Bark monitoring lets your Ask A Vet tracker keep an ear on how much your dog is barking. It powers the barking alerts you get on your phone, and it fills in the Barking figure in your dog's activity stats.
How it works
Here is how the app explains it on the Barking alerts screen:
Your tracker listens for barking and counts barks over a detection cycle. When the count passes your threshold inside a scheduled window, you get an alert.
You decide two things: how long a detection cycle is, and how many barks inside that cycle counts as "too many". You also decide the times of day when detection is allowed to raise an alert.
Barking alerts
When the bark count passes your threshold inside one of your schedules, you get a notification reading "{Pet}'s barking is unusually high" with the message "Check in on them if you can."
The daily bark count
Barking also appears as one of the six activity stats in the app (Activity, Steps, Distance, Calories, Sleep and Barking), measured in times barked.
Please note: The daily count is a separate thing from your alert threshold — you can sit comfortably in the normal daily range and still get bark alerts, and the other way round.
Where to find it
- Open your pet's profile.
- Tap GPS tracker settings.
- Tap Barking alerts (described as "Bark alerts, sensitivity and schedule").
The row tells you the current state at a glance: Barking alerts are on or Barking alerts are off.
Please note: Barking alerts and the Barking stat are only shown for pets whose species is set to Dog.
Bark detection and battery
Bark detection is a switch on the tracker itself, not just a setting in the app. While it is switched off, the collar reports zero barks — so your bark count will stay at 0 until you turn it on.
The Separation Anxiety Monitor manages this for you during a session. As the app puts it:
Starting the Monitor turns on bark detection on the tracker so barking can be counted, and turns it back off when you stop. It's off the rest of the time to save battery.
If you turned barking alerts on yourself, they stay on — the Monitor only switches detection back off if the Monitor was the thing that switched it on.
Important: The Ask A Vet tracker is not a medical device. While it can detect behavior trends, always seek advice from a vet.
Related articles - How to set up barking alerts (threshold and schedule) - Barking activity explained: Silent, Quiet, Normal, Chatty, Vocal and Alarm dog - I'm not getting barking alerts, or my bark count shows zero - What is the Separation Anxiety Monitor?