I believe the best value and highest quality bark control collars require two stage activation. They don’t just activate from sound, or from throat/neck vibration. The ones I always suggest detect BOTH sound and vibration. Fair, gentle and effective training requires this. Be careful of cheaper bark control collars that are single stage activation. ie. vibration only, or sound only. Insist on both.

When training a new customer’s dog on a hidden dog fence, I can often tell immediately when a dog has been trained previously on either a bark control collar or on an electronic remote training collar.  Dogs that were previously trained on these devices almost always are shy about me putting the fence collars on them.  The first time they get a beep or a tingle on the fence collar, they respond quickly and without hesitation. Sometimes a remote training collar trained dog will become very confused and stressed. Asking the question in its’ mind: “Which of 15 random things did I do that caused someone to shock me with the remote trainer?”.

Bark Control collar trained dogs usually are a little confused at first (Dog says: “I didn’t bark, right?”) but quickly adapt to understanding that the beep and shock of the fence collar is related to a specific behavior, just like the barking was triggering the bark control collar. The fence collar responds to proximity of the dog to the flags and the audible beep.

Whereas, a dog previously trained on a remote training collar is slower to understand because they were probably not properly conditioned by some improperly pairing the correction with a specific behavior. Thus, remote trainers are not my favorite training tool for most of my customers.  Whereas, bark control collars are wonderful for most barking dogs.