🚀 go-pugleaf

For those of you unfamiliar with the "Invisible Fence(tm)" system, the
owner doesn't just strap on a shock collar and turn the dog loose in
the yard.  The collar  is a receiver sensitive to pulsed currents sent
through a wire loop at the perimeter of the yard.  The collar beeps
about six feet from the wire, and does not deliver a shock until the
animal is about three feet from the wire.

There is an extensive training regime the owner must  put the animal
through: it involves a white cord inside the perimeter to mark it for
the animal, and several weeks of training, where the owner walks the
dog near the wire on a lead and issues appropriate commands.  The goal
is to train the dog to the perimeter and to the beep, not to the shock.

My experience with this has been with a friend's dogs, which I occasionally
care for when he vacations, etc.  The dogs have absolutely no apparent
adversion to the collars.  They will stay inside the perimeter even if
the fence is off (we had an awful time finding a break in the 1500' of
wire one week - I finally built an audio detector to trace the loop), 
and know that if they are not wearing the collars it's OK to cross
the perimeter.  Yet, even if they are chasing a ball, they halt before
the collar even beeps.  The training is the key to the process -
the dogs will otherwise learn to make a running leap.

The system is expensive, however...

--joe pollock     pollock@u.washington.edu