Thursday, August 19, 2010

Product Review: Bark Off

I have a confession: I am often intrigued by "As Seen on TV" products, and I've been lured into trying out more than I care to admit. Most of them seem to end up being a big disappointment, but if something looks good and doesn't cost too much, I'll likely try it out.

My latest "As Seen on TV" product purchase is the Bark Off. It's a small, battery-operated device that is supposed to emit a high-frequency sound, inaudible to human ears but audible to canine ears, to discourage barking. I stumbled on this completely unintentionally. Twinkle, our one-year-old malti-poo has a barking problem. She's a yapper. And her yapping is at a pitch that feels vaguely like an ice pick being driven into your brain. I've actually been giving serious consideration to investing in a shock collar for her (gasp!), but I was at Target yesterday and just happened to stumble on the Bark Off, which costs much less than a shock collar, and which promised humane and effective bark reduction in my dog.

Before I share my review, let me just also say that there are quite a few reviews of this product online, most of which seem to be put out by the marketer of Bark Off; they seem to have purchased domain names like barkoffreview.com and barkoffx.com, so that if a person goes online and Googles "bark off review" they're going to be directed to reviews generated by Bark Off. No fair, guys.

So here's my review:

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that Twinkle is absolutely adorable!!

Have you tried lime juice? You can get the little plastic limes in the produce department...a little squirt usually does the trick.

diane rene said...

oh no!!
bummer - I have seen these commercials on tv. I have seen some in skymall too I want to try for the neighbor's dog :/
thanks for the review!

Cwilks said...

My aunt has a color that squirts citronela at her dog when she barks, I saw it in action and it works. All she has to do is show her the collar and she runs and hides now.