That's right, folks. Science has conquered dogs, "man's best friend". BarkOff is a small electronic device which, when you push a button, transmits an ultrasonic sound which causes those annoying mutts to shut the hell up. Hey, whatcha wanna bet they considered naming this product ShutupMutt!, but they chickened out? Anyway, I saw the commercials for it today while watching a few DVRed episodes of T.J. Hooker recorded several months back, and I Googled the product to see if it was legitimate. I discovered that most of the Google results had titles that made them look like irate disclaimers of a bogus product. But when I read them, they sounded like commercials promoting the product, cleverly disguised as irate disclaimers! Ooooh, those Madison Ave guys are insidious!
I get similar devices to chase off dogs that try to attack you (although I am not sure they work), but isn't it a little bit of overkill to use it for barking? I mean, I am willing to guess your dog is going to be significantly more disturbed by the intolerable ultrasound than you by its barking. Although I know one dog who barks like it's the devil and almost deserves to have this done to it... Dude had no respect for how distressing its barking can be.
Now if they could just come up with a sonic device I could use on those earthshaking car stereos and the wonderfully generous drivers who feel obliged to share their music with everybody within a blast radius of 500 feet. I'm not sure which I'd rather have: a device that absolutely silences the throbbing shock waves these tone-deaf, brain dead bozos inflict on the normal people around them, or a device that quadruples the volume for them so they would leap from their cars and run screaming down the street. No, wait. I've got it. A device that fries the circuits of their sonic weapons of mass destruction, leaving them sitting at the intersection, puzzled and infuriated while they watch smoke pouring from their devastated stereo. Yeah . . . that's the one I want.
This is actually nothing new. My dad & I set up an Atari 400 to send out a high-pitched sound through a speaker outside at some barking dogs in an adjacent yard back in the early 80's. It needs to be on an amplifier and using omnidirectional speakers - I bought a similar hand-held model (not this one) about 5 years ago and it didn't work to well, as the sound wave being generated is very high frequency, highly directional, has limited range and can be easily blocked by obstacles.
+1 Also, I personally like using simple commands to get the dog to behave, like Shuddup, Shutyayap, and Zipit.