Collarless Ultrasonic Trainer

Petsafe Ultrasonic Collarless Trainer

 

Hello! I've had this product on trial over the weekend and wanted to share my results, it is the "Petsafe Handheld 'Collarless' Ultrasonic Trainer" (product code - PUPT-100-19). First let me explain my situation and why i wanted to try this product.

I have two dogs, a six year old West Highland Terrier named Poppy and a two-and-a-half year old Labrador Retriever, named Alfie, or Alfred Alan Barker, or occasionally Alfred Von Barkington.

The Westie, Poppy, barks at everything. It is the way with terriers and especially Westies. She thinks she is a vicious guard dog, this was great when we lived out in the middle of the countryside as it was nice to know if someone was around, we lived literally in the middle of nowhere and being Scotland the winters were long and the days were short, meaning it was frankly creepy a lot of the time. The peculiarities of rural broadband and living in a valley which ruled out wireless internet options forced our hand into moving into town as my wife and I both work online.

Living in town brings with it a whole host of other noises, often the pipe band that Poppy absolutely despises and can hear from miles away. This means we have a very barky dog. It's just something we've put up with for years.

Just over two years ago Alfie joined our family, the tiny puppy quickly and exponentially grew to become a very large, very handsome brute. He is of working stock so thin and tall and gangly. He was easily influenced by his older sister, Poppy, who taught him how to bark at the slightest noise, which was just fantastic. In addition to this he is an absolute nightmare on the lead despite being fantastic for the gundog trainer he drags the arm off his dogmother and I. He is what they describe as passive dominant, in plain English he acts like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth while trying to control the family around him.

We were kind of at the end of our tether with the situation. We have a terrier who is just being a terrier, a big lab who thinks he's a terrier, and lots of noises and bustle from living in town. Collars were not an option for us, this not a debate about the efficacy or use of these products, our lab is very sensitive to everything so we wanted a non collar solution. It was also very important to us to have the option of positive reinforcement as this was very much a training situation rather than a containment, animal protection, or working dog environment.

We wanted to reward good behaviour and chastise bad behaviour. To let them know what was acceptable as part of our family and what was not. A lot has been written about this, "In Defence of Dogs: Why Dogs Need Our Understanding" (Bradshaw, 2012), is an excellent read. With Alfie, he's a softie, a big puppy with no harm in him but when someone comes to the door Alfie seems like the most intimidating dog in the world if you do not know dogs. His bark is loud (although not aggressive) and has scared off many a delivery man.

I was looking through our stock list of PetSafe products and saw that we have the UltraSonic Pet Trainer which to all intents and purposes is an electronic dog whistle with a positive and negative tone. The positive tone is to be associated with rewards for good behaviours, creating positive reinforcement and the Pavlov's dog effect. Dog hears tone, remembers all the nice treats, cuddles etc that have gone along with it. As I said earlier this was very important to my wife and I as we wanted to modify the dog's behaviour to become a better citizen and family member, not just to punish or chastise them.

The product essentially looks like a remote control with two buttons, P for positive and N for negative. A red LED lights up when a button is pressed.

I have spent the Easter weekend dispensing cuddles and treats in conjunction with the positive tone button. And we are starting to get to the point that the tone alone elicits a positive reaction in both dogs. I have sparingly used the negative button mostly when someone has come to the door and the dogs start shouting at the top of their lungs. A short sharp press as opposed to a longer continuous one has brought a halt to their barking.

We are still not at the point where they have gotten the hang of a negative experience being associated with barking at the door. I would imagine this is because it is a lot easier to create an artificial positive experience with treats and such to develop the link with the positive tone than it is to make people come to my door. Not that I would create artificial negative experiences in the first place. That seems counter intuitive to me.

Our next step is to work this into our walking routine to try and help influence on lead behaviour. We know Alfie he has it in him because a total stranger, the gundog lady, just took his lead and he walked perfectly. So we hope this product that we have had good results with so far can help bring a better understanding between our pooches and us. We just want our dogs to be the great dogs we know they are, so friendly and gentle but for some reason the second they get get on a lead mental.

As Eddie Izzard said, Pavlov's cat, day four, cat rang bell, I ate.