Underground dog fence - looking for advice & tips

[wushaw]

JimR,
You may need to invest into some good huntin collars that will bring your pit to her knees, after a few hits on high you may be able to just use the fence collar as a dummy.

 

[JimR]

wushaw, That is a good idea. I'm afraid that the heavy shocking might turn her the other way though. The dog is now going on 5 years old and is just starting to become my best freind. She is a loner and a hard dog to do anything with. She's been like this since I got her as a puppy. I now have her where she will actually snuggle up to me. This is something she never would have considered doing before. I try to hang out with her, take her places and keep her with me when I'm working on the old farm. She now feels like she belongs here. I would hate to ruin all this work. I can live with taking her out on a run or leash.

 

[Sigarms]

Jim, I understand that each dog is unique (sp?), but we've used "training collars" on our fosters (dogs) and have had success with each one "controlling" thier behavior as far as how far they "wander" off the property.

Keep in mind, some collars also have a "beep" mode where you activate a "beep" sound instead of a shock. All of the dogs in a short time have learned that if we call and they don't come, we first "beep" them. At first of course they wouldn't come if we "beeped" them. Then them with a low setting "shock" and then work our way up to where we could see that the "shock" affected them and then they would come.
The dogs now know if they get a beep, if they don't come, a shock will follow.

Now, I will admit that the 85lb yellow lab needs the setting to be on maximum to get her attention.

We just feel that it's unfair for a "foster dog" to be on a leash all the time while our dogs roam free. After we see that they can handle a leash, we put a collar on them. Never had a problem or an adverse effect yet with any of them.

Nice thing to is that when we take them out at night, we can usually see where they are on the property by the flashing light that "blips" on the collar.

 

[JimR]

That type of collar would be the best for this dog. That way I could limit her travels. The dog just seems to have concern as to getting shocked. I even changed out the battery on her collar to a 6 volt and gave her quite a few double whammies. It had no effect on her other than to make her neck look like it was having a seizure, not even a yelp. I don't put her on the run and let the other dog romp. Both dogs are house dogs. They go out seperately or with me together.

 

[Sigarms]

Jim

www.sportdog.net

We use the sport hunter model. Nice thing about this unit is that you can buy an extra collar down the road if you have another dog and re program the unit so one receiver works with two collars (if you go this route, you don't have the "beep" mode available, you will shock each dog).

This may sound strange, but the dogs seem to know when they have the collar on. If I take one out at EARLY and just let them out without the collar, they take their time when I call for them to come in. If I take the time to put the collar on, when I call, they come back quickly. Makes you realize how smart dogs can be. Keep in mind, the dogs are always within eyesight of myself.

You do have to rechage the collars in an outlet, gotten in the habit where I rechage them every night.

 

[MadDog]

Maybe I'm missing something, but I haven't needed any "motivator" to get my dogs to come when they're outdoors and I call them.

The Lab usually comes bounding up right away with a stick (or log /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif ) in her mouth, hoping that my calling her means that I want to throw sticks for her.

The Newfie comes because he wants to sit down next to me and lean against my leg. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

At night, they come right away because they both figure it's time for the "end of the day" biscuit snack. ---yum, woof.

The only time that they are reluctant to come (and I still haven't figured out how they know this) is when I want to take them to the vet. -great reluctance and much submissive belly crawling and rolling over, then. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

Just proves that they aren't as dumb as they sometimes want me to think they are. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[JimR]

I'll send you my Pit/Golden mix and see what you can do with her. If she gets out and you call her, she stops, looks at you, then runs like **** the other way. She always comes back an hour or so later when she is tired and needs a place to lay down. /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

 

[Sigarms]

Usually the dogs are pretty good at staying on the property.

A couple of neighbors likes to throw food outside (along with some other trash) and the dogs can get wind of it and then its a bugger to get them back. Since the thrown food and trash is on the neighbors property, nothing we can do about it.

We also have about 30 head of cattle in the back pasture. Every once in a while the dogs decide to go play in cow chips or want to chase the cattle.

The beagle mix will also chase anything for hours at a time if left alone. Nothing wrong with this, just want to make sure she stays on our property.

If I have to "use" the collar, it averages about once a day (dogs taken out about 6 times a day, plus left in an outdoor run). Usually and most often they do listen and I never have to "use" the collar, just sometimes every once in awhile they get a bug up thier butt and will do whatever they want. Having the collar ensures that I can maintain control and keep them on my property.

 

[MadDog]

Last summer we had some rabbits that figured out that the dogs wouldn't cross the fence and liked to sit a couple of feet on the other side, muching on clover while the dogs woofed their heads off. I figure if the dogs won't cross the fence for hossenfeffer, they're a good bet to stay home.

 

[Tang]

I'm bringing this back to the top because I'm in the process of installing my invisible fence wire and need some guidance.

I have an Inivisible Fence brand system that we've owned for several years. We've moved it from one house to another and had Invisible Fence install the wire when we moved. We are in the process of moving to our dream place (10+ acres) and to save money I'm running the wire myself (covering 3-4 acres). I buried the perimeter wire last weekend and I'm going to try and finish things this weekend provided the rain stays away.

I need to run the twisted wire pair from the transmitter to the perimeter wire. I plan on using the same wire type that I used for the perimeter. Does anybody have any recommendations for how I go about twisting the two wires together? Any tips or techniques vs. doing it manually by hand one wire over the other? Anything that I need to know that I haven't considered already?

Thanks in advance, Shane.