George hasn't always been a barker, but unfortunately due to some persistent kids in my previous neighbourhood harassing him at the fence when he was young, he's become super sensitive to anything and everything along fence lines.
When we moved to our current house, he took a real disliking to both neighbours whenever they would go anywhere near their fence. Not ideal when they had vegetable patches and washing lines that bordered the fence.
I tried a few things to get him used to the neighbours, even getting a professional dog trainer out and actively doing work with the neighbours to try and desensitise him. I also tried a Citronella collar, but as soon as it puffed once and he realised what it was, he refused to go outside or even move around with it on. Kinda defeated the purpose of using it if he was going to sit in one place all day until i removed it. Unfortunately nothing was working and I was starting to loose my mind. It made me nervous to let him outside in case he started causing chaos and I was worried neighbours would start complaining. Realising a collar wasn't going to work, I went looking for other options and found the perfect solution. The Petsafe Outdoor Bark Control Device.
After reading the reviews, I purchased one immediately and as soon as it arrived I nailed it to the fence line on one side. It gives you an option of adjusting the settings, but since day one ive only ever needed to use it on the lowest setting. Every time George got close to that fence line and barked it would set the noise off. Humans can't hear it (unless you're right next to the device you hear a slight buzzing), but George was less than pleased with the noise.
It took a few months of leaving it on the fence for him to realise what was causing it to make the noise and now ive actually removed it as he's learnt over time to not bark there. I ended up buying a second unit to put on the other side of the fence and applied the same technique to teach him to not bark at the other neighbours. Again after a while I removed it, and now it actually sits in my kitchen.
Leaving it inside rather than outside means that no matter where he is in the garden or what he's barking at, if I want to give him a telling off, I have complete control. I turn the unit on and blow into the microphone which imitates a dogs bark setting the unit off. It emits the noise and he stops barking and comes running inside. The only downside to having the units outside is that the dog has to be within range of it to set it off, so if you have a big garden like I do then sometimes they can be barking at the opposite end and its not activated. Having it inside means I can give him the warning wherever he is in the garden.
I don't use it all the time as I think dogs should be able to bark, especially as he often warns me of people coming to the door so he's never corrected for barking for security reasons.
Note: Mums dog Maisy has absolutely no reaction to this unit. She barks at birds and we tried using the unit on her and she didn't even flinch. Some of the reviews I read at the time mentioned similar, so I do believe some dogs just aren't sensitive to the noise. Also be aware that there are many other noises that will set the unit off if they are close enough. For example the dog next door would set it off as he was on the other side of the fence, so George would be punished for another dog barking which was not pleasant. The lawnmower also set it off, so I made sure the unit was always turned off before mowing the lawns.
There are a couple of sites you can purchase from, listed below:
