Electric perimeter dog wire.

Green Hornet

Bought and installed one of those electric perimeter wires for the dog at home today. She's a big boxer and was beginning to jump walls onto the road.

It really works!

The wire is laid and flags put up marking where the wire is. When the dog gets into the vicinity of a couple of feet of the wire she gets a beeping warning and a shock if she gets too close. After just one shock she stayed well away from the flags. I felt bad but it needed to be done.

Before any of the cruelty crowd get up on their high horse it is not cruel. The dog has almost an acre to roam around as she always did. The only difference is that she wont jump the walls and get onto the road where she might suffer an injury - and that would be cruel (or worse, cause an accident).

Anybody else using this device and how do you find it?

Sam Kade

Did you fence the perimeter of the acre? how much did it cost? As I have a dog that keeps straying to a neighbours house.

Green Hornet

Sam Kade wrote: »

Did you fence the perimeter of the acre? how much did it cost? As I have a dog that keeps straying to a neighbours house.

Yep. Did the entire thing. In fairness it is quite expensive but I think its worth it. The dog is great and loves playing. Very big dog.

Great for the folks at home who are getting on - she's not a huge fan of strangers............

Cost of the unit (cant remember the name but its in all the pet shops) was 299 Euro and you get 200M of wire. I needed to buy another 200M to get around the whole thing. The extra wire cost 30 Euro but that was at the pet shop. Probably get it for half that cost in an electrical supplier.

Sam Kade

Thank's for that, its expensive all right even more so to keep a sheepdog at home.

Alfasudcrazy

I use one too and like you had to wire up over an acre so needed more wire as well. It great and always works. I have two dobies and a collie and they never cross the line even if the collars are temporarily off them. Great peace of mind to know my dogs won't break out.

Prior to getting it they were already expert escaper's even as young puppies. :rolleyes: but the electric wire fence put a stop to it.

Green Hornet

Alfasudcrazy wrote: »

I use one too and like you had to wire up over an acre so needed more wire as well. It great and always works. I have two dobies and a collie and they never cross the line even if the collars are temporarily off them. Great peace of mind to know my dogs won't break out.

Prior to getting it they were already expert escaper's even as young puppies. :rolleyes: but the electric wire fence put a stop to it.

Yeah, I can already see how well it will work. How long does the battery last in the collar?

Its amazing how quick they learn. One shock and as soon as they hear the warning next time they back off. Really impressed. In fairness to the dog at home she was like a showhorse and was well able to negotiate walls and as you say they all find escape routes unless the whole area is fenced off.

peasant

We used to have one of those fences, but have since replaced it with a proper wire mesh fence.

The radio fence is not 100% reliable, don't get lulled into thinking it is.

Things to watch out for:

- electricity outages; no electricity, no fence
- weak battery on the collar
- wire breakages; ours got torn by growing roots, nawed by rodents and broken by tension (hot/cold)
- weak spots along the fence; where you have to go around corners / double up on the wire the field gets weak and the dog may just slip through. Also where the wire is too high/too low the dog may get over/under it. Close proximity to metal (existing fence/gate) can also weaken the field.

Our fella accepted the fence from day one and didn't rebel against it. Nonetheless in two years there were five occasions where I had to collect him from outside the fence. Any weakness in the fence and he'd have it sniffed out before I even knew about it.

Green Hornet

peasant wrote: »

We used to have one of those fences, but have since replaced it with a proper wire mesh fence.

The radio fence is not 100% reliable, don't get lulled into thinking it is.

Things to watch out for:

- electricity outages; no electricity, no fence
- weak battery on the collar
- wire breakages; ours got torn by growing roots, nawed by rodents and broken by tension (hot/cold)
- weak spots along the fence; where you have to go around corners / double up on the wire the field gets weak and the dog may just slip through. Also where the wire is too high/too low the dog may get over/under it. Close proximity to metal (existing fence/gate) can also weaken the field.

Our fella accepted the fence from day one and didn't rebel against it. Nonetheless in two years there were five occasions where I had to collect him from outside the fence. Any weakness in the fence and he'd have it sniffed out before I even knew about it.

Good points and taken on board. The folks live in the country and there's pretty big ditches on three sides and she rarely if ever bothers going out into the surrounding fields. I'm really only concerned about the road entrances and walls at the front and in fairness she does'nt stray out there much. She's young still and hopefully this will dissuade her so much now that she's young she will always be fearful of going near the road. Although, as you say, it will be important to do a check every now and again to ensure the wire, batteries etc. are still functioning properly.

Sigma Force

They wouldn't be my first port of call with fencing but a wee shock is certainly much less painful that getting hit by a car so I do think there is a place for them if there are no other options. Only thing is I think dogs can get a rash around their necks from the collar so it needs to be taken off now and then (although this might of been with older models). 299 isn't expensive compared with a chainlink fence. However in the long term a timber post and chainlink would be better

kerrysgold

you should really re-enforce it with a physical fence because as peasant said if the ESB fails then there's nothing to keep her in.
also, as for not liking strangers, as she is still young you need to work on socializing her to prevent aggression, boxers also need plenty of exercise, just walking around the garden isn't enough even if it is an acre.

muckety

We purchased this system for our 2 springers but it didn't work for us. Every now and again they would run the fence and go on a nice adventure! Then the male dog took to chewing the receiver (shock unit) off the collar of the female, and we lost 3 in a row. At 100 euro per receiver, we gave up and put in wire mesh.