The Quiet Canine "Dog Caller" (dog collar)

[Steve Gibson]

This post anchors our thread for discussion of the dog collar version of The Quiet Canine... the "Dog Caller".

/Steve.

[Steve Gibson]

Gang...

I believe we are learning that a hand-held device based upon (for example) the v2.2.2 fixed-frequency self-oscillating design with a generic tweeter, can be useful when deployed in a tactical self-defense mode where an approaching/attacking canine is ten feet away and closing.  I believe that the combination of surprise and the sensitivity of canine hearing would stop any "big dog" in its tracks.

But I no longer believe that aiming such a device at a barking dog 50 feet away, and perhaps not even in line-of-sight, is going to anything more than further stir up the animal's barking response.

It's a function of power delivery, which is a function of distance.  We've had the "Treble Shooter", (and I'm still going to explore the variable-frequency design for the sake of completion), but I think that what we need is not a Treble Shooter, but a "Mutt Muter."

Although its use would require the agreement of the wayward canine's owner, I would be STUNNED (and so would the dog) if an around-the-neck collar, with those small Pyle surface-mount tweeters mounted at the 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock positions adjacent to each ear, and a throat-located electronics/sensor/driver/battery package... would NOT stop a dog's barking very quickly.

/Steve.

[Kindanyume]

indeed but the problem there is almost always the OWNER... perhaps a
collar for the morons would help more :)

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[Steve Gibson]

Kindanyume...

Indeed. I just received this note through my site's "Quiet Canine" feedback page:

My good friend Greg Stewart and his neighbors have been plagued by a barking sets of dogs.   Greg has taken the neighbor to small claims court and sued him for damages and won. He has pressed the city on and on to file criminal charges on the owner but is really having a hard time.  Just last night they had a community meeting with a city official. Their quality of life has been impaired for many years.

We both live close, in Long Beach, Ca and really need a test unit.

Thanks so much Steve.

It's just AMAZING what a serious problem this is for SO MANY people.  I don't know whether dogs are becoming MORE popular in the past decade, but I'm sure seeing them being walked a lot.

What's so sad is that like one's own baby crying, one's own dog barking seems much less annoying than anyone else's!

/Steve.

[Kindanyume]

it's never a matter of popularity.. but responsible ownership.

My own dog as I've said before only barks in his sleep other than a
few extremely rare occasions

I can't say the same for a few neighbors though whom are too damned
stupid too look after their own dog. I don't blame the dog... I blame
the owner(s)

[tech...@gmail.com]

Hi Steve,

I've got a serious barking problem next door so I've been interested in designing a device to keep those dogs quiet - when I heard you talking on the Security Now Podcast about a device you built to deal with barking dogs I got excited!

Ok,my backstory it's long but crazy: I've been dealing with a barking problem with my next door neighbor for .. well it will be 9 years in June from when I moved in.  They have two of those little terriers. They both bark at different times for different reasons. I've talked to the Woman owner probably 50 times about the problem with no progress. One of the dogs sounds much like I would imagine a Pterodactyl when provoked - it's a bit hard to describe - you would never know it's a dog making that sound. Kind of a screech with random oscillating yelps injected in the midst of the screeching. Anyway I first started with my HOA, they couldn't get any progress so they told me to talk to Irvine City police who at the time said I needed a second neighbor to complain which I couldn't because none of the neighbors wanted to get involved and weren't home during the day to hear it anyway - my wife and I both work from home.  So, Irvine Animal Control would talk to the lady and give her tips about how to solve the problem etc. etc. They would only be able to give her a warning with no next step. They told me that my only next step would be to get a lawyer and document everything and start that whole process.

Good news! or so I thought... A few years ago the City of Irvine along with several other cities in the area started adopting a new ordinance that would warn the dog owner and give them two weeks to solve the problem and then it would start a fine process starting at I think $200 then go up for each incident to $500 I think. So, I was pretty excited about this so I started calling Animal control, and they would come out, talk to the owner and give a warning. I started documenting when the dog barked etc. etc. So, then comes the interesting part....  When the dog continued to bark, the Irvine police requested a hearing with me and then with the dog owner separately to discuss the details. I provided all my logs of when the dog was barking and for how long etc, I also offered audio recordings of the dog barking. I received a letter a week after the hearing from the city of Irvine stating that they sided with me and are issuing her a fine.  I was so excited because maybe the dog owner would now be motivated to do something about the dog barking problem. Well, my excitement only lasted another week when I got another letter stating that the dog owner submitted an appeal to the city's fine....

So then I got a call from the City Attorney representing the Superior Court of Laguna Beach (something to that affect) asking me if I was willing to show up in court as a witness in defense of the City of Irvine on a case involving the Dog Lady's appeal to the city's fine about her dog.  I said "sure, I'd do whatever it took to support the city as it supports me in trying to resolve this problem."  So after some discussion we looked at the facts to prepare for the court appearance and we discovered that the day that I called animal control the dog only barked for 20 minutes continuously and the ordinance requires the dog to bark 30 minutes or more continuously... Even though the dog barked on and off the whole day... and the dog barked for more than 30 minutes on the day after... and the dog has been barking almost every day for the last 8 years!!!!!  the attorney told me that unfortunately this will not hold up in court and that this case will be dismissed!  ARRRRRGHGHGGHGHG!   Oh, but wait, there's MORE!

So, not a big deal right? I'll just start tracking the dogs barking again and start calling Animal control and this time I was going to record the dog barking for more than 30 minutes continuously. That way they could actually hear the annoying barking and not able to refute it! Now the ordinance also states that if the dog barks on and off during a 24 period that adds up to an hour. Well since that seemed a bit more abstract than the other option I decided to try and focus on the dog barking for 30 minutes continually. Now another interesting thing is that the dog seemed to bark for about 20 minutes and then stop for maybe half an hour and then start barking again. He rarely barked continuously for 30 minutes...  So, I started recording with my iphone and then get bummed when it would only get to 22 minutes... and the dog would stop.   Also logging everything in my notes app, date, time, duration - this was getting very time consuming!  After about a week I got a recording for more than 30 minutes and called animal control, they came out and gave the dog lady a new warning... I asked why did she need a new warning, we should start the fine process and they explained, it's been several months since you last contacted us so we want to give her another chance to solve the problem on her own... really? after 8 years at this point, you really think she is going to take action? This didn't change their mind. So ok, we'll see what happens.

So then Irvine Animal Control called me back in exactly 10 days and asked if the dog has barked within the last 24 hours. Well, it just so happens that it didn't.. the dog would typically bark horribly on some days and not as much on other days. I wasn't going to lie about it so I said no it hasn't. They said ok, when the dog barks again for more than 30 minutes give us a call....   I said "wait, you are telling me that the dog has to bark within 24 hours of when you call me on the 10th day from when I called initially?" they said "yes that is correct".  BUMMER AGAIN!!!   But wait - there's more!!!

I am not making this stuff up... so then I kept trying to catch the dog barking  for 30 minutes continuously and record it and then I would call  and they would issue a warning and then after 10 days they would call me and ask if the dog was barking within 24 hours and after several times of this process it actually did. I thought Yippee!! We've got lift off! So the manager of Irvine Animal Control and I talked about the situation and she explained that the Dog owner is likely to appeal again and we will need to go to court and that she was recommending that we seek 3rd party mediation first and that she has seen some great success with mediation. She also told me that if the dog owner doesn't want to do this that we can pursue the fine process. I said, "ok, nothing to lose here right?" so after several weeks she called me and told me that she had trouble getting in touch with the dog owner and that when she finally did that the dog owner didn't want to do mediation but that she would really work on solving the problem and asked if I wanted to pursue the fine and possible appeal process. I said, the dog owner has tried different things in the past but hasn't done what I have requested that I thought would solve the problem and that's - keep her dog inside the house. (The dog owner had told me previously that she doesn't want to keep the dog inside because it needs to go outside to do urinate or have a bowel movement). ... The dog owner is gone a lot.  Anyway, so over the weekend the dog was barking again for more than 30 minutes on both Saturday and Sunday and I recorded them both. I then called Animal Control to let them know and they said ok, we'll give the dog owner a warning. I said "wait, no, we did that, this is just to add to the proof that the dog barking is still a problem!" they told me to call back on Monday to talk to the manager. I did this and the manager suggested we start over since the previous process was started 3 weeks ago. "what!?!?!!?"  I said, wait, we have plenty of evidence that the owner has been warned many times and that the dog has barked over 30 minutes many times what's the problem? ? "she said  it's more effective if the barking is recent". I said, it his recent - it was yesterday!"  She said that we would need to start the process over by giving her a new warning…  ARG!   

CRAZY CRAZY!  Ok, so now… it finally dawned on me... where did this 10 day period come from and why does the dog have to bark within 24 hours of that 10 day period? I asked her where it came from and she said that from a previous incident that almost went to court (talking about me), the city attorney looked at the ordinance noticed that it was a bit generic so the attorney came up with this procedure to make sure that the city wasn't going to waste the court's time unless they had followed all the procedures carefully.  I then asked the question that you may all be thinking by now... "wait, the dog' barking is the worst on Saturdays, so.. let say the dog only barked on Saturdays... and then they gave a warning... then in 10 days from that Saturday they called me to find out if the dog barked within the last 24 hours... it would never ever happen because obviously... Saturdays are exactly 7 days apart!!!".  She thought about it and said... you have a point and that she was going to talk to the city attorney and ask his input on this....

Well, I never got a call back. At this point, I've jumped through so many hoops I've decided I'm not going to get anywhere going that route. So, I want to design a device that will keep the dogs from barking from MY house. This is when I discovered your project so needless to say - I'm motivated!!!  

So over the last almost 9 years now I've thought alot about different devices and methods to deal with dogs when the owner won't cooperate.   So, the owner sometimes  puts a shock collar on the dog that will give the dog a jolt when it barks and it does seem effective when the owner remembers to put it on and charge the batteries. The problem though is that the dog owner is not consistent. We need a device that will not depend on the owner to do anything because in many situations the owner either forgets or just doesn't care. Here's a list of things I've tried and their effectiveness:

1. talking to city and HOA - not effective
2. talking to the owner - not effective
3. spraying the dog with water over the wall - not effective
4. purchasing two different brands of antibark devices that emit high pitched noises - mildly effective. first time I tried the dog went inside, now the dog runs to another part of the yard and keeps barking. I think the noise is annoying to the dog but not enough to make him go inside or stop barking. I have also noticed that the ultrasonic mode (humans can't hear it) doesn't seem to do anything and that the mode humans can hear is mildly effective.
5. yelling "QUIET" at the top of my lungs when the dog barks - more effective than anything else but only for about 5 minutes. The dog actually runs inside the house for 5 minutes or more. It seems that the dog has learned to listen to me or at least recognize that I live here, but unfortunately the dog's attention span is only a few minutes.

Ideas:
1.  I've thought of desiging a device that would record me yelling "QUIET" and then play it at high volume whenever a sound sensor would detect the dog barking but there are a few problems with this idea also:
If the detection system goes off much like these antibark devices I already have, it would go off whenever it detects a loud noise - any loud noise. the problem here is that if myself or the neighbor opens our garbage can lid and then lets it slam down, the device would blast "QUIET" in my voice. Though this could be very funny at first... it might cause some new problems with the neighbors.
2. recording the dog barking and then play it back when the owner is home and trying to sleep. Though this may seem logical and reasonable that she shouldn't be mad at me for the sound of her own dog barking and waking her up... I could see much potential for the authorities getting involved and it would only increase tension and not solve the problem.
3. Using a device much like Wood Norris Invented that could send focus beams of high decibel sound at the dog to scare it into never wanting to bark again. Or maybe making it deaf so that the dog couldn't hear any sounds to bark at.  This would be injurious to the dog and could create lawsuits and other problems.

So I'd like to continue brainstorming and testing ideas. If we could come up with an effective solution to this problem - this could help people all over the world and prevent neighbors from doing crazy things out of anger. This is a very very common problem that doesn't yet have an effective solution... I believe that it's out there somewhere...we just need to find it!!!

TechnoTed

 





On Friday, March 29, 2013 11:17:12 AM UTC-7, Steve Gibson wrote:

This post anchors our thread for discussion of the dog collar version of The Quiet Canine... the "Dog Caller".

/Steve.

[Kindanyume]

Once again more proof we need a device for stupid owners..

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