Invisible dog fences?

[CRHS89]

What's your thoughts on them? Good idea or no? If yes, do-it-yourself or professional install?

 

[Ken King]

Don't they have the virtual fence now where you program the limits (GPS) and no need for the wire?

 

[Sneakers]

Depends on the dog and how strong headed they are. I know a few people that used them with good success, but others .... not so much. Once the dogs realized the limit of the shock, they could ignore it and charge right thru.

 

[LightRoasted]

For your consideration ...

As long as your dog doesn't have a strong prey drive, such as any dog classified as a working dog, (hounds and the like), and they work well.

 

[my-thyme]

Son had buried the wire himself, and it worked very well for his 3 German shepherds. They would stand right there and bark at us in the garden.

Or a delivery guy (delivery people HATED that).

Then a storm washed the wire out of the ground and he chopped it to pieces with the lawn mower.

Fence was there long enough that they still respect the boundary, except when we are in the garden, they come barreling over.

Haven't test on a delivery guy.




Yet.

 

[ontheriver]

Depends on the dog and how strong headed they are. I know a few people that used them with good success, but others .... not so much. Once the dogs realized the limit of the shock, they could ignore it and charge right thru.

Once my GSD realized it only stung for a second, it was over.

 

[Clem72]

Don't they have the virtual fence now where you program the limits (GPS) and no need for the wire?

They do, not so great for small parcels where 3 meters of accuracy might put your dog on your neighbors porch. They are also super expensive for the collar (one I was looking at was over $500 per collar).

There are also ones that work on distance-from-post system which might be the best if you have a good property for it. Can put the base station in your yard and program the distance they can wander from the base.

 

[USAFRetired]

We installed the Pet Safe for Stubborn dogs for our Olde English Sheep dog/Boxer mix dogs (70 lbs)
when they were puppies, they will not go past the perimeter. The training is the most important step, you need to work with them constantly the first week or two so they learn where they can go and what happens when they ignore the collar’s warning signal. Unfortunately the wire that comes with the kit is not very robust, I replaced all the underground wire with 16 gauge and no breakage since then. The collars use 9 volt batteries that last about a year.

 

[Clem72]

What's your thoughts on them? Good idea or no? If yes, do-it-yourself or professional install?

The only hard part of the DIY is trenching if you have to go through roots. If this isn't a concern, it's dead simple. The professional ones I have seen do have beefier cabling, but in my experience it doesn't make much difference in likelyhood to be damaged.

I have had to repair the professional installs for myself and friends/family often enough that I recommend DIY with a shallow depth (2" at most) so it's easy to locate and repair breaks.

And if you do need to find a break under the ground, the super cheapo cable-break locators ($20-30) work just fine, but you need to remember that the signal will absolutely radiate from one end of the fence cable to the other if they are run parallel when going into the base station, which is how professionally systems are often installed (connected until they exit the premises then they split). So I would recommend not running them together at all, or having an above ground accessible section right before they split for an easy to access area that is basically guaranteed be before the in-ground break, then you can cut one leg and then test down the other leg to find the in-ground break.