Anti Barking Collars

[Seymour Butts]

I have two dogs who both live and sleep inside, they have unlimited access to the outside world via a large cat door.
Both dogs (and the cats for that matter) can come and go as they like.
There is nothing more annoying than being fast asleep and all of a sudden both dogs race out the door barking their heads off, this only ever happens at night, never during the day, further more it always seems to happen around the same time of night, first at about 1.30am and then again at around 3.00am.
Obviously they are hearing something outside and going too investigate.
I'm lucky I have great neighbours who all also have dogs, nobody has yet complained, but If I lived next door to me I can assure you I would complain.

This all leads to my question about Ultrasonic dog collars and such devices.

Has any one had any success with them?

Thanks

[ol' boy]

Have you tried locking the door at night?

[Seymour Butts]

Have you tried locking the door at night?

Yes - but they still bark - only with the door closed all the noise is now inside, maybe better for the neighbours, but not us
We have also tried citronella sprays and collars, Of course my wife has tried to reason with them, I've threatened them with the 10 cent solution but that just evaporates any privileges I might get from the wife, so that's no longer an option.

[ol' boy]

Although you did ask about the collars, my friend uses then to train hounds (proper english hunting hounds)
They do work, very swiftly.

[Uncle Fester]

Neihbour tried ultrasonic and citronella collars and psychology. Worked for a little while but the dogs adapt and fell back to bad habits.

So I built this to shut up my neihbour's mutts:




It is not actually ultra sonic. This salvaged bullet horn has a brutal resonance peak at 17khz, so I made a simple oscillator with a power MOSFET tuned for that frequency.
I normally can not hear anything over 12kHz but this thing I can hear and the dogs run inside the neighbours house 20 meters away.
My sound level meter registers about 120dBA.
The horn is highly directional so you can aim it like a gun at the dogs and not have tinnitus for hours later (like I did when I aimed it at myself once).

Now I rarely hear them. I catch one of them sometimes on my property eating the compost, VERY SILENTLY.
It is also a self sustainable tidy dog… it eats it's own turds.

I think you can still get piezo horns on Ebay for 10bucks. They should be good enough inside at least or shorter distance, less than 10m.

Edit: I just realised we are not on the electronics forum, so DIY may not be your preferred solution.
Nevertheless I had a deja vu that this was discussed in "electronics" some years back, so maybe worth a search.

[Downunder35m]

For me the question would be; Why do they bark?
If they are good dogs, they only bark for a proper reason.
At night this might be someone near by coming home or going to work, but could also be "something" roaming your property.
In case you actually need the dogs to alarm you of real trouble these above measures might help to shut them up, but most likely also for the cases when they actually should bark.
Maybe d-sensitizing them to noises at night might be better, or since you already know the times trying to find out what set's them off twice at night - maybe you can eliminate the source of that noise and all is good...

[Godzilla]

Try this (if you can be bothered)

Get a dog whistle ($5)

Every now and then blow the whistle and give them a treat. Get them use to every time you blow the whistle and they come, that they get rewarded.

Do this regularly at first, gradually dropping off the amount of times you do it, eventually getting it to the stage where you rarely blow the whistle, sometimes dont give a treat, day or night, eventually they get programmed to hear it and come looking for you with the thought they may get rewarded.

Keep the whistle next to the bed, every time they are about to go out (or are already out barking), use the whistle and watch them stop barking and come inside hoping for a treat.

My Neighbor got a dog and my Husky wouldn't shut up every time it went near the fence, i used this technique to draw her away from the fence to the door, eventually she preferred to be near the door in the hope i might slip her a smacko than to be distracted by the neighbours dog.

[Downunder35m]

That is indeed a good one!

[ol' boy]

Don't stop there Seymour, i'm thinking this concept could be used with Mrs Seymour too (for sex, not to stop her barking)

[iwacelect]

Your lucky you've got good neighbours, mine managed to get local council to put my dogs down, the f&@kers are yet to pay!!!

[Downunder35m]

How is that possible?
My council is very pro-dog.
I have barking dog right over the fence, the poor thing is locked up in a cage all day and only get's some attention when it is time for food.
Had to fill out records for six weeks listing every barking incedent and the times when I was away or sleeping.
Finally done with that requirement to lodge a complaint against a barking dog I was told I also need statemets from two neighbours confirming the problem and have to inform the dog owner that his dog is barking excessively.
Mind you that all I wanted was for the dog to shut up between 11pm and 6AM...
So all my records were useless as no neighbour agreed to sign on it.
After trying to talk again to my neighbour and stating I lodged a complaint with the council I realised why noone wanted to sign....
Let's just say people from southern Europe not only have good food and wine or beautiful women, but also a very short fuse...
To make the council put a dog down here, the dog must have been known to attack people or other dogs.
And only if a further test shows the dog really is too agressive it will be put down, otherwise the owner gets his dog back with some restrictions.

I think having a dog means being responsible for it's actions and training too.
Sadly too many people only get a dog for no good reason or loose interest.
A dog that barks for a reason is a good dog, a dog that constantly barks, wrecks the property or is agressive only has a bad owner
I love dogs, especially the bigger breeds, but I simply hate to sleep with ear plugs...
If I have a loud party here the police comes within an hours and shuts all down, but if a dog keeps you awake at night for months noone could care less than our council.

[Godzilla]

Exactly, either it needs training, attention from its owner, exercise or has a medical condition.

Our council is the same, records and neighbors to sign......only im the one in the area that's of southern European background.

To put dogs down must point to a more serious issue.

Our neighbor is much the same, his dog use to bark all day, non stop, reported it to the council and they called him, meanwhile we got forms to keep a record on and to get 2 neighbors to sign.

What did he do? Build a caged area and confine the dog to a 2X2m space away from our fence, it still barks (not as often), poor old lady on the other side must be losing the plot now.

Dog is not walked, trained or has any attention......

Post 7 explains what i did from day 2, within a day i had mine at the door when i wanted her to be there, within a few days the whistle was all that was needed with the odd treat, within a week its was the whistle with a treat given once out of every 20 whistles.

Being a Husky mine does not really bark, more of a deep howl/grunt mixed with a sort of bark, she only makes a sound when somebody steps on the property or is around/near our cars when they are parked on the street.

Just yesterday somebody was at the front door and i was home alone in the garage, i couldnt hear the door bell but certainly did hear her particular sound telling me someone was there....ended up being the local real estate agents looking for properties to sell.

A trained dog can make a great companion and a good security/door bell warning system.

[iwacelect]

No just frivolous complaints and continuos calls to council, when the officer arrived the 2 retired neighbours would be standing in the front yard setting the dogs off, got 2 fines, second one being $$1100 per dog & was warned that next one was $2500 per dog so was forced to surrender the dogs to council as could no longer afford to keep paying fine, dogs spent most of the time inside, tried to catch the worst neighbour on film banging the fence, caught the one on the other side with a squeaky toy, advised council officer, "doesn't matter your dogs can't bark!!!!!"

after surrendering them was told later that they couldn't be re-housed as to old, (READ NOT PUPPIES).

[iwacelect]

also new neighbour on squeaky toy side now (previous one moved after loosing our dogs) as of 2 months ago, came over to ask if i could help fix the fence between us (couple of rotten posts) not and issue, while helping him his 12 month old cocker barked a couple of times he asked me if the dogs barking is a problem, i advised no, but watch the prick the other side, he tells the day after they moved in the asshole went and fronted with the numbers for the council and this officers mobile as he and others in the community were going to get rid of my dogs, he told him to piss off, next thing he gets a call from council advising there's been complaints about his dogs barking...

Retiree with nothing better to do

have had dogs my whole life, big dogs, cant stand dogs you can trip over, no how to keep them, our dogs only barked when provoked eg someone at the door or someone banging the fence, while we're home they were inside and had access the doggy door outside

[jwoegerbauer]

I think having a dog means being responsible for it's actions and training too.

My 14-years-old bitch doesn't bark at all: It was simply a matter of training.

[Seymour Butts]

Exactly, either it needs training, attention from its owner, exercise or has a medical condition.

I think in this instance it's training, unfortunately my property is bounded by 6 neighbours and while I'm sure the activity is just a shift worker coming home or leaving unfortunately by the time I get up /dressed /floods on and outside generally the originating activity has ceased and the dogs are then all as happy as larry and ready to go back inside.

The dogs are actually quite well trained for spoiled lap dogs, they are fine during the day, if someone arrives at the door that they don't know we always get an indication but very rarely any barking - If it's someone they know at the door it's like the return of long lost relatives - they are all over them like a rash.

I really like Gods idea - I think I'll be buying a whistle on Monday

[trash]

Yes, I've got one. I put it on my goat, she doesn't bark at all.

Actually the collars work really well. What doesn't work well with them is lazy or stupid humans.
The automatic ones I don't think work to well. They have some issues which I don't really like.
The dog barks <zap> it yelps <zap> and again <zap> ... it's not a very effective way to teach a dog.

The remote control collars are the best and you should only have the collar on the dog while it's under your direct supervision.
They usually have a range of settings. Like buttons 1 to 5 each delivering a much larger shock than the lower ones.

So first rule is to use the collar on yourself. Put it on your arm (laughs - or your neck) and press the buttons from 1 up to the highest you can tolerate.
So if a 4 hurts you and you're not prepared to zap yourself with a 5, I wouldn't use it on the dog.

Next is to associate verbal commands or places and objects with punishment. The association is important because you don't want the collar on the dog any longer than is required to train him.
If he runs and you say "No" and he keeps running, he gets a [1]. It won't hurt him and chances are he won't even notice it.
So you repeat the exercise, the dog runs off and you say "No" and then press [2].
You repeat this until the do realises that "No" means shit is going to rain down.

Of course this is just an example and it can be varied for the task.
A friend had a small yappy dog that loved to chase (and kill) chickens. The problem was that the dog would only do it when the humans were not home.
So the collar was put on the dog and one person stayed behind while everybody else went for drive. Within 10 minutes the dog began to chase the chooks.
Every time he caught a chicken >zap< At first on the low levels the dog was only surprised, but the dog soon learned that chickens had developed the ability to deliver electric shocks.

The dog had associated the behaviour of chasing the chooks with humans leaving so they had to repeat the learning exercise a couple of times over a weekend for it to really sink into the pooch's head that chickens were dangerous.

Importantly, the collar is replaced with another dummy collar so the dog didn't associate the collar with the ability to punish them.

It's also not just about negative feedback. If the dog obeys the command and avoids punishment, they should be rewarded. Positive feedback works just as well a negative feedback.

There are plenty of other options as well as the electric collars. I have nothing to say on the legality of them.
I've seen owners who swore blind they would never use one until it came down to using one or the dog being sent away or put down.

A person using them responsibly will always get a good result and a happy well mannered dog.
A person abusing them will just get a scared and traumatised dog.

I think they can be vastly improved by giving the operator the same shock as they give the dog when they press the button.
So if you press a 10 and it throws you to the ground, then obviously your concern for the dog was more than the kick in the nuts you knew you would get.

[ol' boy]

Yes, the only time i have heard of Electronic Dog collars being used was when training hunting "Hounds", not really dogs, you would never pat one, unless you didnt like your hand.

The collar is used ONLY when they have failed to adhere to 2 or 3 verbal commands, and when out of reach of the whip. Or are about to go a Sheep instead of the a fox.

I have never heard of them being used in a domestic situation.

[vampyre]

I remember bringing up this topic many many moons ago. I was flamed back under my rock. "oh its cruel blah blah balah". Back on topic. :-P

[SCADA]

So I built this to shut up my neighbour's mutts:




It is not actually ultra sonic. This salvaged bullet horn has a brutal resonance peak at 17khz, so I made a simple oscillator with a power MOSFET tuned for that frequency.
I normally can not hear anything over 12kHz but this thing I can hear and the dogs run inside the neighbours house 20 meters away.
My sound level meter registers about 120dBA.

Don't suppose you would like to post up the circuit? I'd be interested to see how this all works. What power is the horn rated at? **Apparently** () you can really make these rock by putting the horn in a tube and tuning the length...would like to have a go at this.