Well, I'm not a fan of invisible fencing, but you seem very conscientious about your dogs, so I expect you plan to be out there with them for fun and games.

Just last week-end a neighbor behind me called to tell me that his dog was attacked by two other dogs. They allow her to be outside in an invisibly fenced yard by herself. So in addition to being attacked by the two off leash dogs, she was repeatedly zapped by the fence as they dragged her across the property line. Owner error for sure, but the dog paid for it.

And then there were the untrained dogs who burst through their invisibly fenced yard and attacked my on leash elderly male a year ago. I like fences that don't rely on constant owner responsibility.

I do hope that your dogs enjoy their new 'freedom' but please be careful not to feel too secure about that fencing. It only works one way.

DS & DIL had one for their 3 MinPins and it worked out very well for them. It all depends on your neighbors and how they control their dogs. DS's neighbor had 2 friendly dogs that always came over but they weren't a treat to the minpins.

I assume you're going thru the training period and using the flags? The flag 'warning' works so well that one day I found a new use for them while I was helping DS put in a sprinkler system. One of the dogs wouldn't leave me alone so I took 3 of the flags, made a circle around my work area and the dog wouldn't go past the flags!! :)

These fences work well as long as owners continue to supervise the dogs when they're outside and they definitely allow your pets to roam and have fun on their own for awhile.

Be careful leaving the collars on the dogs while they're in the house. DS had an incident where the signal was feeding thru the appliances in the kitchen and the dogs started refusing to enter the kitchen to eat. The installer just had to relocate the wire outside and all was well.

I would be cautious of other dogs entering the area, that is my concern of those.
I was at a friends one evening and the neighbor behind her (not too bright of a man) had just had his invisi-fence installed. We happened to be outside and noticed him just standing there and he had the collar around his neck. He checked to see if it worked and stepped over the boundary. Yep it worked. He stood there trying to figure out how to get back over without getting shocked....never occurred to toss the collar over. He let out a holler when he crossed the boundary on his way back.

Two Parson Russell Terriers, true test of the fence. I only used it when we were here but it gave them running freedom. One day I watched a fisher dash out of our garage with my female PRT in pursuit and thought for sure she would go thru the fence. No she turned!! My male did figure out if he sat in the buzzing area the battery will out but he didn't want to leave without the female. He went thru a lot more batteries. One a yr for the female as she wouldn"t even go near the buzz 10 ft.

We've had an invisible fence for five years and love it. I truly believe that most of the objections people raise to invisible fences can be eliminated by careful planning and training, the majority of those objections are answered by point #1 below.

1. We never leave the dogs (three big dogs) in the invisible fenced area when we are not home. If you are home and are aware of their activities when outside, you don't have to worry about other animials coming into their yard. You will know if they do get out, etc. I am sure that you would not leave your dogs unsupervised, this is more of a reminder.

2. If you have the opportunity, I think it is helpful to have a route to your home that does not cross the fence line. For example, we have two driveways - one in front, one on the side. Our dogs cannot get to the front driveway from inside the yard. This accomplishes two things - it gives guests a way to come to our front door without having three large, friendly dogs "greeting' them, and it gives the dogs a place they can get to safely should they get out from the fenced area. They know this is a safe access because when we take them for walks we go out through the front door and down the front driveway.

3. I tested the fence myself as well but was not foolish enough to put it around my neck, lol! However, that example illustrates a point about the training period for the dog. I think it is very important to take the training slowly and be sure that the dog understands the fence line (marked with flags at the beginning) and that the appropriate response to the sound emitted by the collar is to jump backward into the yard. Then when the dog does get a shock, she knows the escape route. Since you have multiple dogs, I also would mention that they will learn at different rates. We trained two initially and tried to keep them at the same place in training. Mistake. When we finally applied the shock, one dog very clearly understood what was happening and reacted calmly. The other did not yet understand, made the mistake of moving sideways rather than backward, thereby shocking herself again, and became afraid of the yard for a period of time. We should have spent more time on the preliminary training with her. Take the training slowly and do it thoroughly.

4. Check the batteries frequently, especially at the beginning. One of the few times one of ours has gone outside the fence was very early on, and was because the batteries in her collar had gone low without us realizing. As eandhl said, the life of the batteries is dependent on how often they test them.

5. We have had a few little problems unrelated to the real issue of invisible fences but things to think about nevertheless. We have more than once plowed over the fence line. Even though we think we have it well marked, we make mistakes. Our fence encompasses about three acres and thus has multiple "joints", places where pieces of cable are spliced together. These splices have been known to separate when frost heave pulls at the cables. Bad news because DH isn't real thrilled with trying to fix cables in 20 below zero and buried under two feet of snow! So we have spent months at a time with the fence non-functional. Unfortunately, the dogs don't understand why their freedom is suddenly restricted so our solution has been to still allow them outside, but under close supervision. It takes a very long time before they figure out that the fence no longer works! Hopefully you won't have this problem.

Similarly, it is easy to get lazy about putting the collars on the dogs. One of ours has not worn her collar for probably a year now - no problem. She is not about to leave. Another went a week without it and figured out he could leave. It depends on the dog but try not to get too complacent. It's easy to do.

Good luck and I hope you love it as much as I do.

My aunt was thrilled to learn that the house she recently bought came already equipped with the invisible fence, she just had to buy the coller for her dog. Turns out the dog was just too fast and the fence couldn't zap him in time. I hope it works for you.

the biggest objection to these is not keeping your dog in, its keeping other dogs out, since they don't have the collar, they don't get zapped. It also would not keep someone from walking up and stealing your dog. Just be sure you are with them, or at the very least can see them out the window. Which kind of negates part of the reason for a fence. HOA are a PITA when it come to things like protecting what is yours.

My sister has one, and it works very well for her dog. Which surprises me, since her dog is a crazy border collie mix. Personally, I would be too nervous for all the reasons mentioned above, but I suppose if I were in your situation with the no fence rule, I'd consider it.

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.

meghane,

The company you're using is using the flags, right? Often, for dogs that don't hear well, a few flags are left up all the time to remind the dogs of their limits. My neighbor left his flags up for several months to make sure his GR had a visual reminder.

I think DS's dogs only received the shock once.........at the end of the training session (2nd week). The signal was set at a very low voltage and that's all it took for them to put it all together!

Here is a cut&paste of a previous post of mine:

"We installed an "invisible fence" (Radio Fence?) about 6 months ago for our standard schnauzer. So far, it has been great. Careful training is necessary; early on, while we were still training and he was learning the boundaries, someone let him out without the collar and he wandered into the neighbor's yard (and quickly caught.) Now, however, he happily runs and roams within our yard and will not approach the "fence" line. He loves other dogs and balls--will stop short of chasing a ball which rolls too far, a teasing bunny hopping just outside the boundary, and sits and watches his "girlfriend" until she comes into our yard to play.

Yes, other animals can enter your yard. We've returned four dogs over the past 6 months, all of whom escaped fenced yards which either had a gate left open or the dog dug under the fence. While I'm in a somewhat rural area, we don't have a problem with aggressive wild animals or roaming dogs so that is not a concern for us. I agree one does need to supervise a dog outside, and perhaps especially with an invisible fence which does not offer any physical barrier."

In short, our fence has worked well for our needs. Our dog is so used to his boundaries that he does not challenge the fence; he stays in "his" territory. We left up a flag on either side of the driveway as a reminder, more for us than for him. We put the collar on in the morning when we get up and it comes off at night at bedtime. Good luck!

Yes, we are keeping the flags up until all the dogs "get it." Ana is doing great- today Dave tried to entice her by running full speed toward the fence, and Ana put the brakes on about 10 feet away after chasing him across the yard. I'm pretty sure Max is utterly clueless as to why we make him retreat from the flags. He may not even notice the flags. Really, he's pretty dense. K'Ehleyr just follows me everywhere in the yard, won't go more than 10 feet away from me. I put her outside alone today and as suspected, she laid on the front porch until I brought her inside. Even with people walking dogs and riding bikes. I know she'd react differently to another animal or a person in the yard, and I'd worry that she'd chase an intruder out. But of course I'd be there, and she is so slow that I could easily catch her. And the intruder would be perfectly safe as well. Tatya watched a squirrel play just outside the fence boundary, but made no attempt to chase it, which suprised the heck out of me. I doubt she would be that good if I wasn't there though. Maybe once the shock corrections start. We'll see. Right now we're just taking it slow and making sure everyone gets what they are supposed to be doing. At least the Huskies are getting it, and I'm not worried about K'Ehleyr. Max is the biggest worry right now. He likes to chase bicycles, delivery trucks, the mailman (he's such a typical Lab) etc. So we are really going to have to work a lot with him. He still thinks everything is a game.

We get quite a few loose dogs too, also escaped from physical fences. Most of them are repeat offenders and I just follow them home. One neighbor walks his mastiff at night off-leash. The Husky girls like to play with him, I'll just have to make sure they pay attention to boundaries while playing. That's a challenge for later though. Right now we're just reinforcing the boundaries. We don't start distractions until later in the training.

We've had several neighbors ask about the fence already. I don't know if my neighbors would spring for the cost of the fence. I got quite a good deal for being a vet student.

Speaking of which, if anyone is a vet student, vet, or vet technician, email me and I'll email back the link to get the discount for the invisible fence if you're interested. They also offer a lot of freebies (bark control collar, remote training collar, others). Sometimes this business has perks that are worth it:)

My neighbor has this. Her dogs are constantly going through it. I wouldn't call it dependable in the least.

All other people I know that have it have the same problem.

I think the fence will work just fine, because you are a smart, responsible pet owner who understands their function.

We never expected the e-fence to replace proper supervision. It is nice to let the dogs run at their own speed, in a safe place. We left the flags up for about month, but really after two days of training, our dogs knew exactly what they were suppposed to do.

I did shock myself with the collar also. I wasn't going to use something on my dog that I hadn't tried myself. I don't think our lab or our terrier, ever did get shocked. They took the training and understood the flags and I don't recall them ever getting shocked. And the old hound, well he was stubborn enough that he would selectively chose when he was going to get shocked. He was so smart, you could actually watch him test the boundary behind the garage or at the property corners.

The fence worked, but not as well, for our old hound. We never had 100% containment on him, but with the electric fence we got probably 98% containment. He would break through when our neighbors dog was in heat, about twice a year. He knew he was going to get shocked and would yelp the whole time as he ran through. His yelping was an alarm to us to go and find him. (And we knew right where to look...)

I think most people who complain about the fences not working, are using them to replace proper supervision or they didn't follow through with the training.

I am laughing at your experiences so far because they sound so very similar to ours! Our Zephyr was much like your Ana - understood very early on with just the flags. In fact, when the time came to administer a shock, it was difficult to find a place where she would cross the boundary. When we finally did, her reaction was "Oh shoot! I KNEW I shouldn't go there, but I did, and look what happened!" She then went through a phase like joepye describes with his old hound - she tested every edge of the yard. She would stop, wait, no shock so took one step forward, wait, continue till she got shocked. She very quickly understood exactly where the boundaries were located.

Our second, Chinook, thought the flag training was some sort of big game, she was having a blast with it. Till she got shocked. I wish we had taken longer before we shocked her because she really did not understand what it was about. She has since learned and does fine - she's the one that won't leave the yard even without the collar on.

Our third dog, whom we acquired as an adult and with no training at all, is like your Max. I'm not sure he EVER associated the flags with the shock or the fence line and he certainly does not fully understand where the line is. But he knows that if he stays with the girls he is safe, so that's pretty much what he does.

I completely agree with everything joepye said. I also believe that most people who say the fences don't work did not install them properly, did not train the dogs properly, or use them as a way to ignore the dogs.

It sounds like you are working with a good trainer. Your fence must be slightly different than ours if the fence people have to come back to turn on the shock. Our collars have rubber covers that we can fit over the prongs so that we can choose when they will get shocked and when they will only hear the tone. This could be important in the future for two reasons - one, all of your dogs may not be ready for the negative shock at the same time. Your Max, for example, may need a few days or even weeks longer training before he is exposed to a shock, while your Ana is apparently ready now. The second reason is if you add another dog in the future. When we got Buzz, we simply took one of the girls' collars, put the cover on, and proceeded with training. No need to turn off the shock on the fence or change the exposure for the girls, just start him on the early steps of training. So, I don't know if you can get covers or not, you might inquire.

Also, back to the batteries. That's great that you get a year's free supply. But at the beginning, don't trust the amount of time they say the batteries will last - they may or they may not. Ours certainly did not at the start because they were getting tested more often. So be sure to check them even if they are not supposed to be down yet.

We no longer have an Invisible Fence supplier in town so partly from necessity and partly for expense reasons, DH learned to repair the fence himself - it really is quite easy and parts can be ordered online. We also order our batteries online and its a bit cheaper.

I cant say enough good things about inviible fencing. I have a brittany spaniel and she is a house dog. We had to keep her on a leash ooutside until we got the fencing. My neighbors also got the fencing and we take turns having the dogs in each others yards. All we do is put my dog in my car and drive into her driveway and let her out with her collar on then later in the day she puts her 2 dogs and mine in her car and drives into my driveway and lets them out. My dog will not go out of the yard with the fencing and it has given us so much freedom with her that I cant tell you how great it is. YEAH for invisible fencing!

Well, Tatya was quite the challenge in getting her to feel the shock collar. The company was wonderful. Both of the Huskies were having trouble feeling the shock. They eventually got Ana's collar to work on a high setting. Tatya got upgraded (for free of course) to the stubborn dog collar with twice as many shock points. The company made sure that all the dogs were feeling the shock appropriately and responding correctly, including returning a couple of days later with Tatya's new collar.

So far, the Huskies are doing great. Tatya has gotten zapped 3 times, and each time she has immediately run into the yard, not through the fence, as she was trained. She saw another dog yesterday and the owner and I were talking right near the fence but Tatya stayed an appropriate distance away. She got a bunch of cookies for being so good. Ana took 2 zaps and won't even go close to the fence now.

Max is of course still not getting it. Right now, he is afraid to do anything on one side of the yard because he got zapped 3 times. He's OK with the other side of the yard. He doesn't understand what makes him get zapped.

K'Ehleyr only goes out of the yard to follow me. But she listens to Dave when he calls her back. I'm not sure I'm going to leave K on the collar because I don't think she heard the beep during the training period, so she doesn't know the boundaries and what to do with the beep/zap. She isn't one to run off anyway.