We have three dogs next door that are completely untrained and undisciplined. I’ve spoken to the owner twice about it and am in the process of compiling a “doglog” for his edification, which is now up to over 100 barking episodes in the last 14 days. After thirty days, I’m going to give it to him and tell him what I expect him to do about it.
Anyway, in meanwhile desperation, I purchased one of those electronic dog things at Radio Shack that supposedly emits a sound out of the range of human hearing, but that dogs can hear. Allegedly hear, anyway. It hasn’t slowed them down one whit, which leads me to a philosophical question along the lines of the tree in the forest: If a human can’t hear it, does it make a noise? What if it does nothing whatsoever? How would you know? Maybe it’s completely hollow except for a small note that says: SUCKER!
Well even if these dogs can hear it when you cannot, the sound alone will not get them to stop barking unless there’s reinforcement training to go with the sound. They’re not innately wired to stop barking when they hear a high pitched tone, after all.
In fact, in the absence of any training the effect would likely be to get them to START barking, as in “What was that weird tone? Hey, I don’t hear stuff that high very often! Hey! Hey! HEY HEY HEY HEY! Didja hear that, didja hear that? Bow wow wow wow wow!”
Years ago I bought a pack of 6 plug in ultrasonic bug repellers at Costco.
I plugged them into 6 outlets in my spider infested shop. By the next year ALL of the Ultrasonic thingies had bugs nesting IN them. I think they were slightly warmer.
The only way they worked on bugs is to use them like a brick and squish them.
I have always had “If you can’t hear, how do you know it works” fear about smoke and Carbon Monoxide detectors. How do you it know it really works. I guess you can smoke up the house pretty easily (but why would you want to) but Carbon Monoxide? How do you fake it?
Don’t get me started on CO detectors, I had a plug in CO detector for years in my basement next to my furnace and hot water tanks.
I had a sizable gas venting when I was changing out the solenoid control on the furnace, I kept expecting the CO alarm to go off, it never did.
After I was done with the furnace, I took the CO detector out side on an extension cord and put it in a plastic bag that I filled with car exhaust, it never went off even though the self test showed fine.
Ultrasonic bark trainers do work, but some breeds are more susceptible than others. It really needs to be in the home with the dog, or on it’s collar. Dogs require a great deal or repition to train, you aren’t going to change their behaviour by triggering it a few times when they bark.
The ultrasonic insect repellant has been tested and shown to be a scam.
Chefguy, I don’t have much for you except sympathy. We have a dog who barks too much in our neighbourhood - he’s way down the block from me, and only does it occasionally. 100 episodes in two weeks, right next door?!? I’d be going out of my mind.
My neighbor has two dogs that bark. One sounds like someone is butt fucking it, it sounds like the damn thing is dying. I’m thinking of trying to build a ultrasonic generator that works only when I hit a button, as I’m suspicious of the ability of systems to readily recognize a dog bark.
Panasonic makes a cheap ultrasonic microphone but unfortunately most sound cards can’t record ultrasonic frequencies. I happen to own a digital sampling scope that can record ultrasonic sound, so I can determine if the ultrasonic speaker is actually working. You could also run the ultrasonic signal through a heterodyne down converter to give you an audio frequency output that you can hear.
Here’s an FTC news item from 2001, saying they have warned 60 manufacturers over misleading claims. I did read an article debunking them a while ago, but can’t find it now. It’s become difficult to search this topic due to google poisoning. The wiki article now says there is some effect on some insects, but none on cockroaches, spiders or ants.
