Laying an Invisible Fence - the Hard Way! - Page 1

Way back on the 4th of May, I posted about wanting to purchase an invisible fence. GSDandrea gave me a link to a website that sold Innotek fences, and showed how to lay them out. Shortly after that, I went ahead and bought one, as it looked like purchasing online was cheaper than buying one in Petsmart.

One of the other posters recommended I get it professionally installed. I thought, "I can't afford that, I can hardly afford the fence!"

Well, heh, I kind of wish I'd taken that advice!

First, I laid the wire around my property, planning to dig it in. I found there were certain areas of the property that needed MAJOR cleanup before this could happen. The blackberry brambles had taken over an area behind my garden shed, and made it completely impassable. Unfortunately, that area faces south, so cleanup had to be done in the early morning, before it got too hot.

Then the dogs got tangled in the unburied wire I'd already laid, and chewed it up. I had to try to find connectors to bridge the gaps. Turns out Innotek only ships to Canada by UPS Worldwide, which is over $100 for shipping!! My e-mail contact at Innotek recommended I try Home Depot for the connectors. Neither Home Depot or Canadian Tire had ever seen anything like them. Local pet stores didn't have them, either.

I did continue with trying to bury the fence. Two weeks ago, I cut through the cable for my TV and internet, and was without service for 5 days, as I couldn't get through to the cable company to report the outage. Their line was always busy, so I assumed the problem was at THEIR end, not mine. Turns out the cable was installed 30 years ago, and ran right through the middle of my perennial garden, and across the neighbours backyard. It was a standard co-axial cable, with NO protection around it!

I changed my mind about burying the cable, as the emergency repair the cable people did was covered over with about 2 inches of soil. I began to staple the wire to the fence. I found out the staple gun that best fitted my rather small hand didn't have staples. The other one was so hard to use, the staple frequently didn't go in the right spot,, as I had trouble holding it steady enough. I checked with Canadian Tire, and found they didn't carry the right size of staple for the other gun. They did, however, have a smaller staple gun for $20 bucks, and it took the size of staple I had at home. (My late husband must have loved staples. He had about 8 packages of this particular size!) So, I spent another $20 bucks on a new staple gun...

Last week, I also made a second trip to Home Depot and this time, found a more knowledgeable clerk, who directed me to a type of connector that would work with the Innotek wire. I was home free!! Heh. Yeah, RIGHT! (continued...)

I began laying the wire. I'll spare you the details of all the snags I hit. The tree root that blocked my progress in the one areal where the wire absolutely HAD to be buried. Climbing 20 feet up a VERY wobbly ladder, with no one to steady it, to get the wire high enough that the dogs wouldn't get zapped as they entered and exited the house. The rechargable drill that lost its charge as I was trying to bore a hole to feed the wire into the garage...

Finally, it was done. I put the dogs out for their last pee of the day. When I let them back in, I found out the puppy had gotten hold of the wire where it came down the side of the house, and crossed over to the garage, and torn it off the wall. I was mad enough to spit nails. Next morning, I fixed the wire, stapling it as tightly as I could to the vinyl siding of the house. (She must like the taste of copper. She also stole the reel of wire off the dining room table, and had a good chew at it!)

She tore it loose again.

I had to put up a baby gate to keep her from getting to it.

After that, I decided we'd better start the training. Uh-oh. I could only find one collar. The one I'd been using out in the garage to test the signal was missing. Over the last week, I looked EVERYWHERE for it. I checked all the likely places. I checked all the unlikely places. NO collar. I remembered I'd accidentally left the garage door open one night, and began to think it had been stolen. Finally, on Sunday, I decided to bite the bullet, and buy a new collar. $136 Canadian from Petsmart! OUCH!!

Luckily, something held me back from removing it from the package. Last night, I found the missing collar, hanging on the handlebars of an old exercise bike in the garage. Black collar+black handlebars+dark, dimly lit garage=nearly invisible collar!

Meanwhile, after doing some training with the pup (who is now 6 months old, therefore supposedly ready for this sort of training) she got so frightened by being zapped that she's now reluctant to go outside AT ALL. I've completely discontinued any efforts to train her for the last 5 days or so to give her a chance to get over it. It's my older dog that's the problem digger, anyway. I trained the puppy first as I was concerned she might chew the wire in areas where it was exposed, like across the back of the house. So far, she's ignored it, as other wires run in that area, too, just between the vinyl siding and the foundation.

So, moral of the story, unless you've got lots of patience, and a large gang of people to help you string and bury the wire (or a yard the size of a handkerchief!) get the pros to help you out!

Hope you at least got a chuckle out of my trials and tribulations with this. It was indeed what you'd call 'a learning experience'! 

no offense, but this would make  a pretty funny sit-com.

No offense taken, V.symphoni! I wouldn't have posted it if I hadn't expected people to get a good chuckle at my expense. Keeps me humble...LOL!

Now that you have it all installed, do not ever forget where it is or I promise you it will get cut sometime. I've had the Invisible Fence people here at least 4, 5 times to locate a break after I edged flower beds, the phone company cut it and so did the dorks who installed the new water line and the plumber who fixed a leaking underground pipe. If you know where the break is, it's easy to fix yourself, if not,  you need to get professional help to find the break. BTW, all the wire should be buried, there should be no wire on top of the ground. Invisible Fence uses a small trench digger that can bury the wire around a fairly large yard in less than an hour.

Seriously, too bad you didn't hire the Invisible Fence people to install it for you. I have a ton of neighbors with self-installed underground fences and none of them keep their dogs inside. Our Invisible Fence does. These other companies make it sound oh so simple to install it yourself and to train the dog, but it's really not and that's just a sales technique.  There is a right way and a wrong way to do it. Invisible Fence comes out and helps you train the dog. Are  you using flags and taping the prongs on the collar so the dogs only get a warning beep at first and not a shock?  You can't shock the dog right away, it first needs to understand the boundaries and the beep is the first step in teaching that.  You must put the dog on a lead and heel it around the edge of the property letting it roam close to the containment area. If it gets a beep, jerk it back saying - not there (or whatever you want to say). Another problem I had is if there is no warning device on the transmitter box you will not know if there is a break in the fence. Keep the collar tight, the batteries fresh and you might have to clip the hair on the neck. Good luck....................

Blitzen, there are places where the wire cannot be buried, e.g. where I had to run it along the edge of the patio, between the fence and the garage. Also, the reason for the fence is my dogs dig. The area where Ranger has been the most determined with this is right up against the house, therefore, I was worried about him digging the wire up and breaking it in that spot. So, for the most part, the wire is stapled to my nice white picket fence, or, as I said, laid along the edge of the vinyl siding at the back of the house. The instructions say this is okay to do, and it eliminates the chances of the wire getting broken when anyone's doing any digging. Yeah. Dogs OR humans!

Have you been told this is not a good idea?  The instructions I found on one website say you don't need to bury the wire, just use these special staples they provide to staple it to the lawn, and let the grass grow over it. I laughed pretty hard at that one! I can just imagine how long that setup would last with the puppy's love of chewing on the wire! 

My main problem with the training, is due to my hearing loss, I can't hear the collar beep, unless I put it right up to my ear. Makes training a bit of a challenge. Thank heavens for those little plastic testing devices with the flashing lights!  I'm going to determine the boundaries as close as I can, and use that, and the dog's reaction, to determine when the collar beeps. And I hope to heck this isn't going to ruin Ranger's hearineg ear dog training!! I wouldn't even try it, except the beep sounds quite different from any of the sounds he's been trained on so far (alarm clock, smoke alarm, kitchen timer, telephone.) I think he's smart enough to distinguish the difference. Pavlov trained his dogs to expect a food reward on one type of bell, and an electric shock on another, so they are definitely capable of learning to discriminate.

I think I'd try to protect that exposed wire with some sort of plastic conduit if you can.  A rodent might chew it too. You should be able to find a product you can slit and wrap around the wire. It will deteriorate quicker if it's not covered.  They probably tell you it's not necessary to sell more fences LOL. My fence is now 12 years old and I still have the original wire albeit patched in some areas.

You don't need to hear the beep, I couldn't either.  Do as you said you are going to do.....just watch the dog's reaction when it gets close to the boundary. Most will alert when they get the warning beep and that's the time to jerk them away using whatever commands you want.  Are you using flags?  Walk around the perimeter holding the collar so you can see how far out the field extends. If you can adjust it, make it as wide as you can and still have enough room for the dogs to play.  After the dogs are trained, you can back it off and if any of them still challenge the fence, turn off the beepers so they get an immediate correction if they wander too far inside the field. Once trained to the fence, none of your dogs should get close enough to the wire to be able to dig it or chew it. If they do, they will get a correction before they get the chance.

If you want to PM me, it's blitzengsd@comcast.net. My first GSD was a problem and we had to beef up his receiver with 4 prongs. He was a coat, so I had to shave his neck. Blitz won't go near it. He jumps straight up in the air if he even gets a beep LOL. Teh few times he has received a correction, he yelped and ran in the opposite direction. Amazing to me since the correction isn't really all that severe, I've touched the prongs and walked into the field myself to test it before using it LOL. It's like a static electricity shock, not like sticking one's tongue into a light socket (not that I would know how that feels LOL).

Well, I know how it feels to accidentally stick your finger into a live socket...remember those old Christmas lights, that were wired in series? OUCH! (I think it happened when a bulb broke, and I touched the base of it while the lights were still plugged in...not sure...was a loooong time ago! (Okay, I'm dating myself here, I know!   )  Star is quite soft on corrections, so I've got the opposite problem with her. Ranger is harder, but I think he'll be okay with the correction level. He's a very fast learner, took only 3 tries to teach him 'leave it'! if someone dropped food in front of him.  I'll PM you if I have any problems!

Thanks, Blitz!

This sounds like a version of National Lampoon Christmas Vacation.  I did get a good laugh as I visualized your story as I read it. After all that work I hope it works for you...........

I am ready to strangle my puppy. Really.

I tried trainng her to the collar, but when I took the tape off the prongs, she got  really frightened, and didn't want to go outside. I realized I hadn't checked the boundaries carefully enough, and she was getting zapped as she tried to come up the stairs to the house.

So, I quit using it until I could fine-tune it a bit, and make sure that wouldn't happen again. Also, I wanted to give her a chance to recover from the fear.

Last night, I had them in the backyard while i was setting up the sprinkler in the front yard. Of course, they were hanging over the baby gate, watching me, and yipping: When do we get our walk??

This morning, I finally put the collar on Ranger, and did some trainng with him, as he did a major excavation while I was having my morning coffee, and I wanted to do some training while the memory of the digging was still fresh in his mind. Funny, he was showing no sign the collar was beeping. I went into the garage, to check the fence. Uh-oh. The light was out.

I started searching for the break.

Despite the baby gate, the puppy had somehow managed to get to the wire where it runs down the side of  the house...

I swear I'm gonna...grumble...growl...grumble...!!

I think I'd better put her in her kennel until I cool off a bit!