Training your dog with an anti-bark collar

My dog used to keep me up all night. His first family had to move from a 2-acre spread into a home with a backyard that was all pool and he was going crazy with no space to run. Neighbors were complaining about his barking and the family decided they had to give him away.

He is a beautiful dog, and I had always wanted a Collie, so my mom said we could take him home with us. We were very surprised when he spent all his time running and barking.

He barks not only at mail men, visitors, kids walking by down the street, and cars which drive by, but at squirrels, butterflies, birds flying over and apparently at the wind going through the grass. Anything that makes the slightest bit of movement at all will attract his attention and cause him to bark and bark.

My mom tried locking him out for the night, but that only made the matter worse. Now he would not only disturb us, but also all of the neighbors as well with his constant and insistent noises.

We had been against anti bark collars for awhile, but eventually we decided that enough was enough. The thing about anti bark collars that bothered us most was that they were so inhumane. If you do not like dog habits, be they panting, drooling, or barking, we reasoned, you should not get a dog.

Getting an anti bark collar which would shock him every single time he barked just seemed like a cruel fix for your own oversight in getting an animal which you were not prepared to adequately take care of in the first place. But still, the temptation of anti bark collars was getting pretty compelling after, one single night, he awoke me no less than six times.

My mom did some research on anti bark collars and found out that they do not all just use electricity. There are anti bark collars that, instead of using an electric shock, emit a high pitched noise which bothers a dogs sensitive hearing, and stops it from barking by the unpleasant sensation.

Unfortunately, these forms of anti bark collars also seemed pretty cruel, and we felt like we just had to find another solution to the problem.

We discovered citronella anti barking collars, which seemed just perfect. Rather than shocking a dog or hurting its ears, these anti bark collars just emit a burst of citronella, which is overwhelmingly powerful and strange for a dog. It confuses him, and makes him temporarily stop his barking.

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