Are anti-bark collars necessary?

No

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by Robert Laws

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Anti-bark collars for dogs work by detecting the sound of the bark and responding by either releasing an unpleasant smell (usually citronella) or emitting an electric shock to the dog. Effectively, the collars are punishing the dog each time the dog exhibits unwanted behavior (i.e. barking). The idea being that the dog associates the punishment with the barking and learns that barking is not pleasant, ultimately making it possible to remove the collar when the dog has learned this lesson.

These anti-bark collars do work in many cases, but to state they are necessary suggests that there are no other means to reduce and prevent unwanted barking. However, there are other training methods to reduce and prevent unwanted barking that are equally effective, albeit often more time-consuming for the owners.

The collars do not consider the cause of the barking and they do not differentiate between times when barking is desirable (e.g. when someone is breaking into the house) and times when it is undesirable. Collars simply react to the bark and attempt to suppress ALL barking.

The secret to preventing unwanted barking without a collar is to identifying the cause. What is the trigger? Often, dogs will bark because they are afraid, because they are excited or because they are seeking attention. Without going into too much detail, it is possible to train dogs to respond to voice commands, to ignore common sounds and to express their needs in less vocal ways, using distraction and positive reinforcement techniques.

If you choose to use a collar in a situation where there is a strong trigger for barking, like neighborhood kids teasing your dog, the dog may become immune to the effects of the collar. That is, the urge to bark is greater than the punishment of the collar and as the dog experiences the effect more regularly, it has a lesser impact on preventing the barking. You should therefore seek to identify the cause of the barking, even with a collar.

Training a dog is similar to training a child or an employee. There are 2 basic methods; train using fear and punishment for unwanted behavior or train using rewards and positive reinforcement of wanted behavior. Obviously, training humans is easier because we can explain verbally what we want, but the underlying principles are the same.

I do not believe anti-bark collars and other forms of punishment for pets are necessary and I prefer to use positive reinforcement to train pets. However, unlike some people, I do not consider the use of such collars to be cruelty, any more than I would call smacking a child cruelty.

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