Anti-bark collars are the new fashionable tools, because they benefit from the bad press surrounding shock collars. Anti-bark collars, on the other hand, are supposedly painless!!
False. Completely FALSE.
What is an anti-bark collar?
It is a collar placed around a dog's neck to stop him barking, using a sound, a vibration, ultrasound, a spray of citronella or water, among other things. The dog receives an unpleasant stimulus every time he barks. Yet a dog needs to bark, just as we need to talk and express ourselves. He has no words, so he uses vocalizations. It is one of his fundamental means of communication, as it is for us. A dog, like us, may need to express danger, fear, play, an alert, pain, sorrow, discomfort, and so on, and he does so through yelps and little cries, but above all through barking. Preventing him from doing so is genuine torture. Imagine that every time you opened your mouth, for the same reasons (stress, fear, warning of danger, scaring someone off, asking for help, crying for help), you received a spray of water in the face, a beeeep, a vibration — in short, something very unpleasant and unpredictable. The element of surprise alone is not reassuring, but it is enough to make you anxious, depressed, or make you want to withdraw into yourself so as never to go through that psychologically painful experience again.
How does it work?
To simplify to the extreme, there are two main currents in conditioning:
Reward: if I perform a given action, I receive a reward. Therefore, I will perform the same action again.
Punishment: if I perform a given action and receive a punishment, I will stop doing it (the barking example).
Punishment, still according to Pavlov and company, can be both physical AND psychological.
The anti-bark collar uses the principles of punitive conditioning. The collar detects any movement of the vocal cords and automatically delivers the "punishment" as soon as the dog uses them. Through this conditioning principle, the dog will stop barking for fear of being punished.
To conclude, I often hear this argument from people who use this type of collar: "But it's Pavlov, it's conditioning, it works!" Well yes, it works (not always). But just because it works doesn't mean it doesn't make the dog suffer.
The dangers of these collars
Your dog does not understand what is happening to him. He barks, he is punished (even if it is a sound, a vibration, or worse, a spray in the face), and he does not understand why. Some dogs will swallow their pain, or bark all the more in total distress and extreme panic, thereby doing the opposite of what the tool is inflicting on them; others will stop barking so as not to receive the sanction anymore. The dog can enter such a severe state of stress that the psychological consequences of this torture will be irreversible, such as learned helplessness. Other dogs will no longer trust the people who put this collar on them and, since they can no longer express themselves, will have no choice but to make themselves heard through biting and violence.
All living beings must be able to express themselves in one way or another — just like us! If we couldn't, we would live in an anxiety-inducing dystopia, depressed, cut off from the world; in short, we would suffer serious psychological damage.
On some boxes of collars sold online (yes, everything is still sold there…), I found only one warning, from a single brand, saying that this tool could be dangerous and that you should be supported by a professional. On all the other brands' websites, it is marketing argument after marketing argument:
Quick fix! Premium technology! Artificial Intelligence! Compliant with the law! Legal! 97% reduction in barking! Charges itself! And the worst: a cure for barking!!!! As if barking were a disease! Marketing does not go hand in hand with the welfare of our dogs.
What to remember
Humans taught dogs to bark, and now we want them to be quiet. Because it bothers us, because it hurts our ears, because it startles us, "because he has to obey us and adapt to our environment regardless of his needs"… it makes me sick.
But the dog never asked for any of this. Barking is massively misunderstood and misinterpreted. The best way to reduce your dog's barking is to understand where it comes from. There are a thousand and one reasons for a dog to bark. Get support from a professional who will come into the dog's natural environment to understand what triggers excessive barking. (A dog always has the right to bark from time to time, during the day — that's the law.)
I turned my Dachshund, a barker by nature, into a much calmer little girl, and I have helped many owners manage their dogs' barking, without shouting at them, without punishing them, but simply by listening to what the dog is telling us and giving him what he needs.
We will of course come back to this endless topic! And if you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me!
Sonia, your Dog Nanny
