Saturday the neighbor stopped by and said, “Is your beagle home?” Â we said-“She’s not in the house but she’s around the yard somewhere”. Â WRONG. Â Ruby was up to his house!!!! Â UGH. Â If we were living in town that wouldn’t be good but not nearly as bad as this…the neighbor lives a mile away!!
Well off we went to find her. Â With the help of the neighbor we looked and search and circled and hunted. Â We couldn’t find her so we went home. Â Guess who was sitting on the steps waiting for us…Ruby. Â I was glad she was there but in the last 6 months she has taken off three times. Â The other two times involved visiting dogs but this time there was no denying it. Â Ruby did it all on her own and it was time for us to do something about it before she got hurt.
That lead me to searching for invisible fencing and before I went to bed that night I had ordered PetSafe Wireless Pet Containment System, PIF-300
I had done a little shopping and comparing before and had almost bought one of these when she gallivanted off last time. Â After some discussion with Hubby and reading the reviews to him, we both thought this one might be best.
It sounded pretty neat. Â Supposedly we plug in the unit and dog can’t go past the radius we set. Â This model will go up to 90 feet in radius meaning ninety feet in any direction of the unit. Â The things I liked about it included that we can easily move it from house to house. Â We don’t bury and wires. Â If we went to visit family in Minnesota we could take this with and it would work there as long as we had the collar with too. Â We could purchase extra collars for extra dogs. Â Once we move to town the unit can go with us and all the extra work it takes is to reset flags up again so she can initially see the boundaries. Â By then she’ll be used to the beep before the correction and doubt we’ll even need to do that. Â The problem…the expense…
Well the UPS man delivered it Tuesday afternoon and being Kalissa was home I made asked her to help me. Â She did but we really weren’t happy with the results. Â It seemed a little inconsistent. Â Then Craig got off work and came over. Â He offered to READ THE INSTRUCTIONS Â (we had only kind of read them) and FOLLOW the directions (we had only sorta followed them). Â Well after that it has worked.
We practiced a couple times with Ruby and I can say so far, (now that we read the directions) it works really well.
Ruby did end up getting a correction yesterday as while we were practicing a cat ran across the yard and she tried to chase it..but other than that, it was pretty event free. Â Ruby is a little mopey. Â She’s not quite her cheerful self when we are outside either but I think this will all get a little better as time goes on.
I do have to say that since she ran I have been a much more attentive pet owner. Â We’ve been walking more. Â I’ve been playing fetch more. Â I love Ruby lots but I had let that lapse a bit. Â I’ve been on track since Sunday though….and I can see that Ruby is appreciating my efforts.
I’ll do an update on the wireless fencing unit next week and let you know how things are going.
2 of our kids had some kind of invisible fencing and collars for their dogs and they worked wonderful. One dog doesn’t always have his collar on but doesn’t leave the yard.
I saw a fascinating piece on TV about this – a family had a collar on a small dog … they lived in the mountains. A coyote came into the yard and grabbed the dog and tried to take him away – but when they crossed the fence line, the “correction” jolted the coyote into dropping the dog and running away. And the little dog was safe because the collar under his throat had saved him from the cayote’s bite… amazing, huh? Who could have expected that drama? Lucky little doggie.
I will be awaiting that review on the ‘fence’ – I have him-hawed about getting one for months, the cost has kept me from doing it – that, and our property is bigger than the 90’radius and I hate the thought she would be denied some parts of our property. We have a 6 month old St.Bernard puppy and she is pretty good about staying home, but sometimes she wonders to the neighbors (which is close since we are in town), but what really bugs me is if someone walks by, she will try to walk with them (she is SUPER social, loves everybody), and it would be SO easy for someone to steal her if we weren’t paying attention. (We had a dog stolen here once, don’t want that again!)
We had a wireless fence system exactly like this for our dogs. We live in the country and it worked great. Our dogs enjoyed the freedom of being able to roam and play in the yard together. My brother-in- law got one and he lives in town and he said it did not work well in town due to the different boundry radiuses did not match up well with his property. I would recommend that you try it out also on your property in town to make sure it will work well there too. It may be ok on your property as you have the double lot.
We also live in a rural area with a 160lb Tuxedo Great Dane. Fence gives him a large area to roam , run, and play. People and animals skirt the edge of property. Not wanting to engage him. He learned his area very quickly and has never passed it. Perfect solution for him and us.
Knew someone who tried the invisible fence system. Worked great until the little stink bug learned that if he ran really fast he could make it past the fence. Go figure.
I rescued two dogs a long time ago that were under this kind of system. It took some doing to locate the owners because all they had were vaccination tags on them along with the electrical thingamijigs on their collars. Apparently, these dogs would blast through the system because they were determined to get to wherever they wanted to go. The owners were going to put up a real fence to solve the problem. So, until you know for sure your dog will not cross the invisible fence, be vigilant.
We’ve had both the PetSafe wireless and wired systems (we call it the “zappy collar”). We had the wired one first because we lived in town with a long, narrow lot, so the radius thing wasn’t going to keep the dog off the street. It worked well for several months, then we had a power surge and forgot to reset the unit – he didn’t get zapped – and before long he’d try to get past the buried wire. He’d take a long run then jump – jerking and yelping as he sailed over the wire. When we moved out of town, we upgraded to the wireless system and it worked MUCH better. With that he’d be zapped until he came back within the radius. After 2 months, he knew the boundaries and hasn’t tried to push them. It’s been 6 years since we moved and our dog rarely is found on the road. Now we use the collar more like grounding – if one of the dogs is on the road, he gets the collar for a few days to remind him of the limits then the collar is put away. I don’t think either dog has needed the collar in a year or so though. We did find that with our short-haired dog, the collar prongs irritated his skin if we didn’t take it off every night when the dogs came inside. We’ve taken the system when visiting relatives to help the dogs know their limits, all to a good outcome. We live in the country, close to a highway and the dogs are outside dogs – we want them to be safe and it’s worked for us.