Guardian by PetSafe Spray Bark Control Collar

I was excited to try this on my pitbull mix puppy. This pack came with a collar, battery, and citronella spray. However when I read the instructions, it came with a lot of precautions. This was scary! Once I finally got it on my puppy, and decided to give it a try, it did work. But I noticed that sometimes when my other dog barked it went off as well. Also, it states you should move it every 2 hours to help keep it from causing any sores or bad reactions. This freaked me out the most. Although it seemed to work, I wouldn't be home during the day enough to move it around every few hours, so not sure if it would work long term. I think professional training may be your best best!

Make sure to read the Guardian Spray Bark Control's operating guide before starting. There are a lot of information on how to carefully handle this product. According to the guide, the aerosol has a risk to create frostbites, risk of suffocation, and risk of explosion. Warnings for the collar itself states, “Avoid leaving the collar on the dog for more than 12 hours per day. When possible reposition the collar on the pet's neck every 1 to 2 hours. Examine the neck area daily for signs of rash or a sore. Do not leave your device unattended where your dog could accidentally damage it through chewing.” After reading the operating guide, you now have the knowledge on how to safely handle this device. I put in the battery and filled up the citronella spray. I tightened the strap and put it on the dog. The dog barked but nothing happened. I didn't hear or smell the collar spraying out anything. I double checked everything, made sure it was switched on and filled the device with more citronella spray and gave it another shot. Again, the dog barked but nothing happened. I had it on for about an hour and decided to take it off. There's a specific area on the collar that detects the dog's bark, I lightly blew into it and received no reaction from the collar. Then I blew into it with extreme strength and activated the collar to spray, but it's a collar that is supposed to be around the neck, at no point will the collar be in the same level as your pet's mouth for your pet to be able to blow or bark into the collar directly. The guide suggests that your pet should not be unattended with the collar, I would like to supervise every moment my pet has this device on, but because I cannot, I decided to remove the device.

We have a static collar that didn't work for our boxer. He barks constantly whether he is inside or out. The static didn't work because he would bark and it would zap him, he would bark again and it would zap him harder. He would bark again and the third time it would zap him he would start screaming and run around the back yard even through the static had shut off. The spray was completely different, when our dog barks a sensor sends a burst of lemon scent. This causes our dog to stop barking and go on to something else. Collar comes with battery and lemon scented spray can. Also the collar will not go off when other dogs bark because it uses a vibration sensor which cannot be removed or adjusted. The receiver is waterproof and has a low battery indication and low spray indicator plus a on and off switch. The instructions says it will emit up to 40 sprays per refill. You cannot have another collar on your dog because it could be set off and you cannot use a leash. I like the spray bark control collar, the instruction manual is easy to understand but I do not like the packaging, it's terrible to remove the thick plastic. I did check the back of the package to see if there was an easy starting point, nothing. I'm sure the factory did this so the product would not be damaged in shipping but this is really bad. Because the clam shell design is so difficult to open Guardian lost one point.

The collar is made of a hard rubber which didn't fit well on my dogs neck dog. It slowed his barking down noticeably for about 3 days. worked initially on my dog, but now he has become accustomed to the spray and it's no longer effective as a bark deterrent. It has, however, worked great on my Min-Pin. It was very effective in curbing his barking, but then it stopped working altogether. But, the spray mechanism only worked once or twice; we had to re-fill it immediately, and then that ran out quickly as well. All in all, I would say that this product is a failure. I wouldn't recommend it.

I chose this Spray Bark Control product to assist in controlling my smaller 20 pound Jack Russell from barking at everything he sees out the window. I am fortunate that I was able to try and test this product through Wal-Mart's spark reviewer. I found this product to be a heavy duty quality made collar, however I was not able to adjust it to comfortably fit my smaller dog, it was a little big. Although the collar is adjustable just did not fit my breed well. The collar may be a better fit for larger breed dogs. We tried it anyway and when it did spray/mist when my dog barked it scared him, which I expected and did make him stop barking at the moment. I would think any spray around his face would make him stop barking. I know the spray is not harmful to the dogs, but I was not comfortable using it. This product may be more effective with larger breed dogs. It would seem that a smaller size collar would work better for smaller breed dogs.