Pet Articles &
Pet Product Reviews

Bark Control Collars

Are bark control collars a humane way to control your dog's barking?...

Using bark control collars is really the only effective way to control your dog's barking – especially if you have a particularly happy and irritating dog, such as a Beagle. This is really a shame. Bark controlling dog collars are what should be known as cruel and unusual punishment for a dog. They basically work by the most brutal of behaviorist tactics. Your bark controlling collar provides some kind of means – either a shock, a spray of citronella, a shrill sound, or what have you – to irritate or terrorize your dog every time he or she barks. Basically, bark control collars traumatize your dog to the point that it is unwilling to open its slobbery little mouth and express exactly how it feels about the mail man.

I have always thought that things like bark control collars were in very bad form indeed. If you appreciate a dog as a pet, that is fine, but you should be willing to accept everything about canine kind. You would not get a dog if you were uncomfortable with their habit of sniffing your privates, licking themselves, licking other people, or any of the other behaviors that dogs are known for. So why buy a dog if its barking offends you. Rather than getting bark control collars and other training gear, consider getting a cat. Or perhaps a pet rock. After all, those things never ever misbehave.

If you must get bark control collars for your dogs, be prepared to try out different ones so that you do not frighten your dog too badly. There are some which give a painful shock, which might be too much for your poor pooch. The citronella bark control collars are supposed to be more humane, as they simply emit a burst of citronella which confuses the dog momentarily and makes it stop what it was doing. However, as dogs are so completely dependent on their sense of smell, these kinds of bark control collars might be sort of like blinding your dog with a bright light. For some dogs, citronella bark control collars might be quite traumatic. The best solution is to get a bark control collar with adjustable intensity so that you give your dog enough of a jolt to hint that loud barking is unacceptable, but not enough to really scare it. However, you should be aware that you might have to try many different kinds of bark control collars before you find the right one.

For more information about dogs and puppies, see the "resources" section of this website, or go to articles about dogs.