The Day has arrived.Today was day 1 of training the dogs to collars which warn them when they are nearing an electric fence. ( Works roughly on the same principle an electric fence which has a battery attached except the thing is activated by a signal from the collar wirelessly.) Day 1 basically was training for me.
I am going to diary what happens so that if anyone else wants to try this they can refer to this to see if it might suit their needs.
Please feel free to interject with your comments or questions and we will see what transpires as we go along.
Have been doing the training almost continually for about 2 weeks now. Well today we let Dizzy Lizzy off and kept Jane on the long lead. It was really strange. Lizzy went back to the car to go back home and when I called her she went up to the table on the veranda and laid underneath. All this time Jane is on the long lead on the lawn looking towards Montcuq like she was on another planet. I cajoled Lizzy to join us which she did and gradually she started to WALK TO HEEL. She even waited when I told her to. She is becoming a real little star.
So Stage 1 now complete. Going to keep Lizzy on the long lead and let Jane off tomorrow. ( this, she says with her fingers crossed behind her back ! - is hopefully have quite a profound effect and they are starting to behave like domesticated dogs.) Lizzy and Jane 99% of the time, come to me the instant I call them. The Pavlovian thingy I think has been a big contribution. Oh and Sandy’s treats have to say they go down bigtime with the girls. So get in touch with Sandy if you want to try them.
Will have a bash with the camera and a little vid tomorrow so you can see Jane disappearing into the distance. Just joking - don’t think she would dare now.!! G.
Oh Suzie Thanks for that comment. I have been working very hard at making being with me more fun than running off and I am hoping that at least in the garden and at my friends I can relax and enjoy them and not worry about them getting on the roads around here which are now busy with farm equipment and some of it BIG !!
Thanks again, going to do the bit with the collars on at the end of this week. Dizzy Lizzy who is as sharp as a knife already backs off when she hears the noise from the collar in my hand but Dopey Jane just keeps looking at Lizzy and wondering what’s going on, but I shall persist until I succeed. Gently Bentley will be my motto. Gina X
Hi Gina
I used to have a chocolate labrador(he died last year at the grand old of 15)He was a great dog but in his younger days he was terrible for running out of the garden.My garden is fenced all the way round but the minute my back was turned he was off.I tried all sorts of things to try and keep him in but he always found a way out.He drove me nuts and then one day I discovered this ring fence.Magic.It worked wonders.From that day, he never ran off again.In fact he always stayed a “healthy” 2 metres from the fence.It made things so much easier and safer!!
Hi Quick update. We have had to make some changes to the fence for the girls as my little darlings their collars don’t set the fence off as it is too high in some places. So a few adjustments. Friday was IKEA day - exhausting - but fruitful. Saturday full of good intentions right royal clear out at home them went to finish fence to start tomorrow and got involved in that time honoured French habit of eating and drinking and looking at the view. Sunday morning doing stuff at the market to do with Artwork shall make a REAL effort to get the ball rolling tomorrow afternoon.
I have some very special friends who already have an electric, wirelessly controlled, ring fence installed around their property and they have very kindly allowed me to use it as well when I am at their house. Our dogs all get on really well, but they like me have a rescue dog ex chasse that is a runner and use this system very successfully to make sure that running away ad lib has become a thing of the past. SO I purchased 2 collars for Jane and Lizzy as I could not handle the little darlings running onto our road which has nothing at all on then the gigantic contraption which harvests the sunflowers. ( Buddy and Hamish were well behaved English dogs and would never have dreamt of going out of the garden!)
SO. Got the dogs used to the collars over the last couple of days and today went up to my friend’s to see what the deal was with the signalling etc. We took one collar in hand and walked up to the fence ( which had been turned down really low for my little titches,) and NOTHING ! After about 15 mins fiddling with the battery and with the collar decided to try the other collar. This one worked yippee. We had not seen the little notation on the side of the collar which showed the locked and unlocked positions. Once they were both in the locked position they both worked. Time for an cup of tea.
Then we walked the whole perimeter still with collars in hand and dogs on leads and when the collars give the warning beep signals - told the dogs a sharp NO and walked them some yards back from the fence and made a big fuss. ( oh by the way the fence is highlighted with little flags as well so the dogs have this to look at as well ). Much relief this all went well today, as Jane is a sensitive soul and has just got her confidence but at the end of this exercise she seemed pretty well unphased so successful I think.
Here are a couple of pictures of the little darlings, with their collars on. (Lizzy was not all that impressed Jane saw it as some sort of medal.) And the last picture is Jane after a good walk in the woods after the experience. She is quite laid back now isn’t she ?
First post here, and lead here by an old thread from Gina Hams, is she still around? I was looking into ring fenced electric control for wayward dogs and her name came up on Google.
I have a young (15 month old) Beauceronne/Dobermann X girl as a foster from PAD, the Dobermann association with which, as a transporter, I have had a 10 year connection, and she is very obedient to commands.
She had 2 outstanding problems. The first was that she became extremely attached to me to the extent that all hell would break loose if I left the house and garden. We are working on that and it is improving slowly.
The 2nd is that she has developed a habit of, first climbing and then jumping the 1m gate and fence to have a wander. I have tried an inward facing horiziontal mesh on the top, it worked but I was worried that if she got out somehow her legs might become entangled when coming back. So I dismantled it.
Next I put electric tape acros the top and switched it on with the box nearby with its warning tick tick. Took her less than a day to work out that as long as she had no feet touching the ground she could touch the tape at will with no effect.
So, I wondered about Gina’s solution. Is it a thread resting or buried in the ground which detects the approaching collar and, hopefully, deters the wearer from going further, or something else?
I agree, but I am not talking about punshment but deterrence. If I see her about to leap, a very brief command from me stops her and she comes back to me, she then receives much fuss and congratulation. But I can’t watch the gate all the time, there has to be a way to stop her.
Only the messages that can’t be done verbally, when I am somewhere else in the house for instance. As I said, I can’t watch the gate all day long. I suppose I could set up a video at the gate that could be viewed indoors and warn her that way each time, she has excellent hearing and responds over a long distance including through walls to my whistle.
But again, I can’t tie myself to a video screen all day anymore than I can to the gate.
It seems to me that the collar solution is less about punishment and reprimand than about keeping the dog safe when the owner isn’t around, Mike. Deterrence, maybe, and ideally a deterrent which the dog doesn’t associate with the owner.
So do cars which run over them, but I came here for advice on that or any other method rather than the known drawbacks.
I am quite sure that electric fencing is not welcomed by cows and horses too, But I wouldn’t want to see them all over the road.
Just for the record, the electric tape I mentioned above, has not been used for over 10 years, and then only once for a similarly incorrigibal dog. Such methods are only acceptable in extreme circumstances.
@Mike_Kearney So what would you suggest as an alternative, Mike? Not everyone is retired and most of us can’t alas take our dogs to work. I had a very good stayer who liked being at home even without her humans and snoozed; and a very successful escapologist who HAD to be with people, who finally had to be re-homed. They were treated the same, had the same living conditions - one was a buggerer-off and the other stayed within 500m of my house.
@David_Spardo Hello David, nothing worked for Houdini who regularly went over the Nationale a couple of km away and tagged onto the CRS squad training runs. I spent 1200€ on fencing part of my garden and then gave up and found him a family where he could be with people all the time.
Thank you Veronique. As a newbie here I am a bit confused by the quoting system and also the greyed out double posting, but hopefully people will realise what I mean.
For some dogs your solution for Houdini is the only one, I am not convinced that that time has come yet for Enola. I had already decided to send her back to the pension a week ago because of the seperation anxiety problems but she is such a wonderful and obedient dog, and was starting to show improvement on the anxiety issue that I changed my mind
Now this. But I will explore every opportunity I can because If I can’t solve it only someone with a complete fortress encircled by a smooth wall at least 2 metres high, will be able to cope. Such adopters are very few and far between.
Hi David, some further thoughts along with my private message - if she is wonderfully obedient then that will be your lifesaver, because she wants to please you. This is probably just a matter of time and reinforcement of good behaviour
In the meantime, there are some very useful tools for working with anxiety / clingyness.
Rescue remedy
Cannabis oil,
ignatia,
Adaptil collars/sprays/tablets
