Ultrasonic bark control thingamejigs

[Kladdkaka]

Anyone have any experience of this kind of thing?

My little bastard terrier beautiful Westie boy has taken to barking incessantly and I have a permanent headache. Thankfully the neighbours are far enough away that he's not being a nuisance to them, but he is being to me. Today was raining all day and to him rain equates to thunder and thunder equates to fireworks and fireworks must be barked at. He's doing my nut but I don't want to buy one if it's a load of rubbish.

We had a collar that squirted citronella type stuff. I think the dog used it as a form of eau de cologne. It didn't work, so now the bloody spoilt mutt sleeps in the bedroom, not at the top of the stairs! I hope you find a solution.

To be honest, I think you are better off saving the money and teaching a 'quiet' command (or 'enough' or whatever you want to call it). These devices work by emitting a high-pitched noise that we can't hear, but which is meant to be unpleasant to the dog, so it will stop barking because it doesn't like the noise. I am amused by the idea that people can buy this to hang in their garden to use on their neighbour's barking dogs, so I can understand why it appeals to people. However, over time the dog will just get used to it and go back to barking again.

You can teach a quiet command by waiting until the dog stops barking, say quiet and reward them. It's probably easiest to use a clicker to help you mark the behaviour, especially since to begin with you might have to reward a very short moment of silence.

If you wanted, you could also try and densensitize him to the sound of thunder/fireworks. I expect you can get tapes to play quietly and then at ever-increasing volume, but in our case DH playing noisy video games did the trick.

In general it's better not to use aversive training techniques because they can have unwanted consequences. Suppose a dog is barking out of fear, and then as well as the thing it is afraid of it gets a nasty noise or a squirt of citronella - it just gives it something else to be afraid of.