Anti-bark collars anyone?

[gritsar]

'k, I'm sure everyone knows by now that I'm a pacifist. I even carry most bugs outside instead of squishin' em. I am also in fragile health and need lots of rest to maintain what health I have. The border collie has other ideas. He barks and barks and barks some more. Not at important things, but at the cows. The same cows he sees day in and day out. Maybe I'm just extra sensitive to his barking, I've been owned by my wolfie for going on 9 years and have only heard her bark half a dozen times.
We are considering an anti-bark collar to break his habit. Do y'all feel they are terribly inhumane? The other question being: We plan to find him work when I get my chickens by moving his quarters within sight of the coop so he can warn of predators. Do you think the collar will work so well he won't bark at all, even when we want/need him too? We wouldn't keep the collar on him long-term, just till he gets the idea.
And about the most bugs statement...I carry spiders, crickets, and other bugs outside, but if a centipede gets in my house he's toast.

 

[Redfeathers]

There are some bark collars that are a gradual increase before an actual shock, some just start with a tone when the dog barks, if they continue it will grow stronger until the dog has no choice but to take notice, I don't see a problem with those kind, the dog learns quickly and usually stop barking at the tone after a few times. There are also citronella collars that just squirt a quick mist of citronella at the dogs face, dogs don't like the scent and quickly (most dogs) learn to not make the squirty smelly thing happen. The dogs smell pretty darn good for a few days! I've tried both on one particular dog and prefer the gradual tone to shock for quicker learning. I don't recommend the instant nasty shock collars that don't teach, they just hurt.

Just my two cents.

 

[PurpleChicken]

If used CORRECTLY and SET TO A LOW SETTING shock collars are very effective
training tools. Mine worked great, at least until my pit/healer chewed it off my
hound and ruined a $150 collar. She put him up to it we think.

Border collies are VERY smart and can be trained not to bark or at least shut up
on command. Just be sensitive to the fact her barking is her way of communicating.

I do want to make it clear that I tested the collar on MYSELF to properly guage
what the level of discomfort is. Setting #4 on mine was more than enough for
a 50 pound dog. Ours also had a beep. The remote control had a beep button and
a shock button. We almost never needed to use shock because the beep always
caught our hounds attention.

 

[jeaucamom]

We tried the gradual shock collar on our sheltie because he is PSYCHOTIC!!! That is NOT an exageration. He barks at EVERYTHING...light..shadow... undetectable noise.... leaves falling....children laughing...lights being turned on...off....etc...Continuously. You get the picture. It made me nuts! And he learned to bark all the way through number 10 no matter how uncomfortable it was for him he just kept going he literally could not help himself. And he had a HUGE bark for a 25 pound dog. So I resorted to 1/2 debarking him. (No hate mail please, I was desparate). It finally made his bark tolerable and didn't take him back to get the other half done.

No my new puppy Bucky, newfie/golden mix, he has gradually been getting more barky over the last couple of weeks. Seems his testosterone is kicking in at 15 weeks. We put the collar on him and it took him two barks (thats only level 2 on the gradual collar) to figure it out and it took him two days to bark again. Problem is, he had been barking to let us know he had to go potty in addition to barking to get attention and even taking him out every 2 hours, we still had messes in the house. Ugh.

So, YES, it does teach them not to bark at all, which is not always what you want.

 

[unionwirewoman]

Yes it will on most dogs keep them from barking ( I like the gradual ones too ) but the problem is , the dogs will not bark anymore if they learn . To answer your question , that means even if a bear is at your front porch , more than likely that dog will not bark . (been there , done that ) . So it's kinda a catch 22 .

 

[nccountrygirl]

My DD has 2 dogs that bark all the time. I've seen the times where I wish I could hook a bark collar up to a car battery and shock the s**t out of them.

 

[gritsar]

Quote:
You mean I can't buy the car battery as an accessory to the shock collar? That was gonna be my next question!

 

[PurpleChicken]

Quote:

Just plug it into the wall for those tough cases.

 

[ChickenFanaticAB]

i don't know about how the collars work for stopping the barking, but a friend of mine has a psychotic dog (she looks like she may be part border collie...) and the human controlled shock collar worked really well for them. At this point, they just need to put the collar on and the dog is much more responsive without ever using the shock. I would think that you could take the collar off and the dog would understand that it was safe to bark, so when you wanted to be alerted you could remove the collar. The dog will know that the punishment is associated with the collar, and will probably try to bark all she can when its not on. Maybe not, but most dogs try to get away with whatever they can....as we all know

 

[Scrambled Egg]

nccountrygirl wrote:
My DD has 2 dogs that bark all the time. I've seen the times where I wish I could hook a bark collar up to a car battery and shock the s**t out of them.



You cracked me up with this!!! Very funny!!