Anyone here use an "invisible fence", or a GPS "fence", for their dogs?

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ProjectBazza

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Normally our dogs stay in our (their) yard, and we never let them out unsupervised, but yesterday afternoon one of them completely disregarded our commands, bolted across across the street and, completely unprovoked, started a fight with another dog.

Right now we're weighing our options for the dog, and amongst many others, we're looking into the "invisible fence" thing. Does anyone here have it, and if so, any thoughts you'd care to share? Our biggest fear is that if the dog was running "all out" and crossed that "invisible line" fast enough the beep, or alarm, or shock, would shut-off eventually.

I also ran across a "GPS collar" last night, but I've never heard of that before so I'm not sure what to think or how that works, either.

I've had over a dozen dogs in my life, but I've never had one be the aggressor, so we're not sure how to proceed here.

Thanks, all.
 
We had one for our black lab, worked great. EXCEPT in winter, the snow "raises " the collar further away from the wire. I was wondering how Rufus kept getting out. Called tech and asked if we got snow, that was the issue. Keep snow low and get biggest collar you can. I have leftovers if you're interested? No collar, but I got the plug in "amplifier".
 
Well it's a good thing we don't get snow here! (Or at least not this year, at any rate....) :rolleyes:

I wasn't aware that could be an issue, and it's good info to have. Thank you!
 
The only problem I've seen with the invisible fencing is that you pet is trapped. If another pet comes into your (their) yard, your pet is trapped by the fencing. This happen to our nephew and the vet bill was quite costly.
 
The only problem I've seen with the invisible fencing is that you pet is trapped. If another pet comes into your (their) yard, your pet is trapped by the fencing. This happen to our nephew and the vet bill was quite costly.
I hadn't though of that, thank you.

And unfortunately we became intimately familiar with costly vet bills yesterday afternoon, as our dog weighs 55 pounds, and the other dog weighs only 7.
 
I have had the invisible fence it worked well as long as everything outside is friendly. More than once my pet would just bolt across the fence to defend what he sees as an infringement on his turf. I cannot see the fence giving the shock needed in the seconds it took it to shoot across the fence. I use an ET-300 remote dog trainer, as much needed and useful tool especially if you have a LARGE dog. Plenty of power settings, along with buzzer and or lights to let your pet know he is getting close to a zap.
 
I have had the invisible fence it worked well as long as everything outside is friendly. More than once my pet would just bolt across the fence to defend what he sees as an infringement on his turf. I cannot see the fence giving the shock needed in the seconds it took it to shoot across the fence. I use an ET-300 remote dog trainer, as much needed and useful tool especially if you have a LARGE dog. Plenty of power settings, along with buzzer and or lights to let your pet know he is getting close to a zap.
Thank you! That's exactly what I'm afraid of- the dog zipping across the line really fast to get at "whatever".

We (or rather, the dogs) do have "training collars", and for the most part they work pretty well, but yesterday my wife couldn't get the controller out of her packet fast enough (I was in the house), the result being rather ugly. And expensive.

I've been calling "Behavioural Specialists" this morning, and so far all they want to do is prescribe a medication of some sort.
 
Never went the invisible route. I fenced in a good size portion of my back yard. About a third of an acre. Put it in my self. Cost was only materials. This area is the ONLY time he is not on a leash..!! Best method I know of…Sorry to here of your situation. It isn’t an easy solution no matter what..Swingn’
 
Normally our dogs stay in our (their) yard, and we never let them out unsupervised, but yesterday afternoon one of them completely disregarded our commands, bolted across across the street and, completely unprovoked, started a fight with another dog.

Right now we're weighing our options for the dog, and amongst many others, we're looking into the "invisible fence" thing. Does anyone here have it, and if so, any thoughts you'd care to share? Our biggest fear is that if the dog was running "all out" and crossed that "invisible line" fast enough the beep, or alarm, or shock, would shut-off eventually.

I also ran across a "GPS collar" last night, but I've never heard of that before so I'm not sure what to think or how that works, either.

I've had over a dozen dogs in my life, but I've never had one be the aggressor, so we're not sure how to proceed here.

Thanks, all.

Scold him immediately, then keep him in the house and don't let him go unleashed for a while (A week or two or three...) Take away some of his privileges...

Meanwhile let the one who behaves go out unleashed to teach the other one that freedom has responsibility, if he can't handle the responsibility he can't go unleashed and run around like the other one...

Especially if the 'good' one is out unleashed while he has to be on a leash, that'll make him think about it.... Keep rubbing it in to get the point across... "He gets to go off leash because he behaves, you don't because you can't behave"...
 
We had one for our black lab, worked great. EXCEPT in winter, the snow "raises " the collar further away from the wire. I was wondering how Rufus kept getting out. Called tech and asked if we got snow, that was the issue. Keep snow low and get biggest collar you can. I have leftovers if you're interested? No collar, but I got the plug in "amplifier".
Interesting, I had a black lab named Rufus too!
I have always kept my dogs in a fenced yard, except for the cottage property we had where they were never out unsupervised. I have often wondered how effective the electronic 'fences' are.
Following.
 
Yeah Rufus seemed like a perfect name for him and black lab. Also as a kid dad had a shepherd mutt mix guard dog named Rastas lol.
Interesting, I had a black lab named Rufus too!
I have always kept my dogs in a fenced yard, except for the cottage property we had where they were never out unsupervised. I have often wondered how effective the electronic 'fences' are.
Following.
 
It did a great job keeping my ex in the basement.. what oh wait... what basement... :)

Rastas what you like bestest.... I like *** bestus

Tip your wait staff.

A buddy tried to test a bark collar like that.
 
Normally our dogs stay in our (their) yard, and we never let them out unsupervised, but yesterday afternoon one of them completely disregarded our commands, bolted across across the street and, completely unprovoked, started a fight with another dog.

Right now we're weighing our options for the dog, and amongst many others, we're looking into the "invisible fence" thing. Does anyone here have it, and if so, any thoughts you'd care to share? Our biggest fear is that if the dog was running "all out" and crossed that "invisible line" fast enough the beep, or alarm, or shock, would shut-off eventually.

I also ran across a "GPS collar" last night, but I've never heard of that before so I'm not sure what to think or how that works, either.

I've had over a dozen dogs in my life, but I've never had one be the aggressor, so we're not sure how to proceed here.

Thanks, all.
The wife and I have 3 dogs, all of them have a collar with GPS tracking and an available phone app to locate them.
This is because one of ours gets curious and likes to explore. Part of it is chasing squirrels that pass through the yard. As they scurry out, Pebbles likes to chase them...
PB 23.JPG


Here she is stalking one in the tree...

Pebbles tree.jpg


Twice she got out and we tracked her. She went out to the busy road behind the property and was picked up by motorists. She had a collar with our phone numbers on it but the "good samaritans" ignored it. One we tracked to a store where she was inside buying dog food and a leash. She played it off like she was trying to help but our dog clearly had a collar with a tag on it with 2 phone numbers to call. The look on her face when I came up to her was priceless...

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I don't trust these electric doodads. I trust a real fence more than I would trust something that would fail when the power goes out.
Also, as another mentioned, what's to stop another dog from entering your property?

1741066722699.png
 
It did a great job keeping my ex in the basement.. what oh wait... what basement... :)

Rastas what you like bestest.... I like *** bestus

Tip your wait staff.

A buddy tried to test a bark collar like that.
I knew a guy many years ago whose wife was a real looker and loved to throw that stuff around. He came home early one day and there she was in the bedroom with one of his friends. He ran the guy off and then CHAINED her to a big tree in the front yard. Kept her out there like a week. They lived way out in south Bibb county in the boonies, so he was able to get away with it. He was one crazy dude.
 
I don't trust these electric doodads. I trust a real fence more than I would trust something that would fail when the power goes out.
Also, as another mentioned, what's to stop another dog from entering your property?

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I have a 4' chain link fence here in FL around the whole double lot property.

It helps to keep wandering dogs out and off of my property, there are times I have had to go out and close my double gate to keep them out.

2 dogs on the loose teamed up and ripped the neighbor's pet cat to shreds. Finally animal services came out and took the 2 dogs away.

Been pretty quiet now since that last episode, and no more dogs out freely wondering around on their own, and no more random barking out of nowhere.

I do not own a dog, or a cat for that matter.


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A good kick in the short hairs usually works...but sadly that is usually after the first time which can be costly. We have a 1-year-old German Short Hair female runt of the litter. She is nonstop balls to the wall until she finally just can't go anymore. Other than typical discipline we give her store-bought calming treats in the evening. We take her to the local fenced in ball diamond and throw her a frisbee until either she or I get tired. ME! As far as our yard we bought her a body harness and ran a coated cable from the back door of our house to our barn, It's a couple hundred feet. Then we put a 20-foot cable on Georgia's harness and clip it on the long run. As long as you don't have crap in the way for entanglements this is relatively inexpensive, and she is cool with the setup.
 
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I had a Chow that would never go out of the yard. Showed her where the boundary was and she was content to stay in the yard. Our Lab/boarder collie mix on the other hand needed some encouragement to stay in the yard so we got and electric fence. That worked well for him unless the collar battery went dead. After that incident we got one that had an led that would light up on the collar when the battery was getting low. The neighbors dog though figured out it was worth the quick zap to chase after the deer in the woods.
 
Electric fence works great for keeping our 5 dogs in our property, they have tons of space to roam, chase rodents, and play but don’t run off anymore.

Dig a trench, laid the wire and connected it all in 1 day.

They have about 3 acres (circled in red) to run around and be buttholes, if I could only keep them from digging holes all in the grass now.

IMG_0309.jpeg
 
Edit: sorry for the long post. If you scroll to the bottom I left a short cliff notes version.


Back in 2006-2007 I went up into the woods to ride my dirt bike. Not far from where I parked just rolling down the fire road heading home I saw something with a dirty white color in the ditch.

You see all kinds of junk thrown away. It could have been a small mattress or something.

When I got close I could see it was a big, white husky dog. And he was in distress. I pulled over and went up to him. He was scared to death. Other people had just driven by him and then some stopped and said he’s going to bite you. Leave him be.

Of course he would have died. So I grabbed half my sammich and a bottle of water and I got on the ground and slowly crawled up to him. He was pretty old.

Once we got cozied up, I started feeding him. Then he had a drink. We were now buddies. He was exhausted. About that time my brother drove up. The dog had a tag on him.

His name was Kaos. And a phone number. I had no cell service and I figured it would be a bit before I attempted to help him up into my truck.

So my brother took off and headed for some cell service to call the number.

After another 20 minutes and some more snacks I got him out of the ditch and moving a bit. I gave him a few more minutes and I lifted him into the truck.

I had no clue if he was dumped or what happened. I felt I had a 50/50 chance I’d have to keep him.

So I swung by the store, bought a leash, food and water bowls and some food.

Back at home I fed him and we kind of settled in. About two hours later I get a call from the owners.

They were absolutely sick that their boy was missing. I wasn’t sure I bought the story but I gave them my address and a half an hour later they pulled up.

I opened the door and he looked but didn’t see them yet. Once he caught a glimpse of his mom, who was bawling like a baby he ran right to them. You could tell he was well loved.

So this is the upshot. When they got Kaos, they also got her sister. I forgot that dogs name. Anyway, they’d been together since birth. I found out he was almost 13 BTW.

Kaos had been missing for two full days and nights and was heading for his third night. I don’t think he would have survived another night.

Anyway, the short story is the day before he came up missing his sister died. And he was dead absolutely lost without her.

His eye sight wasn’t really bad but his hearing was real bad. He could hear but not very well.

These people lived right on the edge of the woods in the middle of nowhere. They had 20 acres. The yard was about an acre and they used one of those fence less systems.

When he got close to the fence and the collar would start beeping. If he got to close he’d get a shock. They surmised that in his missing his sister he got to looking for her, got close the fence, wasn’t paying attention and didn’t hear the warning beeps.

By the time he got shocked it scared the crap out of him and instead of backing out of the fence he charged through it and was gone.

After I found out where he lived, that dog had gone a full 20 miles from his house when I found him.

The TL;DR short version is I’d be careful about using a fence less system. It appears at least that one had a flaw.

And I know at least 5 cars had to pass him up before I got to him.

Here’s a big time major FU to all those disgusting jackasses that drove right past him and left him there to die.

That is inexcusable in my world and only SLIGHTLY less criminal than child abuse. So screw them all.
 
I don't tie my boy out. He roams on our land and quite honestly is far too lazy to go far. I had a pit bull that realized if he let the collar shock him it would time out at a point, and he would cross over the line. Never mind the nice hole it left in his neck.

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I don't tie my boy out. He roams on our land and quite honestly is far too lazy to go far. I had a pit bull that realized if he let the collar shock him it would time out at a point, and he would cross over the line. Never mind the nice hole it left in his neck.

View attachment 1716374633


Your pup is looking a tad bit skinny. You might want to give him a few extra treats to fill him out a skosh more.
 
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