The Truth About Anti-Bark Devices: Why Ultrasonic Gadgets Don’t Work

Hello, dog peeps. Jack here. Just a quick one before we get into this episode. You may or may not be aware that when I'm not talking dog stuff with Max, I in fact interview people who are incarcerated in prisons across the United States on a show called One Minute Remaining Stories from the Inmates. And that show has been nominated for an award in America. And I would love your support if you've got 60 seconds to click the link in the show notes of this episode and just vote for my show. That would be amazing if you could. Thank you very much indeed. Oh, and don't forget to verify your email address. Otherwise, the vote does not count. Thank you.

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It's the Dog People Podcast with your host, Jack Lawrence. Secretly, I decided to start this Podcasts for some free dog training advice. You know, Malinois seem to be like the dog at the moment. Like I think people see them on Instagram doing these incredible things. Yeah. Go oh my god that's awesome. And then they get one like oh my god what the fuck I done? And Max O'Neill.

You would not believe how many people I meet and I go what made you want to get say an Aussie Shepherd? They go I don't know. I'd go had you met one before? They go no. If you want to ask me how often I walk my own dog a week, it's only twice a week.

It's the Dog People Podcast, the podcast hopefully giving you a no-nonsense approach to dog training so you never have to shout, it's okay, it's friendly. My name is Jack Lawrence, not a dog trainer, just a dog training enthusiast, but of course joined by Max O'Neill, the Down Under Dog Trainer. And Max, uh, for most of us, Instagram, you know, you spend your day scrolling through the reels and seeing videos, and if you're anything like me, all you get shown is, uh, dog stuff.

Yep.

Um, and there's been a reel that's been going around. I actually see a fair bit of this You know, dog barking is a problem. Everyone, you know, deals with it in certain ways, in certain aspects, but there's this device that's been coming up in the reels where people apparently are just pointing this thing at dogs, pushing a button, and all of a sudden magically they're stopping barking.

Yeah. So it's the ultrasonic bark deterrent device. We're not going to name any specific brands. There's a few people getting around doing them. And the reason I want to talk about it is because it seems like someone's discovered this, rediscovered this product that's been around for years and years and years has decided to start importing a bunch of them from China, uh, slap a hefty price tag on them, spend a bunch on ads.

Give them a new name.

Give them a new name, give them a nice catchy little reel. And it seems to be working because my inbox is flooded at the moment with, do I need this ultrasonic bark device thing? The ultrasonic thing is it's spitting out a noise or a tone, uh, to our dog. It sounds like a very high-pitched whistle. At a frequency that most humans really struggle to hear, but our dogs can hear well. Now people tend to kind of like freak out at this, go, oh my God, like our dogs can hear it, so they must hate it. Like, the answer is no, not necessarily. Is, for example, if we go out to dinner and I hear like, you know, cutlery on a plate or something, both my wife and I are both like, like worst noise in the world, scratching cutlery on plates. Absolutely kills us. If we go out with our mates, they're like, what are you guys on about? That doesn't bother us in the slightest. And that's roughly how your dogs are going to feel about this noise. Just because they can hear it, not every dog is going to find this particularly aversive.

So it's almost like it's just distracting them for a second.

Well, some dogs are going to hear it and go, oh my God, make it stop. And then they'll do anything to turn it off. And then you can start to show, hey, your behaviour will turn this on. If you bark, your silence will turn this off. Cool. And from there, you're also going to have dogs who just really do not care. It might— the first time they hear it, and that's the thing, they come out the box, we press it, the dog stops barking, we go, oh my God, it works!

What a miracle! And

the next time they're like, what was that? Within 2 or 3 reps, they become completely desensitized to it. So there's much better ways to train out barking for most dogs. And honestly, I find that with it, most dogs are really not sensitive enough to care. Within a week, they generally have desensitized to it. They're not a big deal. And the other thing that can start to happen is if your dog's constantly losing their shit when the neighbour's outside or someone's walking their dog by and you start pressing this button, you can actually start to form an association where your dog's like, hey, that whistle noise only ever goes off when someone's out the front. And I have people, you know, had people then press it, whether because it's maybe the neighbour's dog barking and then it sends their dog off barking and there's no one even out the front because your dog's like, hey, that means that. So they're a pretty ineffective tool. They've been around for honestly about 10 or 20 years in various forms, ultrasonic bark deterrents. Um, they can come in collar forms. You can get things like the BarkBox or the BarkHouse and all these, also these handheld remote ones. Like I said, for some dogs they are effective. If I have clients that are seeking alternatives that are like physically very gentle on the dog and they don't have time to do the proper training and we end up, you know, through our decision-making matrix ending up at that, I go, look, these things are an option. Just know that they're probably only effective in like less than 10% of dogs. If they work, Awesome. Like, how good is that? But if they don't work, you've kind of wasted quite a bit of money. So they've popped up all of a sudden on social media, guys. You know, power to them. Good on them. Good marketing.

Well, I mean, I think the reason why they probably sell so well is because so many people— that's, that's probably one of the biggest issues, wouldn't you say, in a home with dogs is barking?

Like, is barking. Yeah.

I mean, my Kira, I mean, Kira is a pain in the ass at home with barking. Like, you hear— I mean, people will hear it during this podcast. If someone walks past the house with a dog outside, she starts barking. Yeah. And she also apparently one of her jobs she's given herself is to make sure that no bird ever lands in this garden. Like if any bird so much as dares fly over the top of the house or lands on one of the fences, and they fly away and she's done her job. And I'm like, well done, mate.

And you have got yourself a gun dog, haven't

you? Oh mate, she drives me insane because I mean, I love her to death, but barking and everyone I'm sure can attest to this and will agree that barking is a frustrating Part of having a dog. I mean, people say, I love it, it scares people away. And my wife's like, it's good because people know there's a dog here, so they might think twice about jumping over the fence. I'm like, well, yes, but I don't want her barking every time a person goes past the house with another dog or every time a bird flies over the top of the house. But I, to this, to this day, I've been unable to stop that from happening.

Oh, we can sort that out pretty quickly. We'll chat about that off air or maybe on air. Maybe we do a session.

Well, yeah, let's do it. Let's do a session. Let's do a session with, with her barking. We'll bring it to people because I know it's an issue people do with all the time. And then I know it's very much— we've spoken about barking, we've spoken about the different types of barking there is, and I know it's very much case by case with all this stuff with the dogs. But maybe if anyone's suffering from the same issues I am, they'll maybe learn something from—

Well, what we'll do is we'll do an episode on, you know, really actually treating the barking. So we've talked about diagnosing it already. We'll talk about treating it and going like, all right, now you know what type of dog barking you've got. We can talk about how to cure boredom barking. We're going to do a big episode on separation anxiety. And we're also going to do an episode on what we call threat discrimination barking or excessive alert barking. So with Nelson, and probably same with Kira, I want him to lose his shit if someone's trying to jump our fence.

Yes.

I want him to leave the Uber Eats driver alone. And we're going to talk about how we can start to achieve that too.

So perfect. That's what I like to hear.

We'll get really into our barking, guys. But long story short, only 10% of you listening to this would benefit from one of those bark things, if that. Most of you really don't need it. Don't waste your money. There's a lot better ways to achieve that same result you're looking for.

All right. Any questions, as always, head along to the Dog People Podcast Facebook group and Instagram, and we'll talk to you next time. The Dog People Podcast is a Mashed Pumpkin production hosted by Jack Lawrence and Max O'Neill. Edited, produced, and audio production by Jack

Lawrence.

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