Aww! Poor Maggie! ; ) The no bark collars that give a little buzz really work. My husband tried one on once. ; )

Awwww, but aren’t we all suckers when it comes to our dogs? 😉

my dog is deaf and we trained her with a water bottle. when she’d jump on people – squirt. when she’d bark excessively – squirt. she now fears the bottle and is quite well behaved (most of the time!). try it!

We got a bark collar for my dog and it would do something (I can’t remember what) when he barked several times in a row. He caught on so he made sure to space out his barking so it wasn’t even effective! What a waste!

AWWWWWWWW! lol. She’s just so cute! We have a neighbor with a dachshund and his bark is SO loud. Surprisingly loud for such a small hound !

That is so funny! I have a dachshund and he is the same way… The high pitched noise also makes him bark!

I’m a sucker, too. Tried that damn stupid device as well. I am guessing it does absolutely NOTHING. The person that decided to sell that thing is deviously brilliant.

Thank you for posting this! I contemplated buying one of these and am so glad to know they don’t work. My boyfriends dog barks EVERY time a car drives by. I live in the city and there are cars going by all day. Not really sure how to fix that issue.

I bought that and it works! talk to your dogs with it off and watch their expressions , then talk with it on….my dogs walked away and hung low.

Awe, but she is so cute!

This made my morning, especially that “action” shot. Oh, the beauty of short legs. Embrace them, Maggie 🙂

Just out of curiosity, have you ever tried dog IQ test on Maggie that the blogger of “Hyperbole and a Half” did?

Maybe the unit is broken, I suspect she would respond at least a little bit…

Those are the ones that need the most love! Our female cat is just clueless. She is such a spaz too. It drives us crazy sometimes, but really they can’t help it.

Oh, I’m sorry to tell you that you just wasted $10! 🙁 We have more than one yapper in this house, so we bought it on a whim (okay, out of desperation), and it DOES NOT WORK. It’s now shoved in a closet and we are still dealing with dumb barkers. (Hey, I don’t mind if they bark at something LEGIT, but give me a break…) BTW, have you ever tried a “penny can”? We use this from time to time and it distracts them, but on the little dogs it doesn’t seem to work as well. We just fill an empty can (Le Croix in this house) with pens, tape it shut and shake the living hell out of it when they bark at something they’re not supposed to. We had one dog trained by the word “penny can” alone. It was great.

LOL, i just love her. She is too cute!

Maggie looks like she’s so little that I’m not sure if this would work, but my friend lives in an apartment building and bought this for her beagle-mix to take pity on her neighbors:
http://www.amazon.com/Premier-SpraySense-Anti-Bark-Dog-Collar/dp/B0002D31QU

It really works! The funny thing is she lives by an elevated train track and if she’s walking the dog when a train goes by, sometimes that sets off the collar and the dog gets confused, like he’s thinking, “I’m being so good! I didn’t do anything!”

I love Maggie’s stupidity and I especially love your paragraph of cliches about stupidity to describe her. That really is such a huge part of her charm and what makes her so adorable and special. This is hilarious. I do wonder if it works for other dogs, have you read any online review?

Before we got married, my husband adopted a “special needs” cat from the SPCA. Half of one of her back legs was gone, and we had to pay ($900!!!!!) to have the rest of it taken off so it wouldn’t get infected. Even with the crazy vet bill we weren’t expecting, we love little Freska. However, she is the dumbest animal we’ve ever seen. She is a pure white cat, which are commonly known to have hearing problems or sometimes mental “issues”. Freska can hear just fine (thank God, apparently those animals can be super loud because they don’t know how loud they’re being), but she is just dumb. For instance, she can sit at the back door and instead of look out the door into the back yard, she’ll stare at the wall for HOURS. We have a small fish tank on the counter, and instead of getting up there to watch the fish, we commonly find her up there staring into the empty sink. Again, for HOURS. Among other crazy things, she likes her brush, but to use it as a chew toy, not a brush. It’s a good thing she’s cute!

Those ads are designed to draw people in. That’s why they work – even on folks who should know better. Oh well, love me love my dog. I won’t even tell you about the stuff I’ve fallen for over the years.

Aw, poor dumb Maggie. At least she’s a cutie!

Glad I’m not the only one that fell for that piece of junk!

I assume since she’s so dumb, typical training methods don’t work? We’ve had success using just a regular spray bottle of water and spritz our dog in the face when she’s in crazy-barking mode. This degenerated into using whatever glass of liquid we had around. She now has an irrational fear of glasses, coffee cups, and beer mugs.

I love Maggie posts and reading the comments, reminds me I am not the only one with a crazy little dog! Our Lulu is a Bichon with an attitude. When I walk in the door she really likes to let me know how mad she is that I left in the first place :/ She’ll be having her own little bark festival and our other pup Bosley is looking at me like ‘why did you leave with this hot mess?!?!’
Hehe. Dogs. Love.

She is so cute! I have a very large chocolate lab that thinks he is the size of a miniature poodle and is also “not home” so it’s an entertaining combination! I also tried the Bark-Off on my other dog (she is the barker!) and it seemed to work on day one, then never again after!

I have 2 Goldens….my female is smart as a whip (except for being afraid of thunder), but my male is pretty dumb. He barks at nothing. NOTHING. Not like yours, where there’s at least a “reason”. Griffin will bark at a wall. Or the floor. Anything. Weirdo.

Binaca! Yes, the breath spray. Next time Maggie barks inappropriately, spray it near (not in) her face and give your verbal command (No Bark!). Worked like a charm with our corgi. He is smart, so it only took two times – but might take more for her!

Lol, sounds like my brother’s dog. That stupid beagle. I can’t stand him. I love my little Jake who is a German Shepherd/Lab/hound/mix and doesn’t bark at anything practically and is just the sweetest dog ever. I want another dog so badly that I can go running with. Birthday present maybe? Hmmm

She sounds like the little sister of my nut-job dog, Shayla, a greyhound/shepherd mix. Sweet but dumb is how we describe her. We couldn’t even take her camping this past weekend. All the dogs, squirrels, smells, children, etc had her bouncing off the trees barking, shaking, cowering, and that was while *ON* tranqs (natural version) and then benadryl as a last minute thing to help calm her down. We had to take her home. I’ve been eying the anti-bark devices as well and glad to know that they don’t work for dumb dogs. (Said with a great amount of love for my dumb dumb!)

I’m really tempted to try this.

HAHA That’s HILARIOUS! I love your blog! I’m glad i accidentally found it..I have never even read a blog before!

hahaha loved reading about dear maggie and her nemesis. Pure gold. thanks for the laugh, Caitlin!
Heidi xo

Have you heard of citronella bark collars? Every time they bark it squirts citronella in the air and they don’t like the smell. My friend has two dogs that bark constantly but as soon as those collars go on, they know not to bark!

The bark off device works on my noisy pup. I think she just doesn’t care. haha!

This post is too funny. My Cocoa isn’t the brightest pup on the planet either (though I suspect she’s smarter than she lets on). The Bark-Off my roommate’s officemate gave her didn’t do anything, either.

The vet once said Cocoa has a high tolerance for pain (good because she has arthritis in both knees), so I think the Bark-Off just doesn’t deter her because it doesn’t bother her much. Same thing went for the bark-stopping collar we got for her.

I just had to say: I was at the pet store two days ago and the owner was telling my husband and I about his wiener dog he had that barked at everything. He bought it the high end shock collar and the dog just didn’t get it. He finally had to take off the collar because he was afraid of permanently doing damage to his dog.

So you are not alone.

My in-laws have two daschunds…. and they don’t quite get along. In fact when one barks the other starts barking… its like they’re competing with each other for who is louder! And they bark at EVERYTHING. Car in the driveway, person at the door, person in the house, rain… the wind! You are not alone….

I am wayy too lazy to read through all the comments to figure out if anyone has said this already, but we have two schnauzers and holy balloons they are loud! My mom treats them like her children, so she doesn’t really mind. My dad however HATES when they bark. SO they bought them these barking collars. The dogs wear them when we expect guests (the door bell is the trigger…or passers by that they can hear). When they bark, it emits a spray of febreeze type of stuff. Its very gentle…but they hate it! WE love it. They’ve eventually learned what it means (took a while….one is “special” like Maggie). I really suggest looking into it! When they do bark (I think sometimes they just need to get the ‘led’ out) it smells like fresh lemons! Email me if you’d like specifics!!

LOL – I love when you tell us about Maggie 🙂 How precious is she!!!!