Hey guys/gals, As some of you may have known, I've been trying to buy a house for quite some time. Well I finally closed on it a few weeks ago. I have a 2 year old lab that's really a great dog. He doesn't roam and will stay near me. However, there's been a few times in the past where he's seen a squirrel or a cat and tried to chase it across the road. Luckily where I lived before the road was dead and was not an issue. He knew his boundaries and only crossed it 2 or 3 times in 2 years. This new place is 3 acres, in the country, and sits on a fairly busy country road with traffic doing between 35-60. There's not a big chance that he'd run out into the road, but I'm afraid that if he does, he wouldn't get a second chance. There's more wildlife around my house that may cause him to want to chase. The back yard is welded wire farm fence, one side of the hard is chain link, it leaves the entire front yard open to the road and the entire opposite side yard open. Some day down the road I'll probably go with a nice decorative fence across the front which will contain him, but for the time being, I need something. Which leads me to underground fences. Any recommendations? Reviews? Pros? Cons?
I had a great dog once who even though we had a 4' chain link fence around the backyard liked to get out by jumping the fence and bark in people's faces when they tried to cut through our front yard. I had an "invisible fence" installed and trained him on it. For a long time, he stayed in the back yard. One day, after some kids taunted him, he went right through the invisible part and over the visible part. I saw it happen after he started barking wildly. When I looked out the window, the kids (young teens) were standing on the side road throwing rocks at him and barking at him. By the time I got outside, he had the 3 boys backed into a corner and had his hackles up as he barked at them. I was able to prevent anyone getting bit, but I couldn't do anything but chew their butts out and laugh at the one boy who pee'd his pants. The next day my buddy Chantz kept yelping. I went out to see what was going on, and I truly thought one of the kids had returned and done something mean, but there was Chantz. He had dug up a section of wire and was trying to chew it in half while getting nailed by the invisible fence. A few days later when I returned from work, there was the hole and the wire was missing an 8" section. Every time I fixed it, he just dug it up somewhere else and chewed through it again. So I guess the moral is, if your dog has a strong enough desire, the containment system will not work.
I built a dog yard, 28'x48'x6'. It keeps my dogs in and other animals and people out. It can be done relatively inexpensively. Buy a roll of 2x4 (the size of the "holes") fencing as long as you need. For one dog you could make an enclosure 25'x25'x6' and that would be a 100' roll. The buy 8' landscape timbers. You can maybe find them for less than $4 each whereas 4x4 posts can be over $10 easily. I have a motorized auger (post hole digger) and, with 3 acres, you may want to invest in one. I've used it a bunch. Maybe a couple hundred bucks. If a dog gets caught up in "drive" then an E fence will be useless. It also will not keep other animals away from your dog. I have also seen that after a freezing rain one person's E fence would seem to quit working. Personally, I hate E fences and have seen nothing but bad from them. I have had dogs (Rottweilers) for a long, long time and we have been attacked quite a few times by dogs that were either loose or got loose. Make sure your dog is secure in a secure enclosure. You and the dog will be much happier. As for loose dogs, I use to keep my dogs back but finally got tired of it. Now, when loose dogs start coming at us I give them the go.
For some reason, this cracked me up. I had a great dog once that like to jump over a chain link fence, chase down kids, and chew up the electrical fence. I think our views of a "great dog" differ.