Am I part dog?

Jeremy made a very exciting purchase off of EBay about a week ago. He bought BarkStop. It is a device you plug into an outlet and when the dog barks it is supposed to make an irritating noise in the dog’s ear. Obviously this annoying sound should make the dog stop barking. That is indeed the purpose. Human ears are not able to detect the noise . . . supposedly.

The reason for the purchase . . . well, we love Abbie. LOVE HER DEARLY! But . . . yes there is a but. Sometimes, she can live life a little “on edge”. She is a barker, a protector, a watchdog. It is the nature of her breed. But, we don’t enjoy the barking at 2:00am because she heard a leaf blow in the back yard or every time a visitor stops by our house or a neighbor across the street slams their car door closed. And with a baby coming, we need to nip the barking in the bud. We assume that soon our sleep will be disturbed enough, without assistance from little, sweet Abbie.

Well, the BarkStop arrived on our doorstep today. What an exciting event! Plugging it in and testing it out. To test out the product, we of course we had to bang on windows and ring the doorbell when Abbie was least expecting it. And she barked in response to our behavior. At first she seemed to not notice the annoying high-pitched sound. After more “tests”, we could see that she noticed it, but frankly, she seemed unbothered by it. I, on the other hand, was a little bothered by it. I could definitely hear the annoying high-pitched sound and it was a little disturbing to me. It was disturbing that I could hear sounds that only dogs should be able to hear.

Jeremy used the ice dispenser from the fridge later this evening. And of course, BarkStop started it’s squealing. Apparently it can’t yet decipher between a dog bark and falling ice cubes. Abbie was lying on the floors and she just cocked her head to the side, as if she kind of enjoyed the ringing. What a waste of money . . . and a bit of an added complex for me.