As a dog owner, you must be prepared to face all sorts of situations, like excessive barking, that might annoy your family and neighbors.
What Can You Do?
Figure out why your dog barks so much. No dog barks for no reason. There is usually an external stimulus that annoys your dog; maybe it’s an animal (like a cat), maybe it does not like people walking on the street or maybe it gets bored if left alone more than a certain amount of time. If you cannot remove the stimulus that annoys your dog, then you need to find alternatives.
Never punish your dog if it barks out of stress or fear, because this will only intensify the barking. You can use positive training techniques instead of coercion. Positive traning techniques include exposing your dog repeatedly to the stimulus, while you try to calm it down; distracting the dog when the stimulus occurs or the reshaping technique – teach it to bark on command. Many times these methods work efficiently if you have enough patience to apply them. However, sometimes it takes more than that to calm the repeated barking. You can even consider taking it to a training center or a vet.
About The Bark Collar?
Some people who own dogs use a bark collar to prevent excess barking. These items come in more versions.
A popular bark collar is the one that uses citrus spray that is pulverized whenever your dog barks. Some collars even give the dog a warning “hiss” so that they can learn to avoid the smell entirely.
Bark collars with sonic or ultrasonic sounds utter low frequency sounds that only dogs can hear. The dog doesn’t like the sound; it becomes annoying or distracting and the dog will bark less often.
Electronic barking collars give the dog a mild shock when they bark. The method does not hurt your dog, but it can substantially reduce barking.
These are not the only solutions available, but they can solve the problem better than other products or techniques. You can safely use any of the three types – the citronella spray collar, the electronic one or the sonic/ultrasonic dog collar. None of these methods are dangerous to your dog, but can be effective deterrents for excessive barking.
If you need a solution to prevent your dog from barking excessively, you can either use dog training or Bark collars. The latter comes in three versions, which are all very efficient – collars with citronella spray, electronic collars or sonic/ultrasonic dog collars. Any of these methods will not harm the animal. More information on barking collars is available here.
Stop Excessive Barking With a Bark Collar is a post from: Bichon Frise Guide