Update on Trissie and the Citronella Bark Collar
I have to say, I’m impressed with the progress made with Trissie since we’ve been using the citronella bark collar. She never barks at all now at night, not even once which is a radical change from her former behavior. In fact, the other night we were out late and I totally forgot to put it on her when we arrived home and we didn’t hear one peep from her all night. She did start up with a round of barking at around 5.30 a.m. but it didn’t last for long, thankfully.
I have been doing a bit of research on the effectiveness of the citronella bark collar and have found a mixed batch of reviews. I’m still of the opinion that improper use of the collar is the cause of failure in most instances. It could be too, of course, that some dogs don’t respond so well to the collars. I read somewhere that dogs have been known to simply put their head to the side and thus avoid getting sprayed! Pretty smart dog! Fortunately little Trissie isn’t that smart.
It seems too that the barking is reduced most effectively when the dog doesn’t wear it all the time. That could be the reason why it worked so well with Trissie, seeing that she only wore it at night, just before we went to bed. I’m seriously thinking about taking it off her completely now, to see how she’ll do. I’ll keep it on hand so that if the barking begins a problem again I’ll have it to slip back on her again. I’m worried that she might either learn to turn her head to the side to avoid the citronella spray, or she might just plain get used to it and start her barking again.
In any case, I’m certainly very happy with the citronella bark collar and the very positive effect it has had in stopping barking with Trissie, and I would recommend it to others to at least try. It’s a bit of an investment, but well worth it if it does the job it’s meant to, of stopping barking. Next task is to work on her flea problem, which we didn’t realize she had right away. Looks like it’s time to flea bomb the house again, sigh!
In the course of my research I read where someone was using it to try to stop overly aggressive behavior in dogs, however it doesn’t seem to me that it would be very effective in that instance. I think, with an overly aggressive dog, the only solution would be to enlist the help of a good trainer, rather than slapping a citronella collar on and expecting that to do the trick. But for stopping barking dogs, it does seem to work well.
