Spin-off: Invisible fence as a back-up for a physical fence, and the drivey dog

[Renn_aissance]

I didn’t want to take over the Invisible Fence thread as this is not a time-sensitive solution for the OP’s issue.

Some posters have brought up that they have both a physical fence and an Invisible Fence (or other electric equivalent) set inside of it as backup.

For those of you who have it, how tall is your physical fence, and how bull-headed is your dog? How well does the two-fence combo work to keep the dog in?

If a rabbit runs outside the physical fence, does the combination of invisible fence + physical fence stop the dog from going after it?

We will need to make some fencing improvements on any property we buy and had planned on a 4’ fence (maximum allowed by any local HOA) plus a very stout hedge to deter leaping, as we have an athletic and high-drive dog whose legs turn on well before her brain does. I had not considered adding invisible fence as a backup. We had it growing up for my parents’ pack of dogs. The Golden Retrievers would go through it, but probably would not have jumped a fence. The Pyr would dig under a fence but didn’t challenge the Invisible Fence. The Husky was blind, deaf, neurotic, and sort of feral, and went where she pleased, so nothing would have kept her in, but the combination would probably have worked for the others.

[french_fry]

I don’t have experience with an invisible fence as a back up, but I hope it works because a 4 foot fence is not going to hold a drivey dog that’s as athletic as you describe.

My 30lb mutt is half crippled (doesn’t have a hip in back) and I had her in a dog park with a 4 foot fence when she saw a bird - thank god I was able to grab her collar because it was no problem for her whatsoever.

[RackNRoll]

Been using this combo for about 15 years. I have 4 acres of mesh livestock fence plus an invisible fence. I have drivey hunting dogs and it works GREAT. This combo can’t be beat for areas larger than a standard yard and people who have trouble with it have generally made some pretty basic mistakes in the setup or implementation.

What makes it so successful is the adjustable shock boundary. The invisible fence, with a sufficiently wide boundary, keeps the dog from ever coming into contact with the physical fence. This prevents climbing or jumping over, prevents digging under, prevents fighting through the fence, etc.

[GraceLikeRain]

Four feet is barely an effort for an athlete so I think the combo is a good idea. A hedge barrier also seems like a great idea but will take a few years to really come in.

[Simkie]

4’ fence, with a walking path behind. Had a dog who LOOOOVED to bark at strangers and leap on the fence. When she went over it finally, installed invisible fence. She was VERY respectful of it and stayed well within the boundary. She certainly never went over it again, and kept off of it. The barking was also reduced, because she couldn’t play her game by being right on the fence.

No negatives, IMO. Highly recommend.

[Donkaloosa]

Invisible fence does not have to be buried so it can be installed in no time. I have a dog who will chase rabbits, squirrels, etc. and hops right over the fence when the mood strikes him. The wire for the electric/invisible fence is fastened to my chain link fence with pipe cleaner pieces. Cody learned in a nutty not to get too close to the fence — and it is easy to adjust to keep a dog farther away or allow it to be closer. After a year, Cody doesn’t even wear the collar anymore but stays back from the fence a foot or two.

[RackNRoll]

Ours is zip tied along our wire fence, at knee height. Makes installation, routine inspection, and repair a breeze. The only place we buried ours is where it runs through a piece of thick wall pvc pipe (which is buried) at gates and the driveway.

[Renn_aissance]

Thanks for all the responses! It seems encouraging. A single relatively low fence is not going to be enough for her, in part because the HOA’s in this area generally mandate split-rail or paddock style fencing where she has line of sight on the public land behind. I think a fence combined with a really stout hedge would be a substantial deterrent to keep her from catching sight of rabbits, but the hedge will take time to come in. Although ours is a very athletic dog with plenty of vim and vigor, she’s also enough of a weenie that she would probably only challenge the electric fence once or twice- so the physical fence and hedge would be the belt and braces we’re looking for.

The property that we will hopefully be buying (fingers crossed- it looks like the sellers were OK with our counter to their counter-offer!) currently has a 3-foot perimeter fence, which is an obvious no-go. But at least we could get her started on training the electric fence while we were working on replacing the current perimeter fence.

[lauralite]

My fence was one of those vinyl fences that you can get at Home Depot – only 4ft and not at all escape-proof. My first dog never tested it but once I got the border collie mix I had issues with her squeezing out of the fence. Then I got the catahoula and she started jumping the fence.

I used the PetSafe Radio fence, which is wireless. It really worked well – I was surprised at how effective it was since the boundary wasn’t exact but it wasn’t very expensive so I decided to give it a try.

As I wrote in the other thread, the only real issue I had with it was the battery on the collar dying. The catahoula always knew and would start escaping. Fortunately newer versions of the collars have a light that blinks when the battery starts to get weak, so once we upgraded to those surprise dead batteries were no longer a problem.

The benefit to the wireless fence was that it was portable – I could take it with me when we visited my parents and they were well enough conditioned to it that it worked without the external fence.

Two negatives to the wireless fence (at least the model I have, which is older) are that the boundary isn’t static – it would have slight changes from time to time. Second, it can have issues passing through some structures from time to time. I only noticed the latter at my parents’ house so I never really investigated to figure out the problem because we weren’t there much.

When we moved back to my hometown and stayed with my parents for a while, we just installed an underground fence. I walked each of them around the boundary and we put the flags up and slowly took them down over the course of two weeks, but otherwise didn’t need to do much training since they already understood the electric fence.