Our dogs have never been particularly BAD outside (they save that behavior for inside) but they certainly aren't the best either. They generally listen to us until they see something they want like a squirrel, rabbit, small child or leaf blowing in the wind...then the ear muffs are on.
We went back and forth (and by "we" I mean I) about the pet fence. No, it wasn't the shock that I was worried about...I just had absolutely no confidence it would contain the beasts. Let's be honest, our dogs have major issues, we all know this. Plus I still maintain that I would feel much safer with Layla outside if we had a fence to keep her in and other things out.
Anyway, we got an electric fence. It was cheaper than an actual fence (totaled under $400 vs probably about $5k for a self installed fence) and took hardly any time to install. At first we just laid the wire on the ground so that the dogs could see it (along with the flags) and we knew where it was for training.
Oh the training. We wanted to do it right so that we didn't screw anything up, it is very hard to undo bad training (Moose) and we didn't want to go through all the effort for nothing. The first step is to train each dog separate and spend 15 minutes, 3 times a day outside. Great, that is an hour and a half every day taking both dog out individually and saying "go potty" about 10,000 times while holding a toddler that doesn't like to touch grass. Needless to say I made Bryan do it the first couple of days.
So session 1 with Oscar went well if you prefer to have your husband forget to turn down the shock "volume" and have your 15 pound dog receive the shock set for a horse. So session 1 = "success" and Oscar was trained...he hasn't gone near the line since. In fact, he practically pees on the back patio and is ready to go inside.
After calming Oscar down and making sure he wasn't having heart palpitations, it was Moose's turn. Bryan turned down the "volume" and Moose got shocked about 2 times. Not too bad but he did come back after being shocked which are all good signs this will work for your pet.
Now, 2 weeks later I can actually say that we let the dogs out and they stay in the yard. Like I said, Oscar will barely leave the patio but we are making progress with him. Moose still gets shocked at least once a day but he's getting it (and let's be honest, it is going to happen for awhile). We even let the dogs stay out with us while we were doing the yard work yesterday and they did great!
Overall I think the pet fence was a good choice. If it works for our dogs I fully believe it can work with almost any dog. We aren't to the point where we can just open the door and let them out yet (they need to comfort of us telling them "no" when they get too close to the line) but hopefully by the winter they will be a little more independent.
So fine, Bryan was right. There I said it.
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