Building a fence for the dog

[demoman357]

I have 5 german shepards, 2 of which are real diggers. I did not wish to fence my entire place due to the expense. I used a buried wire dog fence with collars. It does work very well. We have two collars that we rotate between them. Only one old dog gets to stay out all the time to keep deer and raccoon out of the garden. The rest of the dogs are kept in a 1/3 acre pen of 48 inch tall welded wire at night and when we are away. Those dogs can easily jump over the four foot fence and can dig under it. Once we discovered we had diggers, we put a hot wire about 4 inches off the ground. It only takes them about two nights to figure it out. No more digging. The dogs think the hot wire is part of the fence and do not attempt to jump. The OP mentioned containment of children as one function of the fence. A hot wire on the inside may not be best for this. Even a hot wire on top can still be of concern with children. One thing I have learned about the dogs is that they can tell when the wire is hot and when it is not. Perhaps if you were to run a bottom hot wire on the inside for a short period of time to get the dogs used to it, then move the same wire to the outside. The dogs may still respect the sound and the smell of the energized wire and will not dig but it is there to keep the outside vermin outside.

Buried fence in the ground ALWAYS rusts away to nothing. The time it takes may be longer based on some criteria, but it will happen. Stacking head sized rocks all along the inside of the fence will work against digging dogs but may be a lot of work unless you use machinery. This has the added benefit of keeping the weeds down along the fence line if you use a herbicide, and plastic under the rocks. It can look cool as well.

 

[riptides]

I had a long battle with my dogs. Two German Sheppard mixes. 150 and 120 pounds now.

Originally we had a 60X200 foot area with chicken wire and heavy brush along the perimeter that were kept in. They soon managed to start digging under, and hopping over the chicken wire. I might say the were exercised and run four to five time a day.

We finally constructed another 30X100 chain link 8 foot high pen that had a 30X12 concrete slab that the fence abutted. On top of the concrete we bought 3 10X10 dog pens, chain link again and opened them to the new run.

To make the story short, these dogs managed to dig under the chain link fence.
This made me trench under chain link and place 4 foot of field fence attached to the chain, and anchored in the ground. On top of that we anchored 4X4 landscaping timbers and rebared them into the ground.

The dogs then returned their attention to the dog pens. Since they were on concrete, the dogs basically exerted their force on the chain link, collapsing the poles and unraveling the chain.

I ran field fence inside the chain link, the entire perimeter.

If I had researched dog pens a little more, I would have done the welded route. And trenched before assembly.

Oh, the dogs have settled down quite a bit. The have not attempted to dig, but they still test the field fence, chain link combo in spots.