I've used the DAP diffuser & spray for Tilly at home & found it effective - if it's for outdoors you would need to use the collar as the spray is to just spray in an area not on the dog.
I only stopped using it because it's expensive & now use the fear aggression bach flower remedy drops in her food which are equally as effective.
I guess as already said, some it works on, some it doesn't, but it's worth a try!

We have also used the collars for Ben & Max and loved them! They are both very nervous - one aggressive and the other vocal. We gave them both collars from the age of 6 months to 11 months and within a week of first putting the collar on we noticed a huge difference. If we forgot to change them then within a week or so of the collar 'running out' the barking would return with Ben and Max seemed generally more anxious. After 3 months we felt it was a bit expensive to keep buying and went without but after 2 weeks we had bought them again! The next time round we just put one on Ben as Max had chilled out a lot but Ben's barking was still a bit much. We are now totally without and sometimes I wonder whether to get another one for Ben which I'm resisting just on a cost basis. I would reccommend the collar, but as others have said, it works on some dogs but not others. We seemed to be the first case our vet had seen of success!
One other thing, the dogs do like to pull each other around by their collars and although they would sometimes stretch them they didn't manage to break them.

Hi, we used a DAP collar for Scruff for about a year for general anxiety, fear agression and separation anxiety and there was a definate difference to him wearing and not, he was a lot happier and calmer. After a year of wearing the collars and 6 months of livng with another dog his fear agression came to a head when he bit several people in different environments at home and at training. It put the fear in me! We took him to the vet to get him checked over as there are issues that are biochemical causing various anxiety disorders in dogs but the vet found nothing wrong with him.

The vet advised us to try Zylkene and so we removed his DAP collar for a week to get a baseline of his anxiety and then started giving him Zylkene (450g) once a day. After 2 weeks we saw a huge improvement in his general behaviour and now after 4 months he is ridiculously happy most of the time, still not overly happy about men he doesn't know entering the house but he calms down a lot quicker and we've had no more biting.

It might be worth looking at as it seems to have given us the space to start retraining him without the barrier of anxiety and definately worked better for the acute issues than the DAP which although great for general calmness didn't stop the moments of most fear.

Good luck I know how scarey this can be.

K

There's also a herbal supplement called Calm Down! I have read several excellent reviews about it's results and plan to try Cain on it. You can get it online, one place is the CSJ dog food website.

thanks for all your replies, i have a DAP collar coming in the post so i will see how it goes, i will probably also give the herbal remedies a try though not in conjunction with each other.

i am just wondering though, i know that the DAP collar can help relieve some of his fear but my intention is to see if he can start walking past other dogs (his main fear) and start socialising him a bit more ( obviously i will tart things slowly) and training him to associate dogs with positive things as opposed to being fearful of them.

i suppose a bit like you would socialise a puppy. Does this make sense, what do you think? I don't want to be stuck on DAP forever, i want to be able to help him get used to dogs, is this method likely to work or if i go on DAP am i likely to be stuck there?

i know others have mentioned success with coming off it but i just wanted to see what you thought of my intentions

thanks again

Sam

The DAP won't solve the problem by itself, you def need to do behavioural modification training too. What it really does is helps relax enough that it lowers the stress threadhold, allowing the dog to cope in situations it couldn't before. Then you train until the dog is comfortable and you should eventually be able to remove that DAP. It's s training aid rather than a solution and you shouldn't need it forvever....or it'll get very expensive!!! Good luck, keep us updated

thank you - that is just what i thought i should do - just needed someone to tell me i was on the right lines

Oh definately agree, all the above are only aids to allow training to happen to turn bahviours and reactions around. Unfortunately for Scruff the training classes are too much for him entirely but we continue to grab every willing party to help us whereever we go!

Just by way of an update,

i have used the DAP collar with Ruffus and i have to say i saw very little difference at all.

I bought two so i could have two months as a trial run to see what i could see but there was no real difference for him at all.

He has met other dogs in this time and there have been good times and bad times but i do not think DAP has worked for him.

This doesn't bother me too much as i think you have to try everything, it is just another thing i can say i have tried.

Thanks for all teh advice that i recieved though.

That's a shane to hear it just doesn't work for some dogs unfortunately.

Have you tried taking it off yet? We weren't sure it had had an effect on Cain until we left it off for a week, the difference them became obvious.