Mike

My name is Mike Atwood and I am currently living in Las Vegas, NV. I work as an audio technician for a popular French-Canadian Circus troupe known for it’s contortionists and clowns that aren’t really that funny. I originally developed the BarkstopCD© disc over eight years ago when I was an audio technician for a military band. You can read about “Why” I developed the BarkstopCD© by going to the BarkstopCD© Story link, but I just wanted to say a few words about what the disc is and is not supposed to be.

I developed the disc 8 years ago and at the time there seemed to be very few solutions out there for controlling barking dogs. There were shock collars, citronella emitting collars and even tone blasters that sounded like smoke alarms. They were also quite expensive. I wasn’t about to climb the fence and try to put a collar on my neighbor’s dog and the tone blaster, if used at night, would get me arrested quicker than if I had an iincessantly barking dog. Now, fast forward to 2008, and there are plenty of automated, ultra-sonic devices out there, and they have their advantages and disadvantages. They are convenient and probably work under certain conditions but they are still expensive and have limited power.

The BarkstopCD© disc is simple, inexpensive (cheap, like me) and is more for the do-it-yourselfer (also, like me). It’s range is only limited by however much power you can or want to put behind it. Some companies advertise that their device emits a tone at 110 decibels. Well, as a sound guy, I know quite well how statistics like that can be fudged. Is that A-weighted? C-weighted? At what distance was the device measured? All that is fine and dandy, but what matters is what the dog hears. If measured right at the device, by the time the sound reaches the dog, it can be quite insignificant compared to the surrounding noise.
When we first started marketing the BarkstopCD© disc, it seemed like most of our customers had similar stories. They were at their wits end and were willing to try anything , including WMD’s to get their neighbor’s dog to quit barking. Well, if you are willing to use your own stereo and speakers, and spend a few minutes of setup time, the BarkstopCD©is like the “bazooka” of bark control devices, compared to the “pellet gun” solutions that others offer..