Invisible Dog Fences
As a country girl, I grew up with a couple of dogs. I remember chasing them around the yard and doing a lot of frolicking as a kid. We never needed to use leashes. That’s because my parents had an invisible dog fence installed. I think they installed it when I was still very little, since we had it for as long as I can remember. I used to think everyone had invisible fences and it’s just what you did when you had dogs. Then I got a dog of my own.
Owning A Dog
Having a fence of any kind was never an option for me before. We’ve lived in apartments and rental houses for years. So, when we started talking about buying our own home I immediately started planning for invisible dog fences. When we first moved in, I was 9 months pregnant and my husband was working 7 days a week. We didn’t really have time to install any fences. Instead we just used tethers as a temporary solution.
Dog Tethers
I think that dog tethers are one of the worst inventions of all time. Dogs (at least mine) aren’t intelligent enough to avoid wrapping them around everything and everyone in sight even resulting in injury. I hated those tethers and I kept talking about invisible fences. Eventually, I convinced MMR to buy one on Amazon.
Do It Yourself Invisible Fences
We bought an entire fence system including a collar and the little white flags. It came in a box with a rather long manual that even detailed how to train your dogs on the fence. This fantastic invention sat in it’s box on our table for about 2 months before we did anything with it. This is because we were planning on installing it ourselves.
Trying to install an invisible fence yourself is very difficult and a lot of manual labor. It’s a whole lot harder when one of you works 6 days a week and the other is responsible for an infant 24/7. Not to mention, when the ground is dry out here it’s just like concrete. That’s not an exaggeration either. It makes shovels ding without even denting the dirt. It took us an hour and 3 gallons of water to dig 6 inches in order to install our mailbox.
Layout The Fence
Before you get to work installing the fence, you have to decide where it’s going to go. I made a couple of attempts laying out the fence before I found the best layout for us. The layout involved planting those little white flags at short intervals where you want the fence to be. Sounds easy, but not in our soil. I tried to stick the flags in but I think a third of them fell over right away. We had to fix that as we dug and filled the trench later.
Dig a Trench
The first step of installing an invisible fence is to dig a trench, for our box it said 1-3 inches deep. We had to wait for a rainy day in order to even have a chance at denting the ground. Luckily, we had my sister-in-law staying with us and she was willing to help. I stayed inside with Bernie and they went out into the misty rain and dug. They dug for two days. I think they spent a total of around 7 hours digging. I didn’t measure the final layout of the fence, but I tried to estimate about an acre.
Fill The Trench
The next step was to lay out the wire in the trench and fill it up. This is much easier said than done. My sister-in-law is a saint and helped me do this while MMR was on baby duty. I think it took around 4 hours to lay out the whole wire (which included one splice) and fill in the trench. Thankfully it was still misty and wet outside which helped with our impossible soil.
Plug It In
This was probably the easiest part, but it still took some problem solving. We had to get the wire inside our house without just sticking it under the door, that causes damage to the wire over time. So, we ended up drilling a hole in our front door and putting caulk around it. Then I finally stripped and cut the wire and connected them to the main power.
Test It
This was pretty unpleasant. I didn’t realize I had the frequency turned up too high and was shocked as I put the battery in the first collar. Electrocution is never fun. After fiddling with the frequency dial and avoiding the main frame while putting in batteries, I figured it out.
You also have to test your dogs. Our puppy was very susceptible to the first setting of shock. Meanwhile, our older dog has such a thick neck, from his German Shepard build, that I had to turn his up almost all the way before he even noticed the shocks.
Train Your Dogs
Now that the fence is installed, you think that it would be easy. But, no of course not. Both of my dogs are known to be a little bit dramatic and they’re also easily scared. Once, the older one freaked out because his paw was caught in the cords to a set of blinds. Naturally, they’re both terrified to go outside and protest by turning into statues when I try to take them outside. The manual is of no help since I can’t even get them to stray from the center of the boundary. I mean, it’s all recommendations anyway.
So, I guess we’re just taking the fence one day at a time. They’ve both figured out what the beeping means. It makes them immediately start whimpering and run for the back door. But, at least they’ve figured it out! Invisible fences aren’t cruel. I wish it didn’t have to shock them but I just want a way for my dogs to run around without having to worry about them. They’ve already gotten into trouble going to the edge of our yard (which means acres away and out of earshot). And our neighbors have livestock, I don’t want them getting trampled!
The question is, was it worth it? If I could’ve afforded it, I definitely would have hired someone else to install that fence. It was a waking nightmare.
Would you install your own invisible fence?
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