The property I’m on has a chain link fence which works very well in keeping my two dogs in. The house next door just sold and the new neighbours have two large dogs. My dogs spend most of the time inside but it’s going to be a real drag when I take them out in the yard and they see the two new dogs on the other side of the fence.
My one dog will savagely attack the fence, trying to get the other dogs once she sees them. The fence is sturdy and I’m not worried about her breaking through. I just want to somehow make it so she can’t see them as well. I don’t have much money and I don’t really care how it looks. I’m really hoping someone has some ideas.
Something like that would be perfect. But I just had an idea. I don’t know how it works with electric wires that they put on fences for horses but If I could make it so she gets a shock when she jumps on it, that would stop the problem. I wonder if if it would charge the whole fence seeing as how it’s already metal.
I’m not sure about the cost of this but it adding privacy to a chain link fence is the whole point of the product. You may be able to fabricate something similar.
I don’t want to threadshit, but I am not sure that this will really help that much. We have a completely opaque privacy fence between us and our neighbors and it does not curtail the barking and carrying on one bit. He knows there is a dog over there and if he doesn’t hear it he will go over and jump up to peak over just to make sure.
One of my dogs is huge. When she stands by me, the top of her ears comes up to my arm pits. She could definitely just look over most fences, that’s why I think the electric fence might do the trick.
It will keep all of them off the fence, on both sides. And if they can’t jump up on the fence, they can’t see over it if I put up some lattice or something.
Electrifying a chain-link fence may be challenging: such a fence nearly always has metal posts that stick well into the ground, whereas any electrified portion will need to be isolated from ground.
Many dogs have excellent senses of smell and hearing. Particularly because of the latter, I think it would be somewhat strange if blocking vision were sufficient to keep a dog from reacting to one in a nearby yard.
As people have pointed out, dogs are quite capable of telling that there are other dogs there without sight, just using their other senses. So blocking the view wouldn’t do much to stop them from attacking the fence. It may make it worse – not being able to see what the other dogs are doing may just make your dogs that much more upset.
Just work on teaching your dogs to curb their aggressiveness, and accept the neighbor dogs. That will take a while, but it’s what needs to be done if you want a well-behaved city dog.
We live way out in the boonies. The entire time they’ve been alive, there’s not been any dogs living next to us so it’s never been an issue. The odd time that dogs walk by the property is when mine start throwing themselves at the fence.
I know, from how they act if dogs walk by, that they’ll be even worse if there are dogs in (what they consider) their territory.
One is the barking at the other dogs. That won’t be solved by a privacy fence.
The other is jumping on the fence. I would think that you could train them not to do that. You might be able to use an electric fence, but it would need to be stand-alone, not part of the chain link fence.
Another option would be one of those buried electric dog fences. To keep them from jumping up, not that it would stop the barking.
The problem is the barking, right? So how about introducing the dogs to each other so that they know and accept each other? So when they see each other through the fence, there’s no barking, only wagging tails.
I would try planting a thick hedge in front of the chain link fence. Maybe Photinia. Just to cut down on the noise and view of the other dogs, although I think ultimately, “dogs will be dogs” and they’ll most likely bark at each other some no matter what you do.
As said, blocking their view isn’t going to work, and neither is electrifying the fence. In fact, electrifying the fence is a bad, bad idea. Imagine if the neighbors have a small child over and the kid toddles over to the fence. Kids playing in the alley might lean against it by accident. It’s just not a good idea to have an electric fence when you are not isolated in the country.
I would suggest training and introductions to the other dogs. It’ll take time and effort on your part, but it’s the best way to go about it. We had to do the same with ours and our neighbor’s dog.
Those of you who said “oh just train them not to do that”, I thought you were nuts because these are what Cesar Millan would call a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 for aggression. The most aggressive one, Bella, also has severe fears of everything. The sound of a bird chirping would make her go so insane that she’d try to break out the window to run away, or find a mark on a wall and try to climb into it to hide. I’d pretty much given up on her. I’ve never known a dog as miserable as she was.
I tried drugs, desensitizing her, even the vet was out of ideas. I decided to try one more thing and that’s do exactly what the dog whisperer does.
The change in her behaviour is nothing short of phenomenal. All of her fears have completely gone, she doesn’t throw herself at the fence and half the time, she’s better behaved than the new dogs. She’s now what I would call a 4 or 5. Mostly she’s pretty good and occasionally she does a big rush and barks. But she stops and comes back when called.
When someone comes to the door they don’t go psychotic anymore either.
So as much as I hate to do it, I have to admit that I was wrong and discipline was the key. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a ton of hard, hard work but the payoff has been so worth it.
I was going to advise that my two dogs also get aggressive about dogs they see walk past on the street, but are completely laidback about the dog who lives next door. One of mine will sniff the neighbour’s dog’s nose through the chain link fence between our properties and gets on quite well, the other just about completely ignores it. As far as the dogs are concerned, there’s a big difference between intruders walking past on the street and those who belong, such as the neighbour’s dog.