How much barkng is too much?

krlyr

Mulder00 wrote: »

The collar is now doing it's job, as long as we keep replacing the battery and refilling it every now and again (very seldom!!). The barker now knows when he has the collar on that he will end up smelling like a lemon. Unfortunately, it's still not fully taken care of his separation anxiety and he has learnt to cry instead of bark to get past the collar...

And your dog will continue to feel the distress leading to the barking/crying. I would really recommend dealing with the behaviour, not just the symptom, because it won't just vanish overnight. Nicole Wilde does a good book on separation anxiety, called "Don't leave me"

I do agree that it's worth recording all day to rule out barking, if the dictaphone is limited. I used my laptop's in-built webcam and microwave, and a free piece of software called Debut Video Capture to record for several hours (I don't think it has a time limit at all) and play back (and importing the video into the audio program Audacity gives an easy to look at soundwave - you can spot the barks by the peaks in the wave)

A few barks here and there won't be deemed a noise nuisance. I would second the possibility of your dog suffering a case of mistaken identity - I live opposit emy nan and a few times she's asked if my dogs had barked in the night, but it's some dogs up the road. Noises like barks carry very strangely up our cul-de-sac and it is nigh on impossible to pinpoint where they are coming from - you may simply be getting the blame because they've seen you with a dog, or yours has a similar bark.

skivenov

Personal opinion - only when they're trained to. Mine was trained to do an alert bark ("Dad, dad, someone's here"). speak on command until told to shush, and make all the noise he wanted when chasing or playing.

Mulder00

krlyr wrote: »

And your dog will continue to feel the distress leading to the barking/crying. I would really recommend dealing with the behaviour, not just the symptom, because it won't just vanish overnight. Nicole Wilde does a good book on separation anxiety, called "Don't leave me"

I just mentioned the collar as a means to treat the symptom and give the neighbour's some immediate relief. I definitely agree that if it's the case that the dog is found to bark more than just once or twice, you need to deal with the underlying cause (which we are doing on an ongoing basis - it's getting better, but never went away!!!)

meritaten

why not ask neighbour to keep a diary? tell her/him you are concerned about this (as you should be) and want to know if there are specific times when the dog is barking. work together to find out if its sporadic or at certain times (ie when the postie comes round) or just random. the neighbour may be less likely to take it to the next level if they know you are as concerned as they are.

nearlyrich

Our neighbour's dog barks when the postman comes to our house but not to theirs???
I would be annoyed if a dog was barking constantly but I can cope with a few random barks during the day..

SuperAllyB

Mulder00 wrote: »

How long do you use the dictaphone for? Being a dog owner myself, it's easy for us to jump to conclusions like neighbours being completely unreasonable when it comes to the amount of barking our dogs do.

We used to get complaints and I used to do things like get home and sneak up on the dogs and even at one point asked neighbours to call me the moment they hear them barking so that I could investigate the cause. Each and every single time, I would get home and hear nothing and would get really upset at our neighbours who seemed to have absolutely no tolerance.

In came the citronella barking collar. The fact that it was empty the first few days after getting home and our dog smelled like a lemon, meant that maybe the neighbours had a point!

The collar is now doing it's job, as long as we keep replacing the battery and refilling it every now and again (very seldom!!). The barker now knows when he has the collar on that he will end up smelling like a lemon. Unfortunately, it's still not fully taken care of his separation anxiety and he has learnt to cry instead of bark to get past the collar...

I'm not saying you are wrong, but do investigate a bit more than just using a dictaphone. My own experience was that the neighbours actually had a point and we did our best to correct the situation.

Sorry to drag up an old thread, but it contains the most recent reference to a citronella barking collar i could find and you seem to have multiple dogs.

Is it noise or vibration triggered? My working dogs are all kept in an outside kennel. A recent addition has triggered a lot of barking during the night even when no-one is about and i'd like to try a collar on her.

Was just wondering whether the dog next to her barking would trigger the spray or not? They all bark if strangers are about which is fine, but barking for no reason at 4am isn't acceptable to me.

Raksha

Citronella collars are noise triggered and aren't advisable in multi dog environments