Invisible Dog Fence recommendations?

[rtimgray]

Thanks for the advice and opinions.

I've looked into the wireless or broadcast system, and all of the ones that I have found have a relatively small containment area.

I would love to have a dog-proof fence to enclose 100 acres, but I have enough trouble trying to keep a cow-proof one up

I've got 10,000 ft. of 12 gauge wire that is on hand that I don't have any other plans for, so that is what I'm hoping to use with the system as far as the perimeter lines go.

Again, about 99% of the wire will be attached to existing wire (either woven wire or barbed wire). Most of my fences are 5 strand barbed wire. I plan to attach it to the middle strand. In all of the times that I've had to fix fences (which is a lot), most of the breaks are either the top 2 from deer jumping over them or the bottom two from smaller animals running through them.

Of course, I will have breaks that I will have to track down, but I just assume that will be part of it. If it becomes too difficult, then I may shrink the size of the containment area.

The dog that we are getting it for is very meek and very trainable. I think that she will pick up on it very quickly - but of course, you never know.

I've traded emails with some representatives of the SportDog equipment. They said the controller should be kept inside and above freezing, so I guess I will have to put the transmitter in the house and run twisted pair wire to the boundary.

Is anybody aware of a different brand of controller/transmitter besides SportDog that does 100 acres?

Again, thanks for the advice.

Good luck and take care.

 

[LD1]

I have a innotek SD2100. I just looked and it says it only does 25 acres. But pet fence wire is usually 20ga anyway.

With 10ga wire, I dont see it being a problem, but dont know for sure. As mentioned, it just sends out a radio signal. So I am not sure where or how they come up with their acreage limitations.

You have more limited selection in systems wanting to contain 100 acres. I bought the SD2100 mainly for the collars. Waterproof, wireless recharge, and batteries that last several months before needing a recharge. Too many other systems took replaceable AA or AAA batteries, or ones that you had to take batteries out of, or were only water "Resistant", etc. So I basically shopped for the best collar I could get, and got the system that came with it.

For your case, its expensive but for 100 acres, I'd look into invisible fence's GPS2.0. It looks good in theory. Basically a GPS collar on the dog, and programmed with points that outline your property. NO wires. With GPS everything these days, I am surprised these arent more common and offered my more companies, possibly in a more DIY friendly package. Cause I think invisible fence is the ones that program the collar to whatever area you want.

Again, I havent looked into the GPS ones much. But I'd want to know if the homeowner can make changes to the boundary, how long the collar batteries last (constantly having to track GPS), etc. But may be worth a look for you

 

[NoTrespassing]

Thanks for the advice and opinions.

I've looked into the wireless or broadcast system, and all of the ones that I have found have a relatively small containment area.

I would love to have a dog-proof fence to enclose 100 acres, but I have enough trouble trying to keep a cow-proof one up

I've got 10,000 ft. of 12 gauge wire that is on hand that I don't have any other plans for, so that is what I'm hoping to use with the system as far as the perimeter lines go.

Again, about 99% of the wire will be attached to existing wire (either woven wire or barbed wire). Most of my fences are 5 strand barbed wire. I plan to attach it to the middle strand. In all of the times that I've had to fix fences (which is a lot), most of the breaks are either the top 2 from deer jumping over them or the bottom two from smaller animals running through them.

Of course, I will have breaks that I will have to track down, but I just assume that will be part of it. If it becomes too difficult, then I may shrink the size of the containment area.

The dog that we are getting it for is very meek and very trainable. I think that she will pick up on it very quickly - but of course, you never know.

I've traded emails with some representatives of the SportDog equipment. They said the controller should be kept inside and above freezing, so I guess I will have to put the transmitter in the house and run twisted pair wire to the boundary.

Is anybody aware of a different brand of controller/transmitter besides SportDog that does 100 acres?

Again, thanks for the advice.

Good luck and take care.

Both ours and our neighbors control units are outside in unheated buildings (sportdog). It's been down to -10F here a couple times since they were installed several years ago. They're still working and so are the all the collars.

Kevin

 

[rtimgray]

As far as temperature goes, the SportDog rep said that they wouldn't guarantee that they units would work in below freezing temperatures. They said it wouldn't damage the unit, it just might not work or work well when it gets below freezing. They said that when the temperature returns to above freezing, it would work normally. The difference for me is that it's going to be about a 400' run to get to the perimeter in an unheated building vs. a 600' run from the house, so the 200' really isn't that big of a deal to make sure that it works as well as it can.

We have a GPS tracker (Whistle) on the dog right now, which is how we discovered that she is traveling so far away (had to go pick her up a couple of days ago because she appeared to be lost or stuck - she was in the same place for about 3 hours, and that was unusual for her).

Thanks again.

Good luck and take care.

 

[TractorGuy]

I've traded emails with some representatives of the SportDog equipment. They said the controller should be kept inside and above freezing, so I guess I will have to put the transmitter in the house and run twisted pair wire to the boundary.

Sorry to repeat myself but these things can be a lightning rod. If you put the controller inside make sure it isn't facing anything it can damage if it explodes. The one I had mounted in my garage landed 12 feet from the wall in a charred glob. The GFI outlet it was plugged into was also blown completely out of the wall. The lightning strike originated at a tree on my neighbors property and ran to ground along my invisible fence wire and into my home to the controller.

Just saying.

 

[Zerk]

Thanks for the advice and opinions.

I've looked into the wireless or broadcast system, and all of the ones that I have found have a relatively small containment area.

I would love to have a dog-proof fence to enclose 100 acres, but I have enough trouble trying to keep a cow-proof one up

.

I've been lucky, my dogs are not as hard on it as a cow. My german shepherd doesn't really try to get out. Neighbors left there dog in there once, and didn't stay with it and it started pulling apart chain link gate. But my dogs have always gone in there, it is not a foreign place to them.


I don't know anything about wireless. I would think the problem would be lack of clear boundaries. A buried invisible fence I would think would give that. But then you are burying a the line.

I only did about 3/4 of an acre. Plenty of room. Plus can still keep an eye on them. I have my doubts you will have 100 acre wireless fence anyways.

How do you know if the wireless or buried fences work? When your dog is gone? Though in theory once he learns it, he would not know its off. As opposed to tree falling on my fence.

 

[LD1]

I have my doubts you will have 100 acre wireless fence anyways.

The WiFi based ones....no. I had one at one time and it didnt work well. The other issue is its basically a circular pattern. How many of us have circular shaped properties?

The GPS tech I think is where the future is gonna be at. I have a vision (or maybe hope) that in the near future we can simply pull up an ap on the phone or computer that will display a google earth type image. And you simply draw an outline on the screen. Upload that data to the collar and you are set. All GPS based.

 

[scdeerslayer]

The GPS tech I think is where the future is gonna be at. I have a vision (or maybe hope) that in the near future we can simply pull up an ap on the phone or computer that will display a google earth type image. And you simply draw an outline on the screen. Upload that data to the collar and you are set. All GPS based.

I would certainly think that should be possible if it's not already available. I did that with equipment tracking gps software 10 years ago. You setup a geofence around the job site and it would alert you if the equipment left the geofence. Granted the gps device just transmitted the data over the cellular network and a computer did the processing, but we should be leaps and bounds ahead of where we were 10 years ago.

The problem would be as mentioned earlier the battery capacity for such a device in a dog collar. I think for simplicity and extended battery life that the upload to the collar should be through USB or saved to a micro sd card instead of any sort of wireless interface.

Aren't there GPS tracking collars now? They're probably only designed for hours of continuous use instead of days/weeks though.

 

[Sprinklerman]

You can use your wire , its only an antenna broadcasting a signal . breaks can be found with an am radio , I believe you tune it to the low end of the frequency . You will need lots of flags , the dogs see the flags as the boundry . After a while you take them down .

Installation , I would bury it . Find someone local with a vibratory plow ( irrigation guys or cable tv ) With a shute blade they can lay the wire 6 inches deep , and if its open and not a lot of large roots , no steep hills , it could be done in 1/2 a day . The machine will lay wire at an average mans walking pace .

 

[rtimgray]

The GPS tracker that we have on the dog right now (well, on her collar) will go about 2 weeks on it's rechargeable battery IF you don't track her much. We were also tinkering around with it right after we got it and if you tried continuous tracking, you could run the battery down in about a day. I've been very satisfied with the tracker, although sometimes in heavy woods it will lose connectivity.

There's no practical way for me to bury most of the wire, unless digging by hand, because a lot of the boundary fences are through pretty thick woods. There's far to many trees, ditches, roots, rocks, etc. I only plan to bury where gates are.

I figure that if the barbed wire isn't breaking, the invisible fence wire attached to it won't either (and yes, of course there will be breaks sooner or later when a tree falls or something similar).

I'm planning on using flagging tape to mark the fences, and I figure the fences themselves will be something that she can recognize as a boundary. The problem will be for a while is that there will be fences that she can cross through (interior fences) and fences that will give the correction (boundary fences). We use flagging tape on our temporary electric fences that we set up for our cows in the summer, and Molly has been shocked by that before, so she already stays away from fences with flagging tape.

Thanks again.

Good luck and take care.