My younger GSD Trooper won't even whine with the bark collar on and he's got a really heavy, long coat.
My older GSD Thunder is good other then when he fence fights with the two Bearded Collies behind me. When he has the collar on and fence fights he just lets out a godawful scream then goes right on barking.

How bout this?

"We slowly raised this a level every day, and she squeals when it goes off, but then barks right through it."

That's the problem right there. You've conditioned the dog to ignore the correction. Leave it off for a week, and then start over at a midrange correction. If the dog barks through that, skip everything and go to the highest.

You don't do bark collars gradually- they aren't training collars.

Edited by Kelly Byrd (06/02/2011 10:33 PM)
Edit reason: grammar

 Quote: Bob Scott

My younger GSD Trooper won't even whine with the bark collar on and he's got a really heavy, long coat.
My older GSD Thunder is good other then when he fence fights with the two Bearded Collies behind me. When he has the collar on and fence fights he just lets out a godawful scream then goes right on barking.

This sounds just like what is happening with mine, I will order a pair of the 1 inch prongs for her collar, and her remote collar (going to resume that training soon, ed's video on it was great) and see if it makes a difference, for now she is down on one, and I am just going to stand out there and see if after watching long enough i can determine a way to deter her from barking.

She barks right at the fence a lot, maybe I should think of a way to keep her to stay at least a foot or two back from the fence?

Every dog is different, and so I give you my best wishes that you can figure this out. I've been around dogs that had a real hard time figuring out the 'quiet' thing. But that was before I learned how to train dogs, to be honest. With my dog, I upped my patience and really taught him the difference between barking and not barking. It took a lot of time, though.

I can only tell you what I do, and you can decide if it will help you or not. I never immediately yell at my dog for barking. I thank him for it and go 'check', and use a specific phrase if it's fine: "That's a neighbor, good boy." I teach him "speak" and "quiet" nearly every day during playtime (ie he gets me to throw his ball if he does it right. I have the luxury of the dog never being alone, though, so I understand that other people need faster results. I just want to say that I think the training is possible. If you get the wrong reaction from the no-bark collar, it's likely that your dog has no idea why he's getting zapped. They're not smart, ya know.

I just had an interesting thought, while she is outside for a few days could I correct the behavior that always comes prior to the barking through the window with her remote collar, or would this be a bad idea without my voice to remind her that her actions are not ok? Or would this be a bad idea

I think if you had the time, you could find out what sets her off barking, and then gradually desensitize her to that (or teach her another behavior instead of barking to handle it). This kind of tactic would require some dedication though, lol. For instance, right now I'm working on teaching my dog to watch squirrels, rather than bark at them, when I take him onto the patio with me and he is tethered. I think I'm making some headway but we haven't stopped the barking completely yet.

We have a 1 year old Border Collie lab mix who is extremely high energy and high drive and he lived inside, crated of course but when we took him outside he was so overstimulated by everything that happened, wind, birds, something only he could hear etc that it was really really nerve racking to take him out. We also used a bark collar but (and I dont think it went very high) he would bark right through it occasionally. We got him an outdoor run and a dogtra remote trainer, and after staying outside for a couple days he settled down ALOT, he was no longer overstimulated by everything and we used the remote collar to correct him after he had alerted us, and we told him to leave it alone and if he continued barking.
I dont really like the bark collars as much because they dont differentiate between a legitimate bark and a bored bark
His reactivity was not because of a lack of excersize either, he is one of those dogs who will play frisbee until he literally dies of exaustion but will never lay down or give up, and seems to regenerate almost immediatly.

30 years ago i used a water hose, it worked. bark/electric collars are way to go. sorry if this question is off topic. if you were going to purchase a new e-collar (for a Malinois) which one is the best value? i was thinking about the dogtra 7100? thanks in advance john

Are you sure it's fitted correctly?

Yeah, Al has a great point, you have to have the collar fitted properly. My mom seems to think it's mean to have an e-collar fitted snugly, but doesn't seem to mind turning up the dial to 6. I fit the collar correctly, and use level 2 or max 3. I put these levels on myself and they're nothing. Just like a soft poke, a reminder.