Love Letter to Citranella Bark Collars

We have two dogs, Orlando and Roxy, and they love to protect us from all other dogs, people, cars, plastic bags, you name it! They are really great dogs except for their barking. We use to take Orlando everywhere with us – he would just lay under the tables and mind his own business. We then got Roxy and they formed this little pack with the sole goal of barking at anyone and everything. I was once at a Starbucks when I lived on Oahu and the dogs barked at EVERY person that walked by. And I mean ferocious barks. A woman even came up to me and said, “Your dogs are going to bite someone and your daddy will have to pay for it.” A few Hawaiians really don’t like us howlies [white, mainland folks]. I tried everything! Obedience school, leaving the moment they started barking, yelling, pinching, turning away, everything. It was seriously affecting our lives so much. We couldn’t do anything with the dogs and were fighting all the time about it. To better illustrate just how bad our dogs were, I was once at the dog park mid-week and my dogs had the park to themselves. A new dog was trying to join and my dogs were barking so aggressively, the owner refused to come in. I didn’t blame her; my dogs were being utter assholes. I left in embarrassment and cried in the car.

When we moved to the mainland we found an amazing groomer, and she recommended a bark collar for the dogs. Doesn’t that just sound so awful? Resorting to some shocking collar because I can’t control my dogs? Yet, this was not one of those evil shocking collars … this sprayed the lemon sent citronella when the dogs barked.  Harmless, yet annoying. So we spent the $40 [actually $80 for two dogs] and tried them out. I am not even exaggerating here, these little collars changed our lives.

How do they work? You fill them with a spray [this comes with the collar], put it on them, turn it on. Done! To try it out, we first went for a little walk around the neighborhood. They love barking at all things in the neighborhood, so it seemed like a good place to start. We didn’t yell at them when they started barking … we just let the collar do its thing. The first barks received confusion, sniffing around, and abrupt halt. Roxy was terrified by the spray sound and she only needed one warning. Orlando, on the other hand, pushes the limits. He tried to bark multiple times and stopped the moment he was sprayed. From that day forward they figured out it was the collars and the barking that prompted the smelly spray.

Now when we go to the dog park or on walks we just put on the collars. We have been using them for almost a year and it stops the dogs’ aggression. They wont even try once the collar is on. Roxy’s collar has been broken for about 4 months but she has no fucking clue! She sees that collar and knows she can’t bark. They hate the collars, but the collar also singals we are going somewhere fun so … they don’t fight it too much.

Buy the Gentle Spray Citronella Bark Collar from Amazon for only $36. Seriously will be the best money we have spent on the dogs.

love, Sarah