welcome

Does it ever! And not just for our dog, but for our neighbor whose dog needed a little help keeping quiet, as well - more on that in a moment.

Within two days, our dog’s barking was reduced by at least 90%. We actually didn’t even keep the collar on him very often after the first two days because it wasn’t needed any longer.

Our neighbor knew our dog to be particularly vocal, but during a doggy-playdate, our dog’s silence was so noticeable they had to know how we accomplished the change! So we recommended the collar, and they promptly placed an order and had equally good results.

Our pup had been barking every time we left the house, when we came home, whenever he wanted attention or when he became excited about other people and dogs.  Two days into wearing the collar, he almost NEVER barked. At most, he let out a high-pitched yipe, but he knows if he gets a little too loud - PSSHT! - a citronella spray will follow, and he doesn’t like that at all!

To date, now a month later, the barking problem remains virtually solved. MAYBE he’ll bark one time at some stimulus, but it ends there at a single bark, even without the collar.  It worked like MAGIC.

Would I have preferred to know that the collar is made in the USA?  Of course. Unfortunately, so many electronics and, well, almost everything else, are not manufactured on-shore (as the corporate types call it), so I didn’t bother to try to hunt the location of this product’s origins.  In a rare departure from my steadfast dedication to finding products that are made here, on this one item, a couple other values trumped that desire.

1) Pet safety - a little hedging of a philosophy here, but if a company cares enough about an animal’s safety to work tirelessly to product a product that is effective while being harmless, my guess is their ethics are in tune. Plus, I wouldn’t switch to a US-made product that wasn’t safe!

2) Headquarters - due to competition, a great many American companies have moved their manufacturing off-shore, a move very common for electronics specifically.  This can hardly be avoided in today’s market.  But the fact that the company’s home base is here in TN, I get some sense of comfort that the corporate ethics will filter out to the manufacturing plants. For other companies, this would be wishful thinking and naive, but after reading the company’s values captured in THE WILL and learning that they are a highly desirable place to work, I am putting a little faith in their integrity.

3) Effectiveness - The bottom line for a product like this is that it has to work! I couldn’t be more pleased with this bark control collar. I will note that the newer model has had slightly less positive feedback from consumers, but the original came through in spades.

The model number is PBC00-11283 and is available on Amazon.

1) Have more than sufficient power to jump not just my vehicle, but a large SUV or truck, in case I needed to use it for a friend or family member.

2) Work in the extreme cold and on a completely dead battery

3) Be made in the USA if possible and by a company that has a solid foundation of integrity and values

I realize this last bit doesn’t usually even come up for most people.  The competing criteria are usually price, name brand and/or credibility - what other people or reviews say about it.

Generally speaking, if my experience on a company’s website is easy because I can find exactly the information I need, answers to my questions are easy to locate, and the product line satisfies the need, it often follows that the company has the rest of their ducks in a row also.  Not always, but often enough. 

Company origin is typically paramount, because it helps me know what I’m dealing with regarding standards. The United States and Europe have strict requirements in a variety of important segments, such as environmental impact management, labor laws, and safety and quality standards. I also try my best to suppose as local of an economy as I can.  So I start by searching where the headquarters are and where the manufacturing is done.

Given that I was in something of a hurry to get the situation handled, I didn’t dig as deeply into this investigation as some others, but the brands’ products I considered are:

1) Weego - US based company, manufactures overseas. I have another Weego portable backup charger for my cell phone and have been happy with it. This brand was a contender.

2) Duracell - I was unhappy with the corporate website design and the (third-party) website hosting all the jump starter products. I believe regular (AAA, AA, C and D) type batteries are made in the USA, but the presentation of the products lacked details. I was not motivated to investigate this further, because information was difficult to find.

3) NOCO - Immediate favorite based on the presentation of the products, delivery of information about the products, and ease of locating the information I wanted. Based out of Cleveland, OH, and manufacture products in the USA.

4) BeatIt - This was one of the first search results on Amazon, but I quickly found the website difficult to navigate, and a little research into the company found that it was a Chinese company, putting it geographically too far away for an exception.

5) AutoGen - Another product line that had good reviews on Amazon, but they didn’t appear to have a website of their own for information.

I compared Weego and NOCO’s products heavily to determine which would be the one I would purchase, and learned a bit about jump starter batteries along the way. The new lithium batteries do not provide a cold cranking amp (CCA) rating due to the different type of battery they are vs lead acid. The CCA rating can be calculated as about half of the max output amperage the lithium batteries are rated at - at least according to the Q&A on Amazon.

The one I selected is the NOCO GB50, because almost everything else was equivalent with the Weego options. The ability to charge peripheral electronics like phones and tablets is a great feature that all the new jumpers have, along with all the safety features like reverse-polarity protection and anti-spark technology.

Not always, not entirely; but I do attempt to read them or at least I skim them for any particularly egregious or aggressive data collection practices or other terms that I may not agree with participating in to use the service.

Sometimes they lead me to even more interesting places, such as this page about Acumen, which was referenced as having a similar creed worth reviewing.

So when I was looking for a platform on which to host this content, there were really only two choices:

1) Host my own webpage / blog

2) Find a platform that would meet most of my needs without compromising my sense of privacy.

Since I don’t want to invest the time and expense of hosting my own site again (I mentioned in a previous post that this isn’t my first go-around with this project), I decided to find a platform that would suffice.

I reviewed Vero as a possibility, which actually looks pretty cool, and to their credit, they were very up-front and clear about their Privacy Policy, which outlines a practice that immediately disqualified them for my purposes.

I don’t want to share my phone book with any company. (At most, I would consider one person’s information at a time to selectively share information.)

Uber requires this to split fares. Vero requires it to see who, of your contacts, also use Vero. Many applications request to download your whole phone book for connecting you to others.

This practice goes against the grain of all my sensibilities for maintaining privacy for myself and protecting the privacy of my contacts. I’m the kind of person who asks permission of my contacts before sharing their information with a third party to ensure it’s okay with them.

Ever have someone cold call you, usually asking for something, and then having them disclose that, “Oh I got your number from so-and-so”? In my mind, I’m usually thinking, so-and-so is no longer trusted.

Maybe a little harsh, but this is one of the values I hold dear: Privacy.

So, given that Tumblr does not require a bunch of personal information to get an account started, and because the platform reasonably satisfied my needs, it jumped right to the top of the list.

Is it possible I missed something terrible in the T&C or PP? I suppose, but I don’t think so. (If you find something of grave concern to you, please reply and let me know.)

B-Corps, environmental protection watchdogs and clean-up groups, humanitarian efforts, recycling programs, and on and on. What I am talking about it a way to find and facilitate companies’ efforts to be rewarded for doing the “right” thing, and to highlight the actions of individuals who make the “right” decisions.

What is “right”?  That is somewhat subjective, but in general we know it as a way to behave such that the outcome preserves and supports what we value, and in fact generates more of what we value, provided those values are ethical and just.

Everyone has their own list, and I’d like to build something that enables people to easily interact with others and organizations, do commerce, achieve results, make money and be happy according to the values in their list.

For now, it begins with research. And it begins with me.