Fourth of Six

Listen Up! There will be a test!

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Shocking bed story

I was playing with my biggest dog the other day. We were on the bed together, and his head was dangling over the side. Suddenly, he yelped and scrambled to escape. The bed had given him a shock! I figured the culprit was his Invisible Fence® Brand collar. He has it on all the time, because if he doesn't, I forget to put it on him before he leaves the house, and then he runs away. I took off his collar and held it close to the bed until it gave off the warning beep. It beeped whenever it was close to the wire running around the edges of the mattress. I guess that wire conducts the Invisible Fence® signal. Now I take care to keep him away from the bed.

I highly recommend the Invisible Fence® for dogs who run away, or yards without a traditional fence. You might need it even if you already have a fence. I have a four-foot chain-link fence, but my dogs are able to climb right over it, so I got estimates on installing a taller fence. I decided on the Invisible Fence®, because it was much cheaper, and could be installed inside the perimeter of the chain-link fence.

The way it works is the dogs wear a collar which signals them with a warning beep to retreat from the boundary. Training is the key. If they cross the boundary, they get a shock. If you don't train them to retreat when they hear the beep, they will go through and get shocked and keep going. I've heard folks complain that the Invisible Fence® didn't work for their dog, but then they admit they failed to train the dog properly. It's 90% training. Don't buy one unless you are prepared to spend about 15 minutes, three times a day, for a month, on training.

I don't make any money from this product endorsement. There are other brands of electronic fences for animals that work just as well, as long as you train your dog. The only difference between providers, in my opinion, is warranty or customer service. The bulk of the expense is the labor involved in installing the fence. You can buy your own and install it yourself, for 10% of the cost, but the labor would be about 50 hours, if you do it with a spade, unless you rent a machine that lays the wire for you. That method takes only an hour.

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2 Comments:

At 7:00 PM, Blogger Dedwarmo said...

I think I missed something. How is it that a wire in your bed conducts the Invisible Fence signal?

 
At 2:55 PM, Blogger Bobmo said...

I'm glad you figured out the source of the shock. The metal in the bed must be acting as a large antenna, though I'm not sure exactly how it would get charged. However, my guess is if you ground the metal, you won't have the problem any more. As a test, try running a wire to the bare metal of the bed and connect it to a water pipe or some other known ground to see if the problem goes away.

By the way, you had me going with the title of this post. For a moment I thought I was reading the National Enquirer! ;-)

 

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