{"id":6701,"date":"2011-06-05T19:08:16","date_gmt":"2011-06-05T15:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/wordpress\/archives\/6701"},"modified":"2011-06-05T18:22:25","modified_gmt":"2011-06-05T16:22:25","slug":"the-best-pet-product-to-ever-happen-to-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/archives\/6701","title":{"rendered":"The Best Pet Product to Ever Happen to Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before I tell you exactly what the product is, let me give you a bit of a background\u2026<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve always known that our dogs bark when we aren\u2019t home and would always try to be out for 3-4 hours at most, so that they could go in their crates.\u00a0 They love their crates and are happy and silent when they are in there, but we don\u2019t like to leave them in too long (unless it\u2019s bedtime).\u00a0 If we were going for longer, which was rare, we\u2019d make sure to be home by 10pm so that they don\u2019t disturb the neighbours too much at inappropriate hours.<\/p>\n

I think we had sort of fooled ourselves into thinking that they stop barking after the first few minutes.\u00a0 It was how we coped and made it possible to go out without worrying the whole time.\u00a0 Little did we know\u2026<\/p>\n

\"Canada<\/a><\/p>\n

They are so lucky they are cute\u2026<\/p>\n

In order to see what the situation was my husband designed a robot that detects when the dogs are barking and sends a message to Twitter<\/a>.\u00a0 We call it the Tweeter Tattle.<\/p>\n

I KNOW, he\u2019s a GENIUS!\u00a0 Seriously, this is a ROBOT that TWITTERS.\u00a0 I love this man!<\/p>\n

So once the robot was functional we decided to test it while we went to the grocery store.\u00a0 We set it up, left the dogs loose with it in the living room and headed off to the grocery store.\u00a0 We had our phones with us so we could check the robot’s Twitter updates<\/a> while we were out.<\/p>\n

Sweet baby Jesus, we had no idea what was going on while we were out.\u00a0 Check this out, this is a screenshot of what went on in the short time that we were at the supermarket (the first few minutes are at the bottom, so read from bottom to top):<\/p>\n

\"tattle\"<\/a><\/p>\n

People, this all took place within the space of an hour.\u00a0 I shit you not\u2026 my dogs are idiots.<\/p>\n

As I said, we sort of knew this was going on.\u00a0 We\u2019d asked the neighbours now and then and they\u2019d say yeah they bark a lot while you are out, no it doesn\u2019t bother us, it\u2019s not so bad\u2026 but clearly we have been blessed with some incredibly patient people in our building.<\/p>\n

Not only did this bother me because of the disruption for our neighbours, but I also hated the thought of the dogs being so agitated the entire time we are gone.\u00a0 I want them to be happy and feel secure, not miserable and distressed every time we walk out the door.<\/p>\n

I started thinking of what we could do. When we are home we have been trying to Cesar Milan<\/a> their asses as much as possible, but that doesn\u2019t do us any good when we aren\u2019t home.\u00a0 We had considered getting one of those collars, you know the ones that give a small static shock or shoot out some citronella spray, but I just couldn\u2019t shake the feeling that it was not such a nice thing to do to them.<\/p>\n

I went on Facebook and asked the opinion of some of my friends who also have dogs.\u00a0 They had some great advice in regards to making the dogs a little less sad when we leave, the best being giving the dogs a Kong<\/a> with treats inside just as we are leaving, so that they see us going as a good thing for the, rather than bad.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t think this was going to solve our barking issue entirely though, so I cracked my knuckles and got my Google on.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when I found it\u2026<\/p>\n

\"petsafe\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Petsafe Indoor Ultrasonic Bark Control System<\/a>.\u00a0 Otherwise known as, the gadget that saved my dogs\u2019 lives.\u00a0 Best. Money. Ever. Spent.<\/p>\n

The way it works is, it detects when the dog barks and then sends out a really high pitched ultrasonic noise.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t hurt the dogs, it just startles and annoys them, so they quickly learn that if they make annoying noise they will get annoying noise in return.\u00a0 As humans we can\u2019t even hear it, but if you are standing really close to the machine there is a soft mechanical noise that it makes that you can hear.<\/p>\n

I was a little skeptical when I was reading about it, I mean how is this little thing going to stop my crazy ass dogs from barking?\u00a0 There\u2019s no way.\u00a0 I mean I think there have been times that I got so irritated with them that my own shrieking reached ultrasonic levels and they didn\u2019t stop barking then!\u00a0 Still, I was desperate and we had to try.<\/p>\n

I checked with Wesdijk.nl<\/a> to see if they had it, and luckily they did!\u00a0 What was also lucky is that they are only a few minutes drive from here so we were able to hop in the car and go pick it up right away.<\/p>\n

You see, we had a BBQ to go to that night and now that we knew without a doubt that the dogs were assholes, we had to try this thing RIGHT AWAY.\u00a0 Our sanity and their existence depended on it.<\/p>\n

So we get this thing home and I look at it, still unsure\u2026 but we didn\u2019t have time to worry about it. We popped the battery in, set up the Tweeter Tattle and headed out to the BBQ with our fingers crossed.<\/p>\n

Oh the suspense!!\u00a0\u00a0 I think I checked my Twitter about 400 times on my phone that evening\u2026 and do you know what I saw?<\/p>\n

\"tattle2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That was IT, for the ENTIRE EVENING.\u00a0 Omg\u2026 and that was probably just the amount of barks it took them to figure out \u201cWait a minute, wtf\u2026 when I bark that annoying sound goes off and I don\u2019t like that!\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day we went out again to a party at a friend\u2019s place, once again as we are on the way I check Twitter on my phone.<\/p>\n

\"tattle3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Again, it probably took them a few minutes to realize what was going on, but then they were silent for the rest of the day while we were out.<\/p>\n

Honestly, this thing is FANTASTIC<\/em>!\u00a0 I sit here and shake my head because I don\u2019t know why we didn\u2019t look into this years ago.\u00a0 When I think of all the times we\u2019ve had to leave places super early to make sure we\u2019d get home to make sure the dogs weren\u2019t barking and bothering the neighbours, I could scream.<\/p>\n

We also notice a remarkable difference in the dogs\u2019 behavior when we are<\/em> home.\u00a0 They don\u2019t bark nearly as much as they used to (which was pretty much anytime the wind blew) and just seem generally more chilled out.\u00a0 I used to feel like we were constantly getting up and trying to get them to stop barking at whatever was under their skin at that particular moment, now they\u2019ll let off one bark now and then and are quickly reminded that they need to zip it.<\/p>\n

Since it can only detect barking within 8 meters, it really just works in the living room. Although I have had it on the balcony with me and manually pressed the button on the top when the dogs bark and dogs that are passing by.\u00a0 I\u2019ve also sat it on our shoe rack in the hallway when we were expecting someone, to stop them from barking like mad at the door (which they are terrible for).\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty sure we are going to pick up a 2nd one for that end of the house (by the entry) to also cut down on their frantic barking when the doorbell rings.<\/p>\n

Honestly, if you have a dog and have trouble with barking and don\u2019t know what to do, you must<\/em> try this.\u00a0 I can\u2019t guarantee it will work on all dogs, as I read in the reviews that some just ignored it or became immune to it after a while\u2026 but so far it\u2019s been a godsend for us.\u00a0 I recommend it wholeheartedly!<\/p>\n

Now, if only we could find a machine to make them stop jumping on people, or shedding, or licking between our toes\u2026 or eating other dogs poo\u2026. *sigh*<\/p>\n

P.S. I forgot to mention, there is also an OUTDOOR VERSION<\/a> of this if you have issues with your dog barking outside!\u00a0 It’s even cute like a birdhouse, makes me wish I had a garden to hang it in!<\/p>\n

*I am in no way affiliated with Petsafe. I paid for this product and this is my own personal opinion, I was not sent this product for review.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before I tell you exactly what the product is, let me give you a bit of a background\u2026 We\u2019ve always known that our dogs bark when we aren\u2019t home and would always try to be out for 3-4 hours at most, so that they could go in their crates.\u00a0 They love their crates and are …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[153,20],"tags":[422,181,72,571,62,366,52],"class_list":["post-6701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-geek","category-the-zoo","tag-dogs","tag-frustration","tag-gadgets","tag-geeky-crap","tag-pets","tag-robots","tag-xander"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6701"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6708,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6701\/revisions\/6708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}