From what I have heard I don't think ignoring her is going to stop the behavior, but I could be wrong. We had a mouse in the house about 3 weeks ago that the cat brought it (stupid cat...). Anyway it ran under the fridge and Reagan sat by the fridge barking for literally 7-8 hours, until my husband got home to get it. I didn't at all reward the behavior as a matter of fact most of the time I was on my bed hoping that the mouse just stayed in the kitchen (yes I know I'm a chicken, I did get a little more brave as the day went on). One time we rented a small track hoe and whne they delivered it they set it in the corner of the property and barked at it for at least half an hour until I went down and showed it to her, showed her it was ok.
This sounds more to me like the type of barking you are having. Whether it be that she is protecting you/her home/her/whatnot or that she is scared of something. Either way I really don't think ignoring it is going to work. I can understand that ignoring would help the attention getting barking but if the dog isn't barking at you she doesn't care if you ignore her. What I have done in my situation is to respond to the barking and show her that everything is ok or even reward her for letting me know what's going on outside. If the dog is protecting you or your home you should reward her and tell her that she did a good job and let her know that its ok, the leaves rustling around outside aren't going to hurt anything and in most cases in my house this has calmed Reagan down. Yelling or freaking out or anything like that is just escalating the situation, you are showing her that there is definately something to be concerned about and she will continue barking, so I would avoid this.
I have never used the collar on my yorkie I do have one for my bigger dogs and wanted to say how it worked. It senses vibration(or at least the one I have does). So it goes on the dog's neck and when it barks its neck vibrates and it will give it a warning that will turn into a shock if the dog doesn't stop. So it will not confuse other loud noises with her barking and shock her for it. Sometimes when they are playing rough though the collar could be moved around and this may cause it to go off. How you test it is to run the prongs against something with texture so by it dragging around the dogs neck it could go off. I've been zapped by a barking collar, an electric fence wire, and a underground fence collar, all of which one or all of my big dogs use. And no if it didn't kill me it won't kill them. The worst is the fence, but my vet recommended me putting that in to keep my dog in my backyard and away from moving cars. I would read the instructions carefully and definately talk to passionfruit to make sure you really want to use it and that you are doing it correctly.
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Courtney |