Dog Containment Fence

[TerryinMD]

Mosey,

When you install the fence you mark the boundary with a bunch of those littlle plastic flags. You have probably seen them ringing peoples properties. The purpose is to define the a visual border when introducing the dog to the fence. After everything is installed and running, you need to work with the dog for awhile to have it learn the boundaries and what happens if they try to cross over the fence. Each dog is different in its level of pain (stupidity??) and how fast it learns. Our Border Collie picked it up in less than two weeks. We left the flags up for a couple of months reducing the amount weekly until they were all gone.

The fence has been in the ground about a year now. He has gotten out three times. Two of the time was due to the receiver on the collar being broken and the last time was due to a break in the underground fence.

Terry

 

[RMEADOWS]

I love ours. I have four dogs that live in andprotect my barn behind my house. I have about 500'-600' of wire burried an inch to two around the barn and the "charger" in the barn.

I only had to use the flags a week as they got smart real quick. I varry the size of the containment area on occasion so they keep listening for the beep and not "test" the line.

I did have one of my dogs learn that they only got shocked for a second. That's when I bought the stubborn dog collar. Takesa 9v vs 3 v and it packs a puch. I got hit buy it and I was scared to cross the fence line.

It also deters people from my house. They see the dogs and no fence, tends to keep the sales people and others off my property.

The nice part about it is that they really can break through if they want. I had a A/C guy over and my daughter came out. One of the dogs broke through and got between her and the A/C guy.

Hope it works for you!

 

[Charlie_Iliff]

My fence came with instructions to flag the lines and lead the dog around to make sure he knows where they are. After a short time, we removed the flags, but he definitely knows where the lines are and stays away from them unless the collar battery is dead.

 

[Wal]

<font color=red>If one of the boundaries is out in the middle of the yard, how does the dog know where the boundary is? Do you have to mark it with flags or something?</font color=red>

Danny,

One stretch of our buried wire runs across about 100ft. of nothingness, just wide open grass. I don't know if it was really neccesary, but I planted a small crabapple tree right in the middle of that run, just a few feet outside the wire boundry. I did it just so our dog would have some point of reference as to "where" the boundry was on a permanent basis.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Wall, I agree with Jim's "robust creature" comment. We have 4 English Mastiffs, the largest being 190 lbs. These dogs have a high threshhold for pain. If you accidently step on their foot or tail they hardly even notice. Things that would make me me scream in pain won't bother them one bit.

We installed a radio fence when we only had two dogs. We followed the training and they learned the boundarys from the marker flags, but the electric shock had little to no effect. They would avoid going near the flags because of their training, but would just stroll across the boundary in between flags paying no mind to the electric shock. If we had purchaced the beeping collars the beeping might have had some effect. On several occasions I saw one of the dogs just sitting within the activation range wagging her tail and looking around calmly. I know the system was working because you could see the muscles twitching and contracting in her neck. The system does not work on dogs like this because there is no incentive to stay away from the border. The dogs are not stupid, they just have a high pain tolerance.

Before I tried the collar on the dogs, I tested it myself and the shock is plenty unpleasent. I would hope that anybody thinking of using one on their dog, try it on themselves first (use your fingers). They do make special extra strength collars, but I did not like the idea of upping the power so much, I really don't like the idea of zapping the dogs much at all, even at the lower power.

We installed wire field fence around a couple of acres and that works great. No collars to buy, no expensive batteries to replace, no worries about lightening, or power failures. The fence is connected to the house (wooden fence near the house) so we can just let them in and out the back door any time they want. The "real" fence keeps other dogs, people and animals away from our dogs domain. We have never had any of the dogs run off in the 5 years we have had the "real" fence.

Andy

 

[MReeter]

Andy,how much is your feed bill a month?Feeding FOUR Mastiffs....Wow!!!!

 

[spencer200]

I got 3 dalmatians, they chow thru 35 pounds of found a week!

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Mike, It is not as expensive to feed them as you might think. I think it costs about $1.25 a day. Thats not too bad considering we are feeding more than 640 lbs of dogs. We get the food in 55 lb bags.

When we just had one mastiff, a guy at work with a cocker spaniel kept saying how expensive it must be for me to feed him. We compared our food cost. He bought expensive food in a 5 lb bag. If I remember correctly it was about the same cost to feed our dogs, maybe the mastiff was a little cheaper. Mastiffs are not as active as some other breeds, so they do not need as much food per pound of body weight and buying food in bulk is much cheaper.

Andy

 

[Journeys_End]

<font color=red>I got 3 dalmatians, they chow thru 35 pounds of found a week!

<font color=black>Our Dalmation used to test the fence every day. She would approach the boundary, and if the collar beeped, she would back away. After a couple of days of doing this 10-15 times a day, the battery in the collar would die. Next time, no beep, dog would go wandering...too smart for her own good.

 

[hoghead]

NEW! The Deluxe Ultralight Receiver (UL-275V) is just like the UL-250M, but offers FIVE LEVELS OF CORRECTION! This is a true breakthrough in pet containment.

You can program the UL-275V to exactly the proper correction level for you pet. This receiver can be used on a pet with any temperament. Level one is a warning tone only with no correction. This is ideal for initial training or very timid dogs. Level five is almost as strong as the RF-204M Stubborn Dog Receiver. The Deluxe Ultralight Receiver also has a low battery indicator light to let you know when the batteries need replacing.

If you want the smallest receiver on the market, yet have the ability to use it with any pet, big or small, timid or stubborn, the UL-275V is your best choice.

The UL-275V comes complete with collar, batteries and short probes for short hair dogs and long probes for long hair dogs.

 

[patrickg]

Brian, Dog training is not all science. I had an aquaintance who raised a few labs to sell to trainers for hunting dogs. He decided to pick a pup for a companion dog for the family as the "buisness dogs" were off limits. He put the pup on his enclosed back porch to paper train it and in case of an accident/miss the carpet would not be involved. When he noticed the pup using the paper he would praise it and if it missed he would rub its nose in it and toss the pup out the window. Labs are real smart and quick learners. After about three of these incidents, the pup, while whining with its tail tucked between its legs and head hanging low would slowly approch the mess, stick his nose in a bit, and then jump out the window.

Now then, about Capt. Kirk's surplus pain collars... I know of a couple folks who "missed" their opportunity to train their dog to a collar-fence as a pup and had penetration problems where the dog would "Crash" the barrier, withstanding a zap or two to get freedom and as has been commented previously and not be motivated to endure it again to get back. In both cases what was successful was the addition of the other type of "Pain" collar in addition to the invisible fence type. Although exact methodology varied, the basic idea was to "manually" zap the dog while he was outside the "fence" so there was no rewarding payoff for "breaking out". The dog learned rather quickly that "busting out" was more uncomfortable than the fence reinforcement shock. The owners had of course turned the manual controlled unit up way higher than the level of the unit that worked in conjunction with the fence. One major difference between the two instances is that one guy turned the fence off while using the manual zapper to punish the dog for being out of bounds to ease getting him back across the line. In the end it worked for both. One was a black lab and the other weimeraner(sp?) The lab was also a barker and ended up with an anti barking electronic pain collar that punished continued barking but not a single bark. That too was highly successful. I'm glad the guy had a large robust dog, some small breeds would have to pull a little wagon to haul all the electronics with batteries.

Patrick

 

[OverlyRun]

For those of you who have put fence in over large areas:

Does the wire have to actually be buried, or can it be simply snaked through the woods or along the bottom board of a fence? I've got about a 5 acre area I'd like to fence to keep a coonhound in, and it would get done a lot faster if I only had to bury it where I might be mowing or driving.

Thanks for any advice or experience.

Chas

 

[rmorgan]

Chas--

We have a few acres in invisible fence and it is laid on top of the ground through the woods and trenched in a few inches where we mow. No problem. Bear in mind though that a tracking dog may be a little harder to train to the wire than a working dog because of its ramblin' ways.

 

[RMEADOWS]

It's best to bury it as it is a trip hazzard... and little furry rodents chew on it (don't ask me how I know).

I used an edger to trench a line aboue 1/2" deep. It hasn't come up, even inthe sandy soil in Florida.

 

[OverlyRun]

Rick, Roger,

Thanks for the feedback. Laziness will probably lead me to lay it along in the woods at the first...and if it gets chewed the pickax will come out and it will be blister time (tractor and an implement won't fit through the woods. Darn!) Will be a few weeks before I can get out to the property. My goal is to reduce the number of times we have to go through the trauma of handling young daughters and rambling dogs at the same time we're trying to get in the car to go home. If the dog gets going, she can go for 20 miles without crossing a road. So among 1) lots of training on the whistle, 2) the fence and 3) a companion dog that is a retriever who stays close to home, I have ambitions that I hope are not foolish. Stay tuned for updates.

Chas