusable to set an animal up for failure which is what these devices being discussed do.

I believe SheltieChe mentioned making the environment more conducive and allowing their animal to have the least amount of chance of failure possible. Perhaps installing some lights if it's too dark to notice cues, yes, we all hate getting out of bed but it's something we must do until our animals can be confident enough in a situation to react the way we desire them to act. It's unfair to put a dog in a yard when you know it isn't trained to handle its emotions when something stimulates it and then you spray it in the face, or use a device to startle it because it fails; it's simply the incorrect way to go about it and you're saying you chose the incorrect way because it's too much of an inconvience for you to get up in the morning and go out with your dog...If you took the time to go out with pup every day for a consecuative amount of time and put him in situations where he will succeed and is rewarded, the behavior would be gone for good. With devices like these, you never teach the dog and forever rely on them. Sometimes we have to do things we don't want to like get up with the dog after installing lights and help your dog associate positive things with whatever sets it off. Then after a few months you'll not have to worry about it and can go back to sleeping in.
 
BarbV said:
According to you, I would have to go outside in my PJ's to supervise my pups in -20C wheather, in case one of them flicks an ear, so that I can correct him before he starts barking out something out there?????
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Yes, that's exactly what needs to be done. Although, you do have the option of getting up and putting on the appropriate attire. I had a reactive dog long ago and lived in a duplex with a shared yard. I had to wake up very early, in the cold, and go out on a leash for about four months with this dog because the shared neighbor wouldn't have been okay with me just letting the dog bark like crazy, even if it is made to hush soon after. I didn't go out and get something to spray him in the face, or to vibrate and cause him discomfort. I did what SheltieChe said and threw treats at 6am, pitch dark, and over time, he got better and better, very quickly actually. He only took a few seconds to do his business so it wasn't even always a definite thing we'd run into someone early, we didn't always. But that's just an example of how you can go about training a dog and while it wasn't fun getting up for those few months, I never had to worrry about it again and knew when he went off to his future home, his owners wouldn't have to worry about it.
 
Bark collars

BarbV said:
Ok, I'm taking a deep breath cleasing breath here. Can we have a reality check here?

I think many of us have said it and bi-black most recently.....the reality is that many of us don't have the luxory of time in the morning to look for a "flick of the ear" to cue if our dog is ready to take off.....It's pitch black outside because its winter and the dogs want outside 6 a.m.

Dogs are house trained, so don't need to be escorted to go pee and told they are "good boys".

According to you, I would have to go outside in my PJ's to supervise my pups in -20C wheather, in case one of them flicks an ear, so that I can correct him before he starts barking out something out there?????

I'm missing something I think​
Click to expand...
Why keep bringing it up?We are all gonna agree to disagree so let the thread die.
 
We all can't be perfect dog owners. I do go out with my dogs at 6 a.m. at -30 C, with motion lights on in 3 areas but when I'm in the back cleaning up poop so it won't be someone's breakfast and they are at the side when a dog charges my gate there isn't alot I can do but use my voice to get their attention. So the world isn't perfect and I can't make it that way for my pups so we can occassionally avoid these situations. As someone said we should all agree to disagree. End of subject.
 
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