Is a Bark Shock Collar Good for Your Pet?
24 Sep 2009
Among new dog owners the question of training their dog not to bark at the wrong time can be very difficult to answer. The most common solution is a bark shock collar but new owners often take a dislike to that word ‘shock’.
The first thing that has to be understood is that dogs do not react to ‘punishment’ in the same way that people do, and there is a very simple reason for this. Dogs don’t have a good sense of the future and they live mostly in the present, so unless you correct them at the very moment they do something bad, they won’t understand your actions. Also, the sense of “punishment” is different to dogs than it is to humans, which is also a concept that new owners of dogs have trouble understanding. If the owner is berating the dog many minutes after the ‘offence’, the dog simply gets confused because it does not associate the punishment with the offence.
So why Does a Bark Shock Collar Work?
A dog bark shock collar delivers a calculated static discharge when barking is occurring. The shock is instantaneous and since it happens when the dog barks, the dog is much more likely to make a better connection betweeen bad behavior and punishment. Once the dog makes the link between barking and punishment, it learns to stop the former to avoid the later. The dog is never really hurt or in pain by the shock; it’s actually the confusion that makes it stop barking while it tries to figure out what happened.
Since it’s not painful, professionals agree that a dog bark shock collars is acceptable and efficient in teaching your dog to behave.
Since the objective is to stop only inconvenient barking, a dog bark shock collar shouldn’t be used more than 30 minutes a day, and only in situations where barking is inconvenient. Dogs are very smart animals and no more want to be punished than any other animal or person. By using the bark shock collar according to the instructions that always comes with it, you will soon be able to teach your dog when not to bark while still allowing it to bark at other times.
