So I've never done a product review on my blog before. That tells you that this product must be pretty darn amazing. It really is and I can't say enough about it. This product has changed our household and our family.
From the title, you may think that I am talking about myself with the "Good Girl". Not even close. The product I want to rave about today is the "Good Girl collar" made by the GoodBoy Company. Link to the product here: Good Girl collar
If you were to go to the page on Amazon, you would see that this is a collar designed to help you stop your dog from barking. If you have visited my house at all in the past 4 years, you know that this is a very real problem in our house. We love our little Pixie Dust, but she loves the sound of her own voice way too much.
It isn't all her fault. She was a very good puppy and I left her home with my ex-boyfriend to train. Yeah, the one who virtually never left my house as he was unemployed and home all the time, seemed like a good option to train a puppy. He trained her all right. Trained her to bark that is. It was oh so cute to howl and make noises and get her to barking. Okay, so admittedly it was pretty cute. But it progressed as an adult to the point that if anyone dared to sing out loud or even goof off and start talking loudly, she gets to howling and barking. He also seemed to think it was really cute to teach her to bark when people came over. When someone would knock or ring the doorbell the barking would be encouraged with "Who's here?" or "Get 'em, Pixie." And yeah - we laughed because, awww the little 4 lb dog thinks she is so ferocious. Except it got to the point where the commercials with doorbell sounds on them sent her into a fit of barking that didn't stop.
As a family we were at our wit's end. We like to host family gatherings and every single time someone new would arrive Pixie would go into a barking fit that lasted several minutes, despite us yelling no, picking her up, even swatting her. New Year's Eve was the final straw - it was nearly constant barking that drove us and our guests crazy. So the week following, I searched Amazon. I'm not going to lie, when I first started searching I was looking for a shock collar. I know some people are wildly against them, but at this point I was desperate.
The problem is this. Pixie is supposed to be a long haired chihuahua, but everyone from vets, strangers and her groomer agree that she is much more likely at last part yorkie. Whatever the case, she is tiny; like 4 pounds tiny. The smallest rated shock collar was for a 7 lb dog and I hated the thought of how much that would hurt a dog nearly half that size. Yes we joked about how it would probably cure the problem pretty quickly but I could not have done that to Pixie (or any dog). During my search I did come across this anti-barking collar called the GoodBoy collar. So I did a little research.
This collar is NOT a shock collar, it is a vibration collar. It causes no physical harm to the dog, just vibrates. You can not just put the collar on and expect the dog to figure it out. You have to train the dog to associate the warning tone (it gives warning tones 2-3 times before actually giving the vibration) with the command "NO!". The collar was rated for a dog 7 lbs and up, but not because it may harm the dog, but they didn't feel it would get small enough for a dog less than that. I looked up with reviews and of course, as always, there were a few negative. However, overwhelming the responses were very positive. Complete with the "you saved my dog" type acclamations. I became determined that I could make this collar fit Pixie and ordered one.
It arrived in a tiny little box. I'm not going to lie - I was blown away by how tiny the box was and couldn't imagine that anything from that box would actually work on Pixie. But I was determined, remember. So I opened it up and was pleased with how sturdy the collar looked and how cute it actually was. The collar comes in "boy blue" and "girl pink" so Pixie's collar says "Good Girl" and is pink. With very little finagling and only a little cutting and burning of the new rough edges, I had that collar fitted to Miss Barksalot and ready to try out.
For the first 24 hours you just leave the collar turned off and let the dog get used to it. She got used to it really quickly, only shaking her head a few times. The next day I nervously turned it on. It wasn't long before I had a chance to see if it worked when someone came home. She went to bark and the collar gave a loud warning beep. I can't lie, I giggled hysterically because her reaction was to start spinning in circles trying to figure out where that sound was coming from. She barked again and got another tone. Meanwhile I was telling her no and when she barked the next time and got the vibration she immediately ran away from the door and jumped up by me at the table. From that point on we worked on training her by putting her in situations she would normally bark and giving her the no command. Every single time she has stopped barking within one, possibly two barks since.
GoodBoy collar fixed my dog and saved all of our sanity! We do feel bad that she isn't able to bark in play anymore and would love for there to come a time when that would be possible. However, it is a small trade off for having her not bark nonstop at anyone that comes to our home, including each and every one of us! It's truly amazing. She is a whole new dog. She still gets excited and whines when we get home, but no constant barking! It's so quiet and wonderful.
The only downfall to the collar is that even when she sneezes she gets the warning tone. I have read on the directions that you can turn the sensitivity down, which is something we will likely be doing in the next few days now that she is fairly trained to keep quiet.
So as far as reviews go, I love this product. It allows me to have a amazing, loving, little dog without all the ear splitting annoying barking that drove us crazy. We have our house back and Pixie has proven that she can be taught! Just needed the right motivation!
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