Experience with gps fence or other electronic fence for dogs?

[colorfan]

my personal ideal would be an actual physical fence but for now my dh and I are at odds about a few details.
In the meantime I am looking into below ground electronic fence or the new GPS system.
Pros and Cons?

Someone told me they use the below ground system above ground and it works fine.
My girl is very sensitive, pretty sure she would not question/test a barrier if she knew it was there.

one advantage I see is a bit more flexibility on my particular yard to give her more room with an electronic fence.

[Mosey_2003]

What I know about using them above-ground is that people typically will zip tie the wire to an existing physical fence, I’m not sure about doing it above ground with it just…laying on the ground?

[Simkie]

I keep Tractive on my dog, which is a GPS tracker with no fencing element. Several times a day, it tells me that the dog is off the property when she’s several hundred feet inside the property line, and not moving. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s when the tracker signal is handed off between satellites, but I really don’t know.

I’d be reeeeeeaaally hesitant to use a GPS fence based on this experience. If there was a fencing element in this collar, it would be shocking the dog while she’s asleep in the house.

[colorfan]

oh, should have specified, was told about 8-10 inches above ground. Not sure how it was strung.

[colorfan]

Yikes! good to know thanks

[Simkie]

I’ve also used “underground” fence without burying it, to keep the dog off of a privacy fence that was really too short.

You definitely wouldn’t want to put it 8-10" above the ground, it’s pretty fine wire and will break easily if someone or something trips over it. I tacked to the fence and tucked into the landscape barrier. If you have nothing to attach it to, you could just barely tuck it into the ground or run it through a conduit.

We have plenty of it here that a previous owner “installed” by running it on the ground without any cover, and it’s just in pieces from animals, people, equipment, whatever snagging it and dragging it around.

[colorfan]

Do you think you could run it through a garden hose to protect it? Then lay it on the ground? Can you have a start and a finish or does it have to connect to complete the circuit?

[Simkie]

Sure, garden hose could work. You’d need quite a lot, and you’d want to stake it down.

The type I used had a circuit. It started and finished at the box that plugged into the wall. It took a bit of planning on how to make that work!

[Mosey_2003]

Do you need something fancy, ie are you in an HOA or something? If we get into using conduit or garden hose for invisible fence, you would be better off (in my opinion) to put some t-posts in and a roll of wire fence or even snow fence, and attach the invisible to that. That way the dog has a visual barrier and the invisible fence has a chance of not being trampled or caught up.

[colorfan]

This is part of what I am thinking, if I put up a physical barrier I would just do that and not bother with the electronic fence.

I am thinking an e fence might give me more flexibility to go here, then over there and back here, where if I do a physical fence it will be a straight rectangle.

[CHT]

Our former neighbours had the electronic fence for their dog (St. Bernard). I think they just strung up the bright blue wire when they moved here, and didn’t have it connected, and the dog didn’t have a special collar, so I think it had learned to respect the boundary by the time they moved here. They had a real perimeter fence, but some gaps a dog could get through, but not dash through. I don’t think i would trust just the wire, as coyotes, loose dogs etc, won’t respect it, and may lure your dog out - I have heard that a running dog won’t always stop at the perimeter.

A friend has a GPS fence, but her property is big, and I don’t think her dogs wander, so it is mainly to keep them not leaving towards the road, which again is fenced, so it’s more a back up for her three large dogs.

[Jenerationx]

Cons are… if the battery gets low on the collar and just zaps the dog for no reason. Some dogs don’t care once they know they’ll get zapped but can keep running after whatever it is they want to run after. The obvious issue is that it doesn’t keep stray dogs or other animals out at all. Then if your dog chases, they will bolt past the wire and may not even feel the zap if they’re in high prey mode or trying to get away from a stray.

[horsepoor]

I have no experience using it for my own dogs, but I do know that every dog in our neighborhood that has an underground fence (there are several) has been loose multiple times over the years. Battery runs down, fence has an outage, dog gets hairy and doesn’t feel it, etc. So I’m not a fan. Maybe my neighbors are all terrible at installing or maintaining it, but it does not give me a lot of confidence. We are just now putting dog secure fencing around our perimeter to keep all those wandering dogs out as I’ve had it with them chasing my horses (who are in horse safe, but not dog secure, fencing).