I was thinking about installing one of those underground electric fences so my chocolates have more room to play. My neighbors have them, they seem to work well, are they cruel? Any info would be awesome.

 Thanks alot!

Nadia

I’m surprised no one uses it or has an opinion. It’s not something I will/would ever need, but I’d be interested in knowing about it. There’s a little guy up the street who always stopped right on the end of his property and his mom was out one day and told me they had invisible fencing. On our morning walk way at the end of the sub, there’s another little cutie that is either very, very good OR has the invisible fence too. She just sits and watches us walk by!

There are some breeds that will stay in, but many will not. Nobody I know in rescue will approve a home with IF. It makes people too complacent and puts dogs at great risk IMHO. Other animals and kids can come in, and the dog is at their mercy. Also, many dogs will take the shock to leave, but they will not take it to return.

Are they cruel? Hmmmm…do you consider electric shock cruel?

I think the success (if you can call it that) lies in proper training and having a breed with no prey drive at all.

My sister had a dobe, he was so protective of my two nephews (human variety), he’d go right thru it, to “get the postman”!

One of my clients (hubby allergic to cats) used it IN her home, for her cats. Cats had upstairs, dogs had downstairs (bedrooms are down). Worked beautifully, and I thought I had seen it all!! 

Before you buy, put the collar on your arm, KNOW what the shock feels like. Then if you can do the proper training with it (initially, it’s not to pleasant), it might be great.

WARNING: LONG but MIGHT be worth Reading!

I do have an opinion on the electronic in-ground fences.  Its an opinion but is based on experience.  Short version: not a good plan unless you’re the only dog house for miles.

First thing to consider is ‘what is the purpose of a fence’?  If everyone trained their dogs properly to exercise good behaviour in the presence of other dogs and other people, fences wouldn’t be needed as much.  So what is the fence for? 

Fences serve as demarcation/boundaries that we want recognized.  Humans will recognize a line of shrubs, a row of paving bricks or a chalk-line as a demarcation.  When we see a fence, the demarcation has a stand-up “notice me” factor (doesn’t mean the little hoodlums won’t run over it, just means they’ll have to deliberately ignore it).

A fence identifies another aspect – security.  I don’t mean Homeland Security/Defense, so much as meaning “gee, this is my safe spot, and I can relax a bit in here”.  This is primarily the reason why rescues won’t adopt to homes without fences; the dogs generally come with baggage and we don’t know what exactly is going to make them shift between fight-or-flight, and the fence gives the dogs a little more space to feel safe in (if anyone wants more info, talk to me off-list).

There’s added dimensions (no pun intended) to what a traditional fence has over an in-ground fence.   The first part of the dimension is the dog’s recognition of territory.  “What’s mine is mine” is instinctual, at a genetic level.  A dog who has a physical boundary will recognize that territory considerably sooner than one who cannot see it.  True, wild dogs have other methods to identify their ground (scent) but they don’t dribble a line of pee around their domain, they leave general markers and then leave it up to the other dog to observe the boundary and WILL FIGHT if that boundary is violated.  Again, this is instinctual – even if your dog has never been brought up with other dogs or is a CGC, that instinctual behaviour is still there.

A traditional fence reduces the arousal factor the dog has on defending its territory – doesn’t make it go away, but a dog may understand things better. But remember this also – a traditional fence is a TWO WAY communication tool. 

Imagine you’ve got the world’s most perfectly trained Rottweiler.  I love Rotties, myself. I don’t have one, but I don’t think of them as junk-yard attack killer dogs from hell the way a majority of the public does.  But…imagine you’ve got the Rottie.  Your Rottie is an in-ground fence dog.  The fence is properly connected and active.  The collar is working.  The dog’s been with this fence for about three years now and knows the limitations.  Now imagine another person walking their dog (for the sake of argument, lets call the other dog a sheltie-bordercollie mix named Brandy, a mild-mannered dog but not one to let her owner be approached by anyone else without feeling put-upon).  They’re on the sidewalk, minding their own business.  Your Rottie sees them walking by.  They stop for a second and then walk on.  Your Rottie identifies this as a potential issue and runs towards the mix/human.  You’ve buried your fence five feet from the sidewalk, that’s okay, your Rottie will stop a couple feet from there. 

Who told the passing dog you’ve got a fence and the Rottie will actually stop? 

The other dog sees the Rottie running straight at her and her human, and immediately goes into protect/fight-mode, running to the end of the standard 6 feet leash, and the two dogs are snapping at each other, in full front-on arousal.  You come running out and try to get your Rottie’s attention, while at the same time, the passer-by is trying to pull the mix away from the confrontation (please note, dogs view of a leash is not the same as yours!).

This is a full-grown case of territorial aggression.  Neither dog is going to back down readily.  The humans are only exacerbating the situation but they cannot let the two dogs have at it either. 

So that’s another effect a fence has – even if its chain link, even if the passer-by sees the dog as a threat – that fences has a physical barrier that is much much more difficult for someone or some dog to penetrate; it definitely provides a de-escalation factor, simply by being passively in the middle of the confrontation.

I use the above example – it actually happened, but has been repeated on more than one occasion with different parties (a large goldie and Jezebel, a GSD and Honey) on different properties. 

There’s another part to an I-fence that is also not mentioned much – and some folks would debunk it completely, but again, I’ve got a personal input on this. 

A dog who’s emotional/hormonal condition is already got them all spun up is not likely to recognize a shock boundary when they really think their world is coming apart. 

Sugar-Bear, my first dog, and I (along with Charlie Brown) were on our daily walk.  Same time, same location as we’d been doing for a couple years.  Walking by the same houses, going down the same streets, listening to the cacaphony of dog conversations as we pass each home. 
There was one particular house, with a small (?) family of St. Bernards.  Normally, they’re in the back yard.  Occasionally, one of the females would be in the front yard. Sometimes, it was the big male, who would always keep an eye on us.  I knew (from the little flags) they had an I-fence (physical fences are prohibited in our front yards per city ordinance).  Normally, we just cross the road a couple houses down and keep on going by, ignoring the other dogs.  This time, it was different.  For one, the female was in the backyard; you could see her jumping up on the fence.  We walked past them, on the other side of the strett.  The male was inside, violently barking…until he wasn’t barking any more.  The next thing I knew, was this massive shove from behind knocking me over, then Sugar was being tossed around from her left rear hip like a rag doll.  I got up, grabbed Charlie Brown and punched the Bernard in the rear quarter.  Three hard whacks later, he let her go and turned on me.  That was about the time the owners came out, screaming at me for hitting their dog.  When they finally got hold of him, and saw her with her leg ripped open, they changed their tune.  They couldn’t drag him back inside though even after I picked her up and was running back home (1/2 mile – did they offer to take me home so I could get her to the ER?  no).  When I drove by about ten minutes later, they were still trying to get him into the yard and he was pulling backwards on the leash they’d finally hooked up to him.

When I returned a day later with the cops to file a dangerous dog report, this was the only explanation they had. “Oh, we’ve got an in-ground fence and we had no idea he would jump over it”.

Jump over it.  In their minds, they saw the fence with the same physical property as a chainlink, wood or other physical boundary.  Might have been a slip of the tongue, but it shows that after two years, they still saw the fence standing high above ground.

What was the reason for the attack?  Simply hormones.  The female Bernard was in heat and the male was intact;  if the dogs aren’t fixed, they had to be seperated at all times.  They chose to have the male inside. he did have his fence collar on and the tests they did on it with the police indicated it was working, but his hormones were controlling his reaction, not his brain or collar.

Unfortunately, with a vet bill close to $1000, and given the attack was not on their property and was unprovoked (as witnessed and admitted by the owners themselves), the police had no choice but to issue a citation that required a whole lot of legal stuff plus a $10K bond to be placed with the city, with that address now listed as a “dangerous dog” home.  They didn’t have to impound the dog because they did provide proof of rabies vaccination, but it could have been much much worse.  Having a dangerous dog in your home is a serious deal – it meant they couldn’t have minor guests and a whole host of other problems arose.  I think they got rid of the male; its been a few years, I don’t walk that way any more without UDAP.

Okay, so having run on, here’s why I’m against electronic in-ground fences. 

1) From the passer-by’s perspective; visible boundaries are important to the dogs and the humans – a “loose dog” in a front yard puts everyone on guard, which heightens arousal much sooner than needed and make premature escalate a confrontation.
2) From the incumbent dog’s perspective; dogs need a boundary they can feel unthreatened in – any one or any dog outside their fence is not as much a threat as inside the fence. This is especially important in borderline personality dogs (e.g. rescues or dogs more likely to be aggressive).
3) From an escapee’s perspective; given sufficient stimulus, a dog can ignore pain.  I’ve seen dogs react from all kinds of things and I’ve seen them ignore pain in favor of fight.
4) From an escapee’s returning home perspective; generally, the “egress” arousal is greater than the “ingress” arousal; the dog may not come home or might just stay outside the boundary until hauled back inside.
5) Most importantly – the human paradigm that its a proper fence.  Humans see a fence with broken mortar, loose chain-link or broken panels – they fix it.  But even when its broken, its still a fence.  An in-ground fence may not have the same material maintenance costs (outside of ensure the collar battery still works and making sure the line isn’t broken) but its a lot harder to see. And because its a mental image, you’re more prone to think of it differently (if at all!); your brain thinks “inground fence” but your mind thinks “four foot wall”.

So that’s how I see it.

I discourage in-ground fences; from a rescue, we think its the same as no-fence, with the added “value’ of shocking the dog to remind it no-no.  What you do with your dog is up to you – what you do with ours is up to us.

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dwain

FANtastic, post, Dwain ~ This is why it is great to be a member of a community like MDS, we can all learn so much from one another!

You more than made your case ;-) Many points you made also apply to Holly’s situation (HannahPriss) with the next door dogs.

We use a wireless fence.  The advantage of the wireless system is it uses radio waves to the collar and you can take it on vacation anywhere as long as there is electricity to plug in the radio.  Our biggest headache is that we needed 3 collars.  One comes with the system and we had to buy 2 x $135 but it’s been worth it and it gives them 90 feet from radio.  One thing to remember they get shocked if they get to far away from radio.  A guy at work forgot to take his dog’s collar off and went to leave his house and shocked his dog he had to hurry to get closer to the house to get the collar off so they could go for a ride.  Hope this was helpful.