I wonder if the cedar fence smells like the cedar mulch when you put it down? I love that smell! But like a Christmas tree, it sort of fades over time I suppose. I think you made the right choice to go with the four foot height. When you have a smaller property the higher fence can make it feel too closed in I think. I put up a four foot picket fence on one corner of our property with a gate and I find I go in and out of that gate more than I do the other side of the house that has an 8ft fence. The back of our property faces two properties whose back lot line intersect in the middle of mine, so that expands my view some and gives me a lot more privacy. So I used a post and rail fence there to increase the sense of space. Sometimes that's been a good thing and sometimes not, like when a neighbor parked an old truck on the back of his property for a couple of years. (g) It's gone now thankfully. And adding that arbor will give you a little more privacy but still allow you to view what is beyond the fence. Ingenious. I can't think of a better design decision for that space. No, I meant, in general, if you live in the city, where would you garden, meaning that would be a reason I would like living in the city less, because the gardening opportunities are smaller. I think I knew you were in the Chicago area, are you on a suburban size lot or a city lot? I know it's small. We're on a suburban lot but it's smaller than most in our town. About a 1/4 of an acre I think. Sometimes I think even that is too big for me to keep up with. (g) Alaska, huh? Well, I can see the attraction, but at my age, I don't think I could cope with the unique challenges. When I was younger, I would have very much liked a 'pioneer' experience. I suppose Alaska is not that as much as it used to be though. GORGEOUS part of the country though! I've never been, but would like to go some day.

I have seen a photograph of a dog who was left outside with the collar on, unsupervised. The thing shorted out and you can see two burned black holes in the dog's neck where the electrodes sat and tortured him. If you get this, leave the collars off until it is ready for the dogs to go outside, then supervise the dogs while out there. Inconvenient? Well, yeah! That is what you get when you do this. Read the instructions. Do they say to supervise the dogs, not leave the collars on? Believe them. Some dogs should NEVER have this kind of fence. Check with the breeder of your dog, or with those who have dogs of that breed and see what they think about the shock collar fences for the dogs. Hounds generally are not good with them. Remember that neighborhood kids, other dogs, wildlife, and anything else out there will have access to your dog, but your dog will only be able to escape by running to the house. It is not protected at all in your yard.

Thank you all for your comments. I am especially glad to hear of the problems you've had, so I can hopefully avoid them. I think that getting them properly trained is the key to preventing running full-tilt out of the area, so we are working really hard on that. We're on a battery plan, so all 4 collars get free batteries for one year. That will get expensive next year, but well worth it. Part of the fence goes through my front garden, so I will have to be extremely careful about not digging it up. I will never feel confident enough to leave the dogs out unsupervised, due to possibility of being stolen, attacked by other animals, attacking other animals (Tatya is quite the birder, much to my horror) etc. I just want them to be able to play together in the yard with us and be able to run around like mad fools if they wish. K'Ehleyr won't go anywhere without me anyway, she's perfectly fine being off-leash and has been several times pre-fence while I've been gardening and such. I'm not even 100% sure she can hear the beep. She may end up not being on the collar, because if I can't train her it isn't fair for her to be shocked- she wouldn't know what she should be doing. She's our old Rottie, and like our previous Rotties, she's not going inclined to run off. Well, she can't even run anymore, it's more like an amble... I thought Ana (5 year old Husky) was going to be a problem. She HATES correction (we're still on beep and leash only, no shocks yet) and got really scared yesterday. So we changed to pure positive reinforcement with her today, treats for retreating from the fence, and that has worked great. Yesterday when she approached the fence and made it beep, we did the leash correction as instructed but she got so scared that she just sat down and wouldn't move. Ana is really smart and has already figured out not to go near the fence in most cases, so right now we are just reinforcing the safe area with her. We'll see how she does with temptations... I don't think Max has connected the beep with going back into the yard yet. He sometimes does it correctly and loves the praise when he does, but he isn't consistent yet. Max's focus on life is fun, and he doesn't taking learning opportunities very seriously. I have to figure out a way to get him to connect the beep with going back into the yard in such a way that he understands. Of course, getting Max to understand anything is difficult- he's not the brightest bulb in the pack. Tatya (2 year old Husky) is the real reason we got the fence to begin with. She's our super-fast flight-risk Husky. We always worry that she'll slip out the door when people are coming and going. She did in fact slip out at Thanksgiving at my mom's house and had 9 people, 2 dogs, and 2 vehicles chasing her for almost an hour before she was finally caught. Obviously she is not off-leash trained, but that's impossible without some sort of containment, and we don't have dog parks close enough that I could use on a regular basis. She is doing really well with the beep training so far, and I've restarted her other training for reinforcement (sit, stay, come, etc) and she's doing well. I'd LOVE to get her agility equipment- she'd be great at it and we would both love it. But that's for when I'm VERY confident that she is well-trained for the fence and off-leash first. Ana and Tatya played a bit together in the yard today, still on leash of course. They had so much fun, but ended up hopelessly tangled up. They will be so happy to be able to do that without getting tangled. Max has been having fun playing fetch in the yard, but it would be more fun to be able to throw the stick further than the length of the leash. K'Ehleyr probably won't get much use out of the fence really. She'll most likely just follow me around or lay in the sun, which is perfectly fine with me. I am encouraged by how well they are doing for the most part. DH and I have been training them twice daily as instructed. The fence people are coming back next week to turn on the shock correction, once all the dogs are ready for it. We are probably going to put K'Ehleyr on a delay (beep first, wait a second for her to move, then shock if she's still at the fence line) and see if she gets it. If not, then she just won't have the collar. Before I had read about it, I thought the training was all punishment-based, but it is not. The dogs get rewarded for retreating back into the yard when they hear the beep. And I'm glad that they don't start with the shock until they know what they are supposed to do. Gives them a chance to not get shocked. So it's turned out better that what I thought so far. We'll see how it goes once they start getting to off-leash training.

I don't have much solution to add, gardening or visual trickery with green things are not my fortes, but just a word from my experience - even if you don't like the fence, do be considerate in how you remedy the aesthetic situation -- remember that the fence is someone else's (potentially expensive) property, and that ESPECIALLY if they put the fence inside their property lines, you are accountable for damages. So things like climbers, which can cause structural damage -- trying to rot it -- think twice. :) About half the yards in our neighborhood are fenced. We are the only ones for about 4 houses in either direction with a fenced yard (we put it up when we got our dog). It's cedar and was about a $5,000 investment. The people behind us don't like the fence for several reasons including the stain color clashes with their exterior paint (they say), it makes it hard to retrieve their cat (which is always in OUR yard, funny how that part of it is OK with them), etc. To show their disdain, they decided to pile their cord of wood up against our fence, for one so we couldn't get to the wood to stain it, and for two -- because they're a-holes. Well their wood leaned too far and broke down part of our fence. We built about a foot inside our property line. All things considered, they're now accountable for about $3,000 even though it's just two sections of fencing that are damaged.