We have a Collie mix who is a "runner"- given the opportunity (an open door, an open gate), she is gone, and there is nothing you can do to break through to her to get her to stop her running off at top speed. And she likes to play in traffic. We've had her about 4 years and this sort of escape has happened 2-3 times. The only way we got her back is that she is well-tagged, and nice people happened to find her eventually and call us to go get her.
We've always lived in town, but we just recently purchased a 5 acre, more rural, property. We would love to make most of the property accessible to her and are thinking that the buried electric fence/collar might be the way to go. I would love to hear your experience with how well it actually works, if you recommend professional installation, how to make sure it's maintained correctly, etc. Also, this may sound silly, but she has the typical Collie "mane" around her neck, so I'm not sure she'd even feel the electric pulse through all that fur?
How often does it go dead? Mine has been working since Nov nearly every day and I haven't changed the battery once. It needs checking again, I think, but I have to find the tool for it because I am not testing it on myself!
With ours you can hear it (the shocks too, not just the beeps - they make a clicking sound) if you're holding it and walk near the perimeter, no need to hold it on your arm... though I have done that once, just to feel what I'm doing to my dog!
It's been a little while since we've changed the battery now, but when she was younger I'd say we'd have to change it roughly every two months.
Mine only clicks when it's got something conductive touching it so it arcs. It beeps but you can barely hear THAT too... Mine is fully waterproof, meaning that in theory my dog could go swimming wearing it and there would be no problem.
I had an escaping dog 2 months after getting it and found that for some reason the fence was not working... possibly water in the joins, they aren't joined properly (just with some insulating tape) because the proper joiner thingies are really expensive. We took the tape off and re-taped them and then it was fine.
We wondered if there was something wrong with the fence, but our second dog (who's about as smart as a potato) wasn't having any problem with hers. We tried switching collars, too (in case there was something wrong with the collar) - and same thing. Potato's collar stayed fine for months and Runner's went dead in a matter of weeks.
Our thick one can't for the life of her figure it out! The smart one knows the rules of the fence but the dumb one just isn't getting it.
I need to put a collar on my long haired dog too but I've lost the long contact points.
Ohhh that's another thing, are the contact points on Runner's collar actually touching her skin? They don't work if they're only touching fur, so they don't really work that well for dogs with thick fur unless you clip them around the neck. The collar does turn so it needs to be all the way around.
We did try shaving her neck, but it didn't seem to make a difference. Since Runner (her actual name is Pepper) is a husky x she does have a thick under coat, but so long as we use the long-hair prongs it seems to be touching. I have seen her test the border and turn back pretty quick so it does appear to be working. I've mentioned she seems to have mellowed in the past year or two; if she got bad again then we'd probably try shaving again.
Hi all, just a quick update. We are now working with a trainer on basic obedience stuff, with a goal of moving into some agility work. Our runner, Delia, has surprised us with her "trainability," and though I don't think we're ever going to trust her to roam on her own, I do think that we are going to be able to work on her "come" and "stay" commands to get to the point that we feel confident we will be able to successfully call her back should she accidentally get out. Next week we move on to work with the 50 foot leash, so it will be her first real test of listening to our commands when she has more freedom and distractions.
I'm so glad this thread has been helpful for other people to compare notes on strategies. For what it's worth, our trainer didn't think the electric fence would be that useful for Delia, because as a collie mix she has the thick neck fur.
-NEVER put it around your neck and run across the line with your drunk friends.
-NEVER forget to take the collar off your dog while you are driving out of the yard.
-Remember: once they are over that fence line, they are not coming back over themselves Posted via Mobile Device
We have the buried fence for our dog. We trained her on it at about 4 mos old and she was great-only got out once or twice that first year and that was it. BUT this year at around 4.5 yrs old, she suddenly went over the boundary-probably was chasing a critter of some kind. We had no idea she would do it-she had never even tried before other than the couple of times at the very beginning. She got hit by a car on the highway and thankfully, is fine now, but it was scary. She stayed at the vet for about 4 days and at first, we weren't sure if she would live. Now she is confined to the part of the yard with a regular fence and goes out (still with the radio collar on) only if we're right there to keep an eye on her. Luckily we have a big fenced yard but she gets bored because she used to have 10 acres to explore in. Now it might be about half an acre.
The thing I don't like about the wireless and radio fences it that they don't keep other dogs OUT of your dog's area. We have big dogs and just didn't want to deal with someone else's dog deciding to be bulletproof and picking a fight with one of ours. To be on the safe side, we fenced 2 acres for our 12 dogs conventionally.
That's part of why we used non-climb wire fence around our whole yard - both to keep our dogs in (I think I had mentioned earlier that we use both a conventional fence and a wireless radio fence, the radio fence keeps her from digging under the conventional fence) and other dogs/skunks/foxes/(am I evil if I mention neighbour children? :twisted OUT!
Also... TWELVE dogs? And I thought we had a lot of pets! :lol:
Yep, 12. A boxer, german sheperd, german sheperd mix, puggle, 4 minature dachshunds and 4 pit bulls. They have plenty of room to run and love their yard. One of the pits is my service dog as well.
Where we live, people tend to dump dogs and cats, so we have a zoo around here.
Good on ya for taking them in! We don't have a lot of dogs dumped here but cats are a real problem. All three of our cats were left at my husband's farm... city people seem to think that farm cats are happy cats. If the machinery and diseases don't kill them, the feral cats do... if we took in all of them, we'd need a bigger house!
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