Try to Stop Your Dog Barking with Citronella Bark Collar

A citronella bark collar certainly is not the only way to stop your dog from barking. It offers some advantages though and may be a useful tool for training your dog to be quiet. We tried one on our loud spaniel and saw immediate results.

Dogs bark for all kinds of reasons. Often the reasons are good ones. Sometimes they reasons are hard to understand and the barking just turns to wild, uncontrolled noise. Maybe the noise stems from boredom or loneliness or maybe it's just the result of too much energy. In any case, the noise causes trouble and often must be stopped.

In our case, we tried many avenues to keep the noise down and nothing we tried had much positive result. We then looked for a tool to help with the training. The tool we choice was a MultiVet citronella bark collar. Here's how it works.

The actual unit is a cube that slips on a collar and fits against the neck just under the dog's jaw. The instructions say to put it on and leave it turned off for a couple of days. That's to let the animal become accustomed to the feel, I'm sure. It contains a sensor to detect the barking and a pressurized can containing citronella oil. The unit requires a battery to operate and a pressurized can to charge the oil reservoir in the unit.

When the dog barks, the sensor triggers the spray device and the nozzle sprays. What issues forth is a cloud of oil mist that completely surrounds the dog's head. With the collar we have, the oil mist cloud is about 18 inches across and is mostly ball-shaped. Not really harmful to the animal, the mist is quite smelly as well as coming as a complete surprise. There is also a slight noise to the puff which may add to the startle factor.

At least for our spaniel, just a couple of squirts was all it took to make an impression. The mist is smelly, yes, and probably shocking as well, in a startling sort of way. That's what the expression on our dog's face suggested. Who knows, why, maybe it's just the distraction of the whole experience, but the collar stopped the uncontrolled barking almost immediately.

A citronella bark collar administers a negative consequence to barking. The oil mist cloud comes suddenly and as a complete surprise, at least for the first time. It may not work for all dogs but it certainly does for some.