invisible dog fence

i'm guessing she is looking at the Pet Safe system? i dont know how many are out there but thats the company i went with... stubborn dog system(i have American Bulldogs and a German Shepherd), paid extra for the above ground instalation ... wish i hadnt. not because it doesnt work but because..... its easy to install without paying extra lol
i made my own pegs to lay the wire down in some areas... just bent some wire coat hangers and bang! its done! grass grows over the top of it. just be sure the wire IS flush to the ground and tight from peg to peg 

 though i will say this.... we have had to repair it a few times because it CAN get damaged if not done right... but its no big deal to patch.. depending on the size of space lol our wires go through the woods..... so when we hear the alarm going off we check the heavy traffic areas first then the woods. most of our problems came from the lawn mower... the deck has a lean to it and the ground is uneven... so when the mower made a sweep it would sheer off a piece of the ground. in those areas we DID bury the wire.

Also i forget the type (my husband knows) but we used regular speaker wire instead of buying directly from the company when we expanded the yard. i forget how many hundreds of feet of wire we have.... a life time supply really lol

 i love the inground fence for the most part. no it doesnt keep other animals out of the yard.... and it may not ALWAYS keep yours in. the hardest part is training the dog. a lot of people give up on that....

i own bulldogs... supposedly stubborn dogs that are designed to take a lot of painful punishment... and it contains them on the lowest setting!! they hear the beep and they get back. heck, even if the collars off of them they dont cross the boundary.  

she's probably talking about the wireless version- the only drawback I see with the wireless version is you can't easily control the shape and size of the "safe zone" it's a circle. So you may end up with lots of wasted yard space. It's really not that big of a deal to lay the wire- like dumdog we only buried it in the few places where we actually mow lawn, the rest it's just lying there on the ground. It took us less than two hours to set up for a large property and most of that was testing where to put the flags in. We've had two wire breaks in um, seven years? once a tree fell on it and once some critter chewed it.

 we have the buried wire type and it is all about the training.  If my very prey driven, wanderlust filled, immune to pain dog can be trusted in the fence - which he can - darn near any dog can do it with training.

If they use the buried type we are happy with Innotek and the hole for the wire can easily be created with a power edger

the only major problem we had with innotek was REALLY unexplainable!  

we have ours out in the shed (i have toddlers, dont want them unplugging it while i'm not looking!)  lightening struck a tree outside the house and the next day the entire box was fried. DH found it when he smelled smoke coming from the shed... he brought the box in and showed me where it was actually warped and melted!

i dont know if the lightening did it, or if it was faulty or what. nothing else was damaged, we didnt lose power....  the outlet it was plugged into is still A-OK.... but that box went kerplunk! we'd had it a little over two years. but they replaced it!  

 we have ours plugged in in the garage.  Last summer we had a nasty lightning strike that took out just about everything electric in the house - however the Innotek survived - go figure

lol you were lucky then! my dogs didnt even notice it was off while it was being replaced.

lightening is weird like that, or so everyone told me when it happened. i was surprised nothing else was damaged!  

DumDog

lol you were lucky then!

Depends on how you define lucky - we lost over $10,000 of electrical items - I kid you not.  We weren't home (poor Bugs was but he didn't seem to notice) and never figured out where it hit.

But we lost pc's, the new CA unit, fax, home theater, printer, phones, garage door openers, the list was huge - every item had a burnt transformer or such.   But the Innotek survived - very strange.

Bugs doesn't hardly wear his collar - he knows his boundaries and doesn't leave

kpwlee

DumDog

lol you were lucky then!

 

Depends on how you define lucky - we lost over $10,000 of electrical items - I kid you not.  We weren't home (poor Bugs was but he didn't seem to notice) and never figured out where it hit.

But we lost pc's, the new CA unit, fax, home theater, printer, phones, garage door openers, the list was huge - every item had a burnt transformer or such.   But the Innotek survived - very strange.

Bugs doesn't hardly wear his collar - he knows his boundaries and doesn't leave

ACK!! sorry - i was totally distracted when i replied and i missed that you said you lost everything but the fence. you werent lucky then!

i think if it came down to losing all my appliances or a $200 i-fence.... i'd choose losing the i-fence!! 

kpwlee

 we have the buried wire type and it is all about the training.  If my very prey driven, wanderlust filled, immune to pain dog can be trusted in the fence - which he can - darn near any dog can do it with training.

If they use the buried type we are happy with Innotek and the hole for the wire can easily be created with a power edger

We have the Invisable Fence Brand, burried most of the places and on top of the ground in the woods where it was to rocky.  We also had it installed.

IMPORTANT:   IT IS ALL ABOUT THE TRAINING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!    I have three very different types of dogs on the fence and they are all 100% reliable on it.  No problems.  But training took one month for each of them, it is not something to take lightly.  If you want it to work, you must train.

 yeah what i tell people about the fence is the training is key. you keep them in more than the fence does.... if the i-fence was 100% inescapable the dog could be a crispy critter.... its a mild discouragement... nothing more.

Thank you so much for all your wonderful replies. I am so sorry I haven't been able to get back on and post a reply. I emailed her the first reply, and i am sending on the rest right now. Again, thank you so much. I am sure all this will be very helpful. I loved the i-fence also. If we weren't fenced with wood now I would be thinking about it again.

I think the invisible fences, if done right, are actually MORE successful than real fences. With the invisible fence your dog is carefully trained to stay on the property, and it's just a "backup" to the training. If something goes wrong with the fence the training keeps the dog in. I've heard of more dogs "escaping" from real fences say when someone leaves a gate open than I've heard of well-trained dogs wandering off from i-fenced yards.

I used to work at a retail shop that dealt with PetStop/Invisible Fence.  I think that *for some people* these are great systems.  If I had a place out in the country I wouldn't hesitate to consider one of these systems because they are much cheaper to install on a very large area of land (compared to a wooden, chain or vinal fence).

However, often times fences are for more than keeping your dogs in -- they are for keeping other things out.  Obviously invisible fences don't work for that.  I just bought a place in town and there are kids EVERYWHERE.  I have agility equipment that is very attractive to children, so I had to put up a solid wooden fence to protect my interests and the safety of the kids.  I could have saved a ton of money by going with an underground fence, but it didn't serve my needs.

It also doesn't protect your dogs if you live in a place with lots of strays or wild animals that venture onto your property.  Nor does it stop someone from walking onto your lawn and snatching your dog if he is unsupervised.  And as other people have mentioned, the fence is only as good as the training!

That is very true. We have neighbors with dogs that are left to run, and it is very frustrating to have the neighbors dogs in your yard peeing on bushes and carrying things away. They even came in our basement and ate our dogs food. I actually got snapped at by a dog that was trying to fight with mine in my yard when I tried to chase him off, and bit in the back of the leg by another neighbors dog in my own driveway, and that was not the only time I came outside to find someone else's dog growling at me in my own yard. I couldn't ride my horse more than a half mile down the road because of 3 aggressive dogs that were left to run.They actually run out at us on the motorcycle and come at your leg because we are going slow there. And  a lot of times the man is out in the yard. If I walk that way, I carry a horse whip with me that I have used before on them, now they stand back and let me pass. A friendly dog I don't mind coming out. I enjoy stopping and petting them as we walk, an aggressive dog is a different story. When I was a kid, Dad taught our dog she was not allowed to leave the yard. He really got her to listen well. We have a dog that we can't keep in with even the fence, you are right. She climbs right out. it is frustrating. She doesn't go but to the other side of the road and sniffs around, then comes back, but I hate it. it is something I would like to figure out how to remedy, but so far not.

Karissa, i had a Perch too for a while! Julie