Trissie and the Citronella Bark Collar
I have been trying the citronella bark collar on my dog now for about a week, and I have to say that I am quite impressed with the progress she’s made in learning not to bark. I’m even more impressed with how much better our relations with our neighbors are too 
We recently inherited a 9 month old female cocker spaniel, her previous owners were friends of ours but they were leaving this country and heading back to their own country. Of course we inherited not only the dog, but food bowls, chains and collars, brushes and her Frontline Dog Medicine. Trissie is a very cute, cuddly little dog, but she has a bad problem. For no apparent reason she starts barking right on dusk, at shadows or anything that moves. Neighbors to our right are a couple of elderly sisters, with pretty low tolerance for children, dogs, or anything that encroaches on their peace and quiet. As you can imagine, they were not very pleased with the latest addition to our family.
We tried bringing her inside and that worked, at least while she was inside. Because of allergies though, we can’t have dogs in our living room or the sleeping areas of the house and we didn’t want to leave her in the kitchen area at night. She was used to sleeping outside at night, and we brought her kennel, kennel decking, bed and blankets with her so no need to feel insecure there.
So, at bedtime dear little Trissie the dog would be sent off to bed. She’d do her business, sniff around a bit then trot over to her kennel. When we were sure she’d settled down we crept off to bed. No sooner were we lying down though, and the barking would begin. We’d be up and down for most of the night trying to shush her, finally we’d bring her inside at around 5 a.m. so we could get some shut-eye at least.
Yes, I know, we were rewarding bad behaviour but to be honest we didn’t know what else to do for those first few nights. It was probably the result of her being insecure but we couldn’t have her in the house all night, nor could we have her barking and keeping the whole neighborhood awake.
I’ve used the citronella bark collar before, quite successfully and I thought it might be what was needed for Trissie. I bought the citronella bark collar home after work and managed to get it on Trissie before she started her routine nightly barking.
You should have seen her, the first time she barked and the spray shot out. She turned her head from one side to the other, trying to figure out what on earth was going one. We noticed an immediate improvement in her learning not to bark, though she’d still try it from time to time during the night. The citronella smell doesn’t sit so well with her, which is partly the reason for using a citronella bark collar. Other spray anti bark collars work too, but there’s something about the citronella that most dogs find unappealing.
Here we are one week or so later, and I have to laud the citronella spray collar as being the solution we were looking for. Now she barely barks. If she does try it out, it just takes a few times for her to remember that whenever she barks she gets a little surprise!
I am not leaving the anti bark collar on her during the day, as I don’t think her barking during the day presents much of a problem. She mainly has a bark at the kids passing by on their way home from school, or when the postman drops off something in the letterbox. Dusk and nighttime was the problem, so I simply slip it on her when I get home at work and then take it off her again the next morning.
When I bought the citronella spray collar, I went ahead and bought replacement citronella refills as well as a couple of new batteries. The spray collar goes through batteries pretty quickly–another reason for my decision not to leave the collar on her all day. They’re pretty easy to come by checking out online dog supplies.
Anyway, if you’re looking for a fairly quick, safe and easy to use solution to help train your dog not to bark, I would highly recommend trying the citronella bark collar above all other types of anti bark collar. It works in about 85% of cases, and I have my thought that the 15% of the time it doesn’t work is due to improper use.
