We have a lady in our neighborhood who walks her black labX by two or three times a day, and he BARKS at every dog in every yard he passes (pretty much all of them) and gets every dog in the neighborhood barking back. She walks him on a flexi-lead so he can get right up to the gates and stand there barking for several minutes before she moves on, and it drives my dogs (and everyone else's) crazy. Long after she goes by every dog would be barking at every other dog they could hear barking down the block.
I ended up getting one of these, I can't remember the brand, but it was the one shaped liked a birdhouse. It was amazing. The Lab stopped barking when he got near, and my older dogs stopped as well, but it didn't seem able to pick up the higher pitched (piercing) bark of the puppy.
It only responds to sustained barking, so one of my dogs has learned to bark once, pause, bark again, pause and so on. It's still a huge improvement because she can't get into a frenzy and she's much more likely to respond when she is called off.
The down side is the model I have operates on a 9 volt battery and it seems to go through them pretty quickly, but it's improved the overall barking in our vicinity so much that I'll probably find another one that I can plug in. If your dogs have a fairly high pitched bark though, it might not work for you.
It's possible your neighbor's kids just don't understand about how to treat dogs...maybe if you explained what they are doing that's making your dog bark, they would be willing to learn how to interact with your dog in a better way? |