Input/Advice on Underground fencing?

red1115

Since my beloved mischief twins have discovered the joy of escape and I've already dropped $400+ on reinforcing the fencing around the back 6acres, I'm wonder if anyone has had any luck with underground fencing?  I'm considering the Petsafe Stubborn Dog system ($249), but I'm hesitant.  In 20yrs of having Border Collies other highly intelligent breeds (read: outwitting their humans!), I've never had this escape issue - but Pippin (and partner in crime Roxy (TerrierX)) have a seemingly endless need to go play with the neighborhood children!

Now admittedly I am asking quite a bit of these two.  They're both in the height of their adolescence and testing their boundaries (LITERALLY as well as figuratively!).  They had to deal with my old dog Zero and even older cat passing away in just a few months, my work travel has increased and my husband deployed - so their home life and routine have been thrown into upheaval.  With that said, I've noticed a disturbing trend with their escapes - My wonderful in-laws have continued with their daily activities/walks/exercises when I travel, but the dogs don't escape while I'm away - they just do it when I'm home!  Even if I go out to dinner they won't escape the yard - they'll wait until I get back to run away from home!  (It's enough to give a dog mom a complex!) Not sure if it means anything but they always go to 1 of three specific houses - all with kids and dogs...Thankfully my neighbors are wonderful & constantly tell me "that's just what dogs do" but having MY dogs running around is just not acceptable - even in the country.

I find it interesting that when working livestock, both dogs are perfect off leash and I have no worries - but if I let them out back to do their business - they turn into prison escapees!!  It's as though they have spilt personalities between being awesome working dogs & crazy, pain-in-the-ass pets - I've never seen anything like it!

Any advice/insight or experience with underground fencing would be greatly appreciated.  Oh and BTW - they're spayed & neutered.  Thanks in advance!

kcgrl

Our neighbors have the underground wire and we have the wireless pet system. 

One of the labs next door would constantly bust the fence to chase the coons/coyotes - visit the cat and dog next door to them and so on. M had to turn their fence/collar on very high and he held blackie in until he got the point. Neither dog will leave the yard now. 

On that note, we were trying to adopt a husky from a husky/malamute rescue and they would not let us adopt with an underground fence. They said to me "Huskies quickly learn that after 1 bad jolt they are free."  I am not an expert but since I know how smart Collies are I wonder if they too would learn that trick. 

Our wireless system however was less expensive than the wire. It provides 180 diameter feet for our dogs to run. It is not as big as 1 acre but its enough for them to run their little hearts out. The main point that I'm making though is that the wireless systems shocks for 30 seconds once they have busted the barrier. Its not just 1 measly little shock and their free. 

RedheadBaker

The following is a post written by a regular on this board who has an invisible fence. 

you should NOT get invisible fence if:

-your dog will be outside when you are not around. Invisible fence keeps YOUR dog in the yard; it doesn't prevent other animals/people/etc from coming in and harassing your dog. If you expect your dog to EVER be outside w/o you nearby, get a conventional fence instead.

-you don't have the time to train your dog. Some people just put the shock collars on and expect the dog to understand the fence--and sometimes that works, but more often than not, it doesn't. (The dog has a 50-50 chance of going the WRONG way the first time he gets zapped, and then he'll be trapped OUTSIDE the yard)--for us, we have a VERY headstrong dog, so in December, in a foot of snow, we had to spend 3 weeks doing training sessions outside several times a day with our dog...and she didn't catch on in 3 weeks, so 6 weeks later, we were still doing training sessions...and 2 weeks after that, she "almost" knew it, and 2 weeks after that, she understood (and hasn't set paw outside her yard)--if you don't have the time/patience to REALLY train the dog, it may not work.

-if people are going to be scared of your dog because they don't understand he's restrained. (if you have a sidewalk running through your front yard, and you prevent the dog from reaching the sidewalk w/ the fence you have 2 potential problems, the first being that people who are nervous about dogs will not see the sign for inv. fence, and may report your dog as being unrestrained, and second that they can easily bother (accidentally even) your dog, but he can't get to them--you'd be amazed at the number of people who will not realize it's there and try to call a dog out of the fenced area to them, undermining all sorts of training!)

-if your dog has a high prey drive. Some dogs, especially those that fall into the sight hound and scent hounds (as well as some other breeds like huskies) can be extremely driven by prey. These dogs will see a small animal, etc, and will run through the shock to get out of the yard. However, once out, they won't run through the shock to get back in, and will be trapped out of the yard. Sometimes these breeds can be trained too, but you know how I said I doubled the training time for my dog? Expect to double it again, and accept that it may NEVER work

-a very "sensitive" dog may get scared. There are stories of dogs who received a few shocks and then refused to go outside because they were afraid of another shock, or they got nervous when their owner put them on leash, after the owner had allowed them to get the corrective shock the day before. If your dog is extremely sensitive to correction, you may have to be VERY careful to create the "correct" associations in training.

-if you have a long furred dog and you're not prepared to spend more $ on a collar than normal and/or trim fur on part of its neck. (Very furry dogs require longer pronged collars and/or the part of the neck where the prongs need to touch to be trimmed a lot)

-if you're very concerned about power outages (sounds silly, but my parent's house looses power about 3 x a week...so, inv. fence wouldn't be ideal for them)--and we got the alarm on our system, so it lets us know if the connection is broken, and/or the power is out in the system

---now, with all of that being said, for US, inv. fence has been WONDERFUL. Like I said, we had it put in during December, once our pup was already housebroken. (I would NOT put it in before the dog is housebroken, it can associate the correction received with going outside). We considered a lot of options. We found petsafe and innotek were the most common "install your own" system. And "invisible fence co", was the mot common installed system in our area.

After a lot of thought, we went w/ having inv. fence co install it for us, for a couple of reasons:

1) they offer training (and a guarantee w/ it). While DH and I are pretty handy w/ dog training, it was nice having a professional come, especially since our dog is very headstrong (so if she was unattainable to the fence, we would get our money back!)

2) The collars had a warranty. The collars are the most expensive part of the systems, and since my pup is VERY inclined to chew things, we could imagine having to pay another $300 because she ate the collar (which, BTW, she has NOT eaten, because we got the one w/ the warranty :-)

the first several weeks of training involved no shocks. Dawg's collar had plasticky/rubbery "guards" on them, so she only got the corrective "beep", no shock. After the weeks of retreat training (many extra weeks because she didn't catch on ), we finally removed the guard, put a "reducer" on the collar (which reduces the shock received, they allowed us many settings for the collar's strength, and they had us start w/ her receiving 20% of a normal shock) and allowed her to get shocked.

She got shocked about 4 times total. To this day. And she is perfect with the fence. She LOOOooves people and she will edge up TO the fence to see our neighbor, but will NOT cross it. she Looooves her Frisbees, but she will edge up to the fence and sit, looking sadly at the poorly thrown Frisbee, but will NOT cross the fence.

We have about 2 acres, and we didn't include the very front of the yard (we keep her well back from the road) or the very back of the yard (where the wild critters live, she doesn't need to bother them), and it cost us a bit under $1k. (about 1/3 the cost of fencing that area)

(after the inital cost, the cost was for the length of wire they had to run--which is why including the front yard = cheaper than back yard only because if we used the house as the 4th side of the fence, it meant they'd have to run 2x the amount of wire though the rest of it to complete the circuit.--this kinda shows it:

http://www.invisiblefence.co.uk/A%20wire%20is%20run%20around%20the%20boundaryht_files/image002.jpg

) 

and this offers some more/similar insight:
http://www.siberescue.com/Common/InvisibleFence/invisiblefence.html


and other links (not all of which I agree with, BTW): 

http://www.canismajor.com/dog/fences1.html

http://www.dogpatch.org/doginfo/invfence.html

http://www.k9care.com/Tip-ElectFence.htm

http://www.dogsinthenews.com/issues/0105/articles/010513b.htm

http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/rm_outdoors_fences_gates/ 

article/0,1797,HGTV_3757_1388825,00.html

 

red1115

Thank you sooo much for reposting that!  That is EXACTLY the kind of information I need from someone who obviously has the same type of dog personality in their household. (I was again struck w/ admiration and frustration at dog intellgence while patching the fence yesterday only to look up and find my pups sitting on the other side of the fence wagging their tails at me with smiles on their faces...ARGH!)

I'm still not all together convinced that an underground or wireless fence will keep the 2 pups in the yard 100%, but I think if I can restrict their "freetime movement" to about 1acre (as opposed to their current 6acres) I might be able to to at least watch and figure out their pattern & hopefully re-direct their escapee actions.  I've never used electrical shock while training my dogs over the years, but in this case it may prove to be what is needed as a deterrent to their risky behavior.

Thank you again!!

 

schumakr

I have no real advice here, but I do have a story that happened pretty recently. There was a dog in Fargo that got out of their yard because their invisible fence was not working. The owner had no idea the dog was out. Turns out the dog went to the river (which was close to their home), and went out on the ice. The dog broke through the ice and was hanging on only by his front paws. A passerby found the dog and called 911. A water rescue team was sent and they rescued the dog with no injuries other than the dog being extremely cold. They got really lucky the dog didn't fall all the way in the river.

 

After hearing this story the invisible fence thing would make me nervous.

jump*tunnel*climb*weave

Are they unattended while escaping? Your commet about dinner has me thinking it's that.

KatelynS07

jump*tunnel*climb*weave:

Are they unattended while escaping? Your commet about dinner has me thinking it's that.

Ditto. Ours would jump the fence in a heartbeat if we weren't out there to supervise them.

 

It sucks to go out with them every time they have to potty, but I'd much rather do that than have them escape.