My apologies ladyjane if I sounded sarcastic. As that was not my intent. I brought it up only as a possible cause to the behavior I was observing not to discuss the what ifs of another dog coming through the "fence" and into my yard. My thought when bringing this up was based on the fact that animals are far more sensitive to stimuli than we are, and I thought maybe there might be something that they can hear, feel or in some other way sense concerning these fence. Possibly that the electricity running through the underground wire was emitting a sound that I couldn't hear but she could (like the crackle in large overhead power lines that we can hear). Since I could not find anything concerning this elsewhere I challenged this group to see if anyone may have had some experience with that or knowledge about that which I could not seem to find.
I too was happy to find this particular option (audible warnings) to the invisible fences, and it certainly seems to reinforce, in at least two ways, the same meaning to the boundaries. As you mentioned, these fences will only help train your dogs and will have no effect on other dogs coming into the "fenced" area. Nor will it help your dogs if the associated collar is not used. And yes there really is nothing to stop one of my dogs from taking off like a bolt right through the area. I tried it myself and if you move through it really quickly, you might only get a warning beep if that. Also, if your dog gets through it, and gets a small shock, once on the other side they will get another shock coming back through the fence, and this can really discourage them from even coming back.
There really needs to be a lot of care when training on these systems. The dogs should see the fence as a "see-through-barrier," and they should understand that it exists. Yorkies are very smart and at least my three seem to understand the concept of why these flags are out in my yard. I will likely keep at least a couple of the flags out permanently just to mark the edges of the boundaries, so that they have a visual reinforcement as well as the auditory. And in all honesty, my three seems to prefer it indoors most of the time unless they are out for a walk on the leash. So they usually go out, do their thing and come right back to the door. Even people walking by don't seem to distract them too much. Which is why this odd behavior (sitting and looking at me and not doing her thing) was concerning to me. However, today she seems a little better. As long as it is quite outside, she seems okay right now, but as soon as there is any sort of distraction, she seems to forget why she was out there, and resumes the sitting and looking back at me behavior. This to me seems to suggest that there is something in the larger scope of thing beyond the yard that seems to be bothering her. I keep taking her out (a bit more often than usual) with at least one of the other two just so that she starts getting the idea of why she's out there to begin with.
Thanks again for the comments and suggestions and for your inquiries with the fencing system. |