Bark-a-matic

Today I had a call from someone asking about a bark collar that was on one of the dogs that they saw on our Flickr site and I thought maybe I should explain a little bit about what we do to keep the noise levels down to a dull roar.

1. Some dogs bark when they are excited . At the daycare they can be excited a lot!
2. Some dogs bark when other dogs are playing. I think they want the dogs to stop so one of the participants can play with them. It never seems to work because they are really good at ignoring other barking dogs.
3. Some dogs bark whenever someone passes by outside. They all seem to bark if the person stops and stares!
4. Some dogs (I'm not naming any names, Coulee and Tundra) tend to howl if we "ignore" them (you know for a whole 30 seconds or so!) and they get everyone else howling along.

So to try and reduce barking we:

1. Ask the dogs to be quiet (if they can hear us above the racket!)
2. Spray the dogs with water. It is amazing how well this works. With most of them, we just need to be holding the water bottle and they won't bark. With others, they bark to make us spray them because they think it is a great game!
3. Use Citronella spray collars. We have a few at the daycare that we tend to rotate around the dogs depending on the time of day and what activities are happening. So for example, Coulee tends to wear a collar when the dogs are running around outside as she tends to instigate barking at people that are passing by, whereas Polly wears the collar in the morning when there is a lot of activity because she barks (loudly and shrilly) at other dogs playing.

Bailey sporting a bark collar

It is important for us to keep the barking to a minimum so that we keep our neighbors happy (they love watching the dogs play but I'm sure they don't like listening to them!) and so that we don't go crazy from all the noise.