what is the best fence to put up for a dog

DOG FENCING OPTIONS: OVERVIEW

1. Provide the best and safest fence you can afford for your canine family member.

2. Practise non exit your canis familiaris in his fenced yard when y'all aren't home. If you are home and within while he is out, make it a bespeak to exist circumspect to what he is doing, and bring him in at the kickoff hint of trouble.

3. Make a vow to never use an underground stupor debate for your dog.

There was a time when no 1 thought twice about letting their dogs roam the neighborhood. A fenced k was well-nigh unheard of. If you lot grew upwards in the 1950s and '60s as I did, you may recollect those times. Dogs were well socialized, loved kids, and it was no large deal when the neighbor's canis familiaris came over and visited your female dog in season. Of course, they too chased cars, got pregnant a lot, and occasionally – although rarely – bit someone. You may as well remember, equally I exercise, a long list of babyhood pets who got shot, hit by cars, or simply vanished, having fallen victim to who knows what fate.

Today, our canine companions are more likely to exist spayed or neutered, vaccinated, and responsibly contained. As a result, they tend to live safer, longer lives. Only having a fence isn't e'er the be-all, terminate-all solution that it seems to be. Fences can bring on a host of challenges that our parents never faced with the family dog a generation agone.

The Best Dog Debate

Ane significant challenge is the cost of fencing. Unless you lot've purchased a house that already has a domestic dog-proof fence effectually information technology, you lot're looking at a meaning investment of resources to install one. Whether yous pay someone to do it or are a skilled practice-information technology-yourselfer, you lot're probably looking at least a few m dollars for a modest-sized suburban g. The price for materials for a 6-foot concatenation link fence (not our favorite choice) for a 50-foot-foursquare yard runs around ii thousand dollars. Forest fencing, particularly privacy fencing (the best selection, in our opinion), is considerably more than.

If all you needed the fence for was to keep your canis familiaris from roaming, chain link would be fine. Only you also need the fence to protect your canis familiaris from the unwanted attentions of passersby (man and otherwise) and to forbid him from condign overly aroused by visual stimuli such as passing cars, bikes, joggers, skateboards, dogs, and mail service-carriers.

When my husband and I bought our house in Chattanooga, Tennessee, it came with a lovely, big thousand, fenced deeply with chain link. Since our driveway was a quarter-mile long and passersby were rare, I thought we'd be fine.

Notwithstanding, a neighbor who lived a half-mile away had ii Labrador Retrievers that he attempted to continue his on his holding with an surreptitious shock contend; we were treated to regular visits from the pair. I'm convinced that our Scottish Terrier's canis familiaris-reactivity was initiated past (or at least significantly exacerbated past) his interactions through our concatenation-link fence with these two visitors. To this twenty-four hour period, he is still most reactive to Labrador Retrievers and dogs who resemble that breed in torso size, shape, and haircoat, although he has made a lot of progress with other types of dogs.

The Right Contend Meridian for Dogs

Regardless of the type of fencing you have or volition have, it's important that your fence fulfills its primary responsibility of keeping your dog independent. To that stop, I recommend a 6-human foot loftier fence. Of course, non all dogs crave a 6-human foot fence. Our debate at our current home in Maryland is merely four anxiety high. Information technology came with the house and none of our dogs are jumpers or climbers, and so we can slide by with iv feet for now. But if we were to prefer a domestic dog who had high-leap proclivities, we'd be in deep trouble. If I were installing a new fence, it would be six feet, for sure.

Dogs escape from fenced yards because they can, and often considering they're left alone in them for long periods of time while owners are sleeping or abroad at work. They get bored and lone and decide to go looking for something to do, or someone to be with. They use a variety of escape techniques, including jumping or climbing over the argue, earthworks under, chewing through, or, in the example of the "non-fence" – running through. I endeavour to avoid saying "never," but I will say that I never leave my dogs in our fenced yard when I'k not home to keep at to the lowest degree one-half an middle on them.

If you accept a dog who jumps your fence, raising the height in small increments is a bully way to teach him to jump higher and higher – hence the benefit of installing a six-foot debate to start with, rather than starting at 3 or four feet and raising it gradually. If you lot accept a super-athlete who can jump a 6-foot fence, yous can boring him downwardly past planting bushes or placing something solid and heavy at his take-off point so he can't assemble himself properly to jump.

If your dog tin can climb a six-foot fence, you lot can install a "roof" that comes inwards off the meridian of the fence at a 45- or 90-caste angle, and so when he gets to the top he's stymied. (This roof tin can too confound a jumper, who volition take a harder time determining the contend height with the improver.) Or y'all tin attach "coyote rollers" along the top of the fence – pieces of PVC pipe suspended on wires that volition spin when he tries to grab the acme of the fence to pull himself over. You can build these rollers yourself, or buy them commercially.

Our dogs don't jump our fence, but Dubhy, the Scottie, has managed to escape a few times, once by pushing out a loose board, and twice by squeezing through a gate that didn't close tightly at the bottom. Our fence is onetime and ane of these days we'll have to supersede it, but until then, nosotros are diligent about checking for loose boards and faulty gates. In the meantime, we're fortunate that we live smack in the middle of our lxxx-acre farm with a one-half-mile driveway, and that when Dubhy has escaped he hasn't headed for parts unknown, but rather simply explored the woods on our own property, and returned when we chosen for him. I suspect the first groundhog pigsty he finds keeps him happily and thoroughly occupied until he's summoned home.

When we lived in Monterey, we had a Pomeranian who could squeeze under our privacy fence. A row of concrete blocks lining the inside of the fence stopped his efforts, but information technology wasn't very attractive. If your dog is a digger, make a note to bury your fence at least vi inches.

Ane last tip on keeping your dog contained: make sure there's goose egg next to the fence your canis familiaris can utilize as an escape aid. The summit of a doghouse or a solidly stacked woodpile can make an first-class springboard; movement them abroad from the fence. I have some incredible video footage of a small terrier who uses a tree trunk to back up his rear legs as he climbs upwardly a chain-link fence with his front paws, working his way up until he can jump over the top of the fence. Be sure to install your contend far enough away from any copse or other permanently stock-still objects that could aid and abet your potential escapee.

Types of Fencing for Dogs: Avoid Potential Barrier Frustration

Dogs don't limit themselves to escaping equally their only fence-related means of complicating their humans' lives. Dogs in fenced yards are capable of developing a host of undesirable behaviors such as barking, running the argue line, aggression toward dogs and humans on the other side of the fence, and redirecting assailment toward human and non-human family members on the inside of the fence.

Barking is usually boredom, alert/alarm, or arousal barking. Colorlessness barking tends to be a repetitive, continuous, monotonous, "bark-bark-bark" for hours on end, with little or no modify of tone. These dogs are usually out the whole day while their humans are at work. Some are out 24 hours a day, seven days a week, bored and lonely. Boredom barkers are at the highest risk for being poisoned, shot, released, or stolen by a neighbor who is fed up with the dissonance. At best, the irritated neighbor might study the barking to a local animal control officer. The simple answer for these dogs is to bring them in and appoint them in activities that stimulate them physically and mentally, so they are no longer bored and lonely.

Alarm or warning barking is the domestic dog's attempt to tell his humans that in that location'due south something going on that he thinks they should know nigh. A dog who is frequently left alone in a fenced thou decides it's his responsibility to be on lookout man duty, and to allow yous know when something's afoot. If he restricted his definition of "something's afoot" to the bona fide infiltrator or approaching wildfire that would be fine. But he's just as likely to include squirrels, cats, and the mail truck in his "afoot" category, and pester both you lot and your neighbors with his frequent pronouncements of neighborhood news.

A solid fence, as opposed to concatenation link, tin can reduce alarm barking, since the dog won't see equally much to bark at, merely it won't stop him from seeing tree-climbing squirrels or contend-walking cats, or his attention and response to auditory stimuli.

Arousal barking occurs when the dog has a potent emotional response to something in his sensory field. Once more, information technology's often a visual stimulus, but can also be auditory or fifty-fifty olfactory. Annihilation that involves a strong emotional response has the potential to get a serious behavior problem and ofttimes leads to assailment. The tone of this bawl is serious – an intense, "Danger! Danger! Lawmaking Red!" kind of bark. The dog may as well dash dorsum and forth forth the fence line, reaching a loftier state of arousal that continues long after the stimulus is out of sight. Arousal barking can generalize to anything on the other side of the fence – and woe to the unsuspecting child who reaches over the (four-human foot) argue to pet the dog or feed him a cookie.

This dangerous level of arousal can exist caused by passersby who tease the dog, but it tin can but as easily be acquired by the constant frustration of wanting to greet the canis familiaris or person on the other side of the fence, but being unable to do and so. In fact, the behavior, which quickly leads to aggression, is often chosen "bulwark" or "restraint" frustration. The barrier doesn't take to be physical to create this behavior; it tin can but equally easily occur when the bulwark is the threat of an invisible shock. The accumulated stress beliefs, and the classical clan that develops with the stimuli, can crusade long-term behavior problems that require pregnant behavior modification (and a change of environment) to repair.

Redirected assailment is ofttimes related to bulwark frustration. It happens when the target of a domestic dog'due south aggression is unattainable, while someone or something else is inside reach. You may encounter it when 2 dogs who live together and know each other well are fence-running and becoming aroused at a dog or some other stimulus on the far side of the fence. Suddenly, one domestic dog turns on his companion and a full-scale fight erupts. Yikes!

Outdoor Threats to Your Dog

We've already touched on some of the prophylactic issues that tin arise for your fenced-in dog, even when you're confident he tin't escape the argue. Poisoning, shooting, accidental or deliberate release, and theft are just a few. Others include danger from wildlife. Coyote rollers can keep those rascally guys out as well as keep your dogs in, but the rollers don't foreclose contact with all wildlife. I've rescued 5-human foot blackness snakes from Dubhy. It makes me distressing that he's killed a couple before I could save them, but if they were rattlesnakes or copperheads the state of affairs would be much more serious.

Rabid skunks, foxes, raccoons, and fifty-fifty bats tin have contact with your furry friend when he'southward out in that backyard on his own. I even met a young puppy once who had been lifted off his paws by a golden hawkeye who ultimately decided the potential repast was either too heavy, too squirmy, or both, and dropped him from a top of twenty anxiety. The puppy was lucky to be alive, and volition bear a scar on his back from the eagle'south talons for the residual of his life.

Other potential backyard hazards include overheating, hypothermia, lightning strikes, alligators, brown recluse spiders, ingestion of poisonous mushrooms…Gee, I'm scaring myself. I think I'll get telephone call Dubhy in from my g.

The reply to all these fence-related issues is to not exit dogs unattended in fenced yards. That includes not allowing free access to doggie doors when owners aren't at home. A dog-walker is a better alternative if yous must get out your dog habitation for periods much longer than eight hours at a stretch and no family members tin can dash home on lunch to let him out for a bathroom intermission.

When Is a Argue Not a Fence?

Information technology sounds like a childhood riddle, but the answer to the serious question "When is a fence not a fence?" is "When it's invisible."

Even if the sole purpose of a argue was to keep your dog independent to a designated area, surreptitious shock fences — commonly called "electronic containment systems" — do a
shoddy job at best. The two Labrador Retrievers that taunted Dubhy through our fence in Tennessee are not uncommon. Ask any animal control officer how many devious dogs finish up in the shelter still wearing their shock-fence collars.

But containment of your canis familiaris is non the only reason for having a argue. If you're still willing to shock your dog for a containment organization that has a high failure rate, here are some more reasons non to utilize one:

1. It doesn't protect your dog from intruders. Black snakes may slither through our wooden contend, but the rare stray dog who wanders by can't get to my dogs. Strays can walk right across an invisible shock boundary with impunity. So can other animals, or human intruders who may have less-than-honorable intentions toward your dog.

2. Information technology doesn't protect others from your canis familiaris. Fifty-fifty if you accept one of those dogs who never tests or runs through his fence boundary (and they certainly exist), it doesn't stop well-
meaning people, including children who tin can't read your fence alert signs, from crossing the boundary into his space.

3. The initial training, during which the dog must get shocked at to the lowest degree in one case, is supremely traumatic to some dogs. Stories abound of dogs who have refused to go into their yards after being stupor-debate trained, and of those who adult housetraining bug because they were agape to get exterior at all. You don't know until it'south too tardily if your domestic dog will be i who is and so strongly affected past the shock.

4. The dog can associate the shock with passersby and become increasingly aggressive when he perceives them as responsible for the shock. I have had clients, and nearly every trainer I know has had clients, whose dogs had no trouble with aggression toward humans until they put their dogs in an underground stupor fence. Insidiously, many of these owners think it's worth one "tiny" daze to exist able to allow their dogs run free in their unfenced yards — because later on that one daze all they get is the alert beep. What they don't understand is the dog associates the beep with the shock, so emotionally, hearing the beep is the same as existence shocked.

five. And so…the stupor fence beep is like to many other electronic beeps. Digital watch beeps, microwave beeps, photographic camera beeps, computer beeps, warning beeps — and the dog can have the aforementioned emotional response to those beeps. I had a client terminal year whose rescue dog appeared to have separation anxiety — becoming destructive when left abode alone. Nosotros ultimately determined that the anxiety-related destruction occurred when the domestic dog heard a spotter beeping in the kitchen drawer — the outcome of being conditioned to a fence/beep/shock in a prior abode.

I know there are communities that don't allow physical fences, and that underground shock fences are all the rage in those places. I wouldn't alive in one. If I did take to live somewhere with no fence, I'd use a leash, a long line, a super retrieve — but I wouldn't use an underground stupor fence. Not me. Non ever. Never.

Pat Miller, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, is Whole Dog Periodical's Training Editor. She is the author of The Ability of Positive Dog Training; Positive Perspectives: Love Your Dog, Train Your Domestic dog; Positive Perspectives Ii: Know Your Dog, Train Your Canis familiaris; and Play with Your Dog.

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Source: https://www.whole-dog-journal.com/behavior/installing-safe-and-affordable-fencing-for-dogs/

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