Electric dog fence installation trouble

"Jstein" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@u15g2000vby.googlegroups.com... Hi everyone,

I would like to ask for your help with a problem I?m having with my electric dog fence. I recently purchased Innotek?s IUC 5100:

It would appear that the way in which I want to install the system is atypical and not recommended by Innotek. I live in a 2 story house with a basement. My house sits in the center of my plot of land. I would like to keep the dog (Sadie) out of the back yard and contain her only in the front. The transmitter is mounted in the center of the wall on the longside of the concrete foundation. One side of the loop starts at the transmitter, drops to the floor, runs out of the sill to the yard, completes the loop and enters the house through the sill on the opposite side and runs back to the transmitter. The issue with this is that because the antenna runs along floor of the basement of the house, Sadie can get shocked while leaving and entering. It is spotty at times but if she gets shocked when trying to leave the house my fear is that she will never want to go outside again. To combat this issue I decided to splice in a piece of copper stranded shielded wire in the hopes that this would shield incoming and outgoing signal. At the entry points into the basement, I spliced both the shielded cable and the single strand. At the transmitter I stripped approx 6? of the shielded cable (on both left and right sides) and pulled the center solid wire through the braid. I then connected both of these to building ground. Much to my surprise, the shielded cable behaved the same as the single copper wire loop I ran outside; it acted like an antenna setting of the collar. The transmitter has 2 terminals that connect to a separate surge protector box via a twisted cable. The surge protector box has 4 terminals total, two that connect to the transmitter and two that connect to the loop. The transmitter has a non grounded power supply that plugs into the surge protector which is grounded. I called Innotek and described what I was trying to do and the best solution they could give me was to essentially splice on an additional 1000? and double back to the starting point. While I do not want to incur the expense of the additional wire, I am also stubborn and would like to know the theory behind this and why it will not work. Innotek informed me that the fence operates at 8.192 kHz while the remote control operates at 27 MHz(not sure if remote is important). If anyone has any suggestions I would be most appreciative. Our dog needs more outside time and I do not want to constantly have to worry that she is going to run off. Thank you in advance for your help.

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It is the 8 kHz signal that flows through the wire, and it is the magnetic field that is important. Twisting the wire causes the magnetic field to cancel out. The shielded wire you tried does nothing to attenuate the magnetic field; it only works on the electrostatic field. Read their instructions again and see if you can come up with a configuration where the wire is twisted where you need to let your dog out of the house.

I have three dogs (a Finnish Spitz, a Siberian Husky, and a Malamute). One digs under the fence and one climbs over the fence. In my situation, I had to run one wire along the bottom of the fence, loop at the end, and back along the top of the fence. The four and a half feet of separation between the top and bottom wires allows the magnetic field to work properly. Unfortunately all three dogs have long hair, and I had to eventually go with a conventional electric fence.

One problem with "invisible" fences is that if the dog sees a squirrel, it can run through the magnetic field quickly and only receive a short shock. But when it tries to come home, it is walking rather than running and the field prevents it from passing back into the yard. You need something to delay the dog in the magnetic field long enough to get a good shock. My chain link fence worked well for this, but the long hair was a problem.

Realizing that no "invisible" electric fence will prevent aggressive stray dogs from attacking Sadie, the best solution is to build a chain link or picket fence around your front yard.

With all due respect, this does not answer my question. That aside, I have never encountered overly aggressive dogs in my neighborhood, nor is she left alone for long periods of time.

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Barry had already pointed out another pitfall: that if she ignored the shock to chase, say, a squirrel, she'd not want to return. Did you skip over the part where he had a physical fence as well as the wire?

But she's only a dog, and getting another one is easy enough, I suppose. And you have some $300 invested in the underground wire system that you'd hate to waste. I understand.

I turn the system off for Shadow to cross the boundry.

John Ferrell

While this thought had occured to me, it is not ideal for me because we sometimes keep the collar on her when she is in the house. She likes to grab random items around the house and not drop them on command. This is a habit we have been trying to break since day one and she is now starting to understand the consequences of this behavior. As I mentioned above, the collar can pick up the fence wire in the basement and she can get shocked while freely roaming the house which is not practical.

Relocate transmitter to rear wall and reroute loop so that all areas she is allowed including the house are inside the loop perimeter and she will not cross this perimeter entering and leaving basement.