Our doorbell goes and the whole house knows about it. That is the thing I wanted to change, and QuietPaws™ is part of how I changed it, though not in the way I expected when I first opened the box.
Here is honestly how I use it, and the part nobody tells you: the device is only half the job.
What we cover
What made me reach for it
It was never really the barking. It was that I could not get a word in.
Couriers, mainly. The gate goes, my dog is at the front door before I have put my cup down, and from there I am shouting over the top of a dog who cannot hear me and would not listen if he could. By the time I reach him the courier has gone and the barking has already done its job, which is the part that matters. Every time that sequence runs, it gets a little more practised.
I did not want to shout, and I did not want to haul him back by the collar, because that just makes me part of the stress rather than the way out of it. What I wanted was something that would break the moment so I could actually start training.
What it actually does
Here is the honest version, and it is less than the marketing on most of these devices suggests.
QuietPaws™ interrupts. That is the job. It makes a sound your dog notices, and in the second or two where they stop and wonder what that was, the barking stops.
What it does not do is teach your dog anything. It cannot tell him that lying on his bed is a better idea than shouting at the door, and it cannot explain that the courier is not a threat. An interrupter buys you a gap. A gap is not a plan.
That is where most people go wrong with these things, and I was one of them. You buy the device, the barking stops in the moment, you assume the problem is handled, and a fortnight later you are back where you started wondering why it stopped working.
The device creates the gap. You have to be the one who fills it.
Karen, after a fortnight of getting this wrongWhat I do with the three seconds
This is the actual method, and it is simple enough to fit in a paragraph.
The bark starts. I trigger QuietPaws™. He stops and turns his head, because something odd just happened. In that half second I say his name once, brightly, from wherever I am standing. He comes. He gets a treat the moment he arrives, every single time, with no making him sit first and no conditions.
That is the whole thing. What I am building is not "stop barking", which is genuinely hard to teach because it is the absence of something. I am building "when something happens at the door, come and find me", which is a behaviour he can actually perform, and which he cannot do at the same time as standing in the hallway barking.
Two things decide whether this works.
The treat has to already be on me. If I have to go to the kitchen and find the bag, the moment is gone and I have taught him nothing except that the noise is meaningless. I keep treats in my PawPouch™ hanging by the door, which sounds like a small thing and is the single biggest reason this stuck for us.
And I only trigger it once. If I press it again because the first one did not work, I am actively teaching him that the sound does not matter. One trigger, then I work with whatever I get, even if what I get is not much.
Quick tip
- Practise the recall cold, with no barking and no trigger, ten times a day for a week. Name, he comes, treat. If the recall is not already solid in a quiet hallway, it will not appear out of nowhere in the middle of a barking fit.
If the recall itself is the weak link, Dr Ian Dunbar's tips for a reliable recall is where I would start before you worry about the barking at all.
The interrupter
QuietPaws™ Anti-Barking Device
What I use to make the gap. No shocks and nothing on the dog, which is why I was willing to try it in the first place. Available as a single or a 2 pack.
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From $84.90
Why we run two of them
We have two, and it is not an upsell. It is geometry.
One QuietPaws™ covers one spot. Ours sits in the hallway pointed at the front door, which handles the couriers and the postie and anyone who knocks. It did absolutely nothing for the other half of our problem, which was the back fence and the dog next door.
One device cannot cover a front door and a back fence at the same time. If your dog has two trigger points, and most dogs in a suburban house do, you want one at each. The 2 pack is $139.90 against $169.80 for two singles, so it is cheaper, but the saving is not really the point. The point is that one device only ever solves one of your problems.
Where it does nothing at all
I would much rather tell you this than have you buy one and be disappointed.
QuietPaws™ is for event barking. Something happens, your dog reacts, you need a way in. That is what it is for and that is where it earns its money.
It will not fix a dog barking because there is nothing else to do. A bored dog barking at the wall needs something to work at and a longer walk, and if you interrupt that you have taken away the only thing they had going on without replacing it. Our guide to the signs of a bored dog covers that side properly.
It will not fix a dog who is distressed when you are out, and this is the one I want to be blunt about. If your dog only barks when the house is empty, an interrupter is the wrong tool. The barking is a symptom of panic, and removing the symptom does nothing to the panic underneath it. The specialists are clear that trying to suppress that particular kind of barking tends to make things worse rather than better, which is why our separation anxiety guide sends you somewhere else entirely.
And it will not do anything if nobody is home to do the other half. The gap only counts if someone fills it.
The mistakes I made first
Four of them, in order of how much they cost me.
I leaned on it
For the first fortnight I triggered it and did nothing else, because the barking stopped and that felt like it was working. It was not working, it was a pause button, and he worked that out before I did.
I used it on the wrong barking
I tried it on the aimless barking in the late afternoon, which turned out to be a dog who had not had enough of a walk. A longer morning loop fixed that. The device had nothing to do with it.
I had no treats on me
Covered above, and if you only change one thing, change this one.
I expected him to generalise
The hallway recall was solid weeks before the back garden one was, because as far as he is concerned those are two unrelated situations. You train each spot separately, and the second one does go faster, just not for free.
The unglamorous half
PawPouch™ Dog Walking Bag
Mine lives on the hook by the front door with treats in it, not on walks. Having the reward already in reach is what turned this from a nice idea into something that actually worked in our hallway.
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$69.90
When to put it away
The goal was never to use it forever.
These days the doorbell goes and he comes to find me most of the time without anything happening first, because the pattern has become his rather than mine. The device is still in the hallway and I still reach for it on the days when something properly sets him off, but I go weeks without touching it.
That is what I would call success. Not a dog who has been quietened, but a dog with a better idea about what to do, and a device that mostly sits there because it already did its job. If you want the training side without any device at all, why your dog barks at home goes through every cause, and the rest of our training gear sits in the training and behaviour range.
Common questions
Does QuietPaws™ stop barking on its own?
It interrupts barking in the moment. It does not teach your dog what to do instead, which is why I pair every single use with a recall and a treat. On its own you get a pause rather than a change.
Why would I need two?
Each device covers one area. A dog who barks at the front door and at the back fence needs one at each, because a single unit cannot reach both.
Will it help a dog who barks when left alone?
No, and I would not try it. That is distress rather than event barking, and suppressing it tends to make it worse. Our separation anxiety guide is the right starting point instead.