What's new in the Garmin Bark Limiter?

Autorise Stimulation -- Garmin has added a setting to the BarkLimiter that allows the unit to automatically increase stimulation levels as your dog barks to find the correct level. Unlike direct set stimulation levels, the Autorise feature uses 18 levels of stimulation. This allows the unit to ramp up very quickly to stop rapid barking and to get to the right level fast.

The advantage of an autorise feature is that the unit can deal with high distraction situations that need higher levels and then after the barking is over the level will drop. The next time a lower distraction situation comes up, the unit starts low so that your dog isn't over corrected. I have had great success with this type of feature in other brands of bark collars and I am glad to see it in the Bark Limiter.

The majority of my dogs work fine in an autorise mode but I have a few that don't. Some dogs are just really driven to bark and they require a high correction level the first time they bark and everytime after that. These dogs will not do well on an autorise bark collar and will require a high direct set level.

The downside of autorise is that you are going to have some barking. This mode might not be what your particular barking issue needs and you might be better off with a direct set level.

Vibration Settings -- In Vibration mode, instead of correcting the dog with static stimulation when he barks, the collar will vibrate. There is no electric stimulation at all. It is not a warning or a precursor to stimulation, it is only vibration.

I can't say it won't stop a dog from barking but I'll be real surprised if it does, especially over time. Some dogs may find vibration to be startling at first, but once your dog figures out that there is no downside to it, you will need to move to a mode that has a stimulation correction.

Keep in mind that if you have used vibration on a remote training collar to communicate with your dog you will be making a mistake to try and use vibration with your bark collar.

Coin Slot Dial -- This is a very simple way to operate the collar and it's easy to tell what level you are on. The down side is that you do not want a dial that is easy to turn. If it's easy to turn then there is a chance that the level could get changed while the collar is on the dog.

Garmin has made this dial stiff. This makes it hard to turn by hand but there is little chance it will change levels by accident. To make it easier to use, there is a "coin slot" in the dial that lets you use a penny, dime or quarter to turn the dial. You can also use a flat head screw driver or any other flat tool.

I am not a big fan of external dials. We have several products that use them and I don't like them. There are a couple of things about the Bark Limiter that make the dial an improvement over a button, but I'm still not a fan. When we have trouble with older versions of the Bark Limiter, the majority of the time it was an on/off button issue. Every time you changed anything on the old Bark Limiter you used the on/off button. Once it failed you were done. The dial should fix that. Also, changing levels on the old Bark Limiter was a pain. You had to scroll through all 5 levels to lower the stimulation. It was hard to explain and it took time. The dial fixes that.

Updated Bark Odometer -- Garmin has made a needed change to the "Bark Odometer" on this version. Instead of flashing green once for every time the dog is corrected, you get red flashes for every 10 correction and then green flashes for the ones. For example, if you get 2 red flashes and 5 green flashes, your dog was corrected 25 times. (You may need to turn that level up!)

Integrated Contact Points -- The Bark Limiter no longer comes with short and long contact points. The new integrated contact points are designed to work with long and short haired coats. This is a new trend in bark collars and we have not seen many issues with not being able to get good skin contact, but some dogs will require longer probes. If that is the case with your dog, you will need to try another brand.

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"Good Barks"

If you look around at other sites on the internet that also sell the Garmin Bark Limiter, you will find text that talks about this unit being able to "recognize qualitative differences in barking." These websites claim that the Bark Limiter can tell the difference between "obsessive or nuisance barking" and ignore "good" barking. This is not true. Garmin originally intended to make this concept part of the design of the new Bark Limiter but were unable to do so.

While this is a feature that many folks would love to have in a bark collar, the Bark Limiter can't do this. The reason these websites claim that the product will do this is because Garmin accidentally included this text on its website and several distributors sent the info out to their dealers. The Bark Limiter can not tell the difference between "good" barking and "bad" barking. Anyone that tells you it can does not know what they are talking about.

What the Bark Limiter does do is differentiate between barking and other vocalizations. This is pretty typical in bark collars today. We find that many sounds that a dog makes will not be seen as "barks" by the unit. This is a good thing, but sometimes we have dogs that learn how to make sounds that the unit will not correct.