On my new daily run around the block I have discovered several new-to-me things about my quiet little coastal Connecticut Neighborhood.
Neighbor X a half mile away has an Invisible Fence.
Neighbor X a half mile away has two (2) large male Doberman Pinschers.
Neighbor X’s Dobermans like to run full blast at passers by stopping inches before mauling and bark at a pitch that would make most vomit.
So there I am, loving the nice pre-autumn morning, running along pleasant street, when out from behind their lovely black raised ranch 2 large Doberman’s run out full sprint towards me.
I couldn’t escape if I wanted to. I was breakfast plain and simple. I half stopped in the middle of the road and braced myself for the impending doom. I knew I could get away, but certainly not unscathed. I’d have plenty of stitches and a whollup of good story.
Said Dobermans stopped short and barked mercilessly as they frothed at the mouth, alerting the owner inside to come out and call them to order.
Cardiac Arrest Subverted, I noticed the little black boxes attached to their collars…and knew there was an invisible fence around this yard protecting passers by from being mauled.
I didn’t even hear the owners apologies. I only heard myself within my own head saying…"Where the fuck are your little flags encircling your yard alerting people to your invisible fence? Where are those little fucking flags assuring passers by they will not be mauled by your heathen bloody fucking DOGS!!!
PLEASE OWNERS OF INVISIBLE FENCES…KEEP THE LITTLE FUCKING FLAGS UP IF YOU HAVE DEVILS SPAWN FOR PETS…PLEEZE.
I’ll give you one worse - people with invisible fences whose dogs have learned they can charge the barrier and the shock will shut off soon enough. My husband is a letter carrier and a couple times he’s been surprised by a charging pooch who he expects to stop, and then it doesn’t.
Aggressive dogs in residential neighborhoods suck period! I could see if it was a junkyard trying to protect its goods at night, but c’mon.
Poeple like that tend to act like their dogs are harmless and that you’re acting unusual by being pissed/scared shitless.
Whilst I sympathize with your plight, can I be the first to say - What in the name of all that is dark and fetid and lives in a slime pit, is an invisible fence? do these little black boxes electrocute the dogs if the step over a line sort of the same as in the running man?
IANAL, but it seems to me that you have a right to walk on public right of way without being assaulted. (An assault in legal terms, is merely the threat of violence.) How is this any different from some lunatic-baseball-bat-wielding homeowner threatening everyone who comes near his property?
If the authorities can’t help, perhaps you should carry a can of pepper spray and give the dogs a blast everytime you feel threatened.
Yeah, we have Pyscho Dog in the neighborhood who does the same thing. We’ll be walking by on our nice little stroll with Buddy the Beagle and the next thing you know it’s chaos! Psycho Dog, a strange mixed breed of german shepherd and who knows what else, just cannot stand to see peace and harmony. From nowhere, he’ll charge towards you, barking and slobbering, then suddenly he STOPS as if…well, as if zapped by an electrical current. I swear one day he’s going to herniate a disk jerking back so.
My dog, though sweeter than any animal ever to walk the earth, is not going to win any prizes for intellect because he does not get that Psycho Dog is not particularly friendly. Buddy torments Psycho by doggedly pulling us towards the yard, tail wagging furiously and smiling idiotically as if this will convince Psycho to join him on his Woodstockian walk because, dude, violence isn’t the answer. Psycho responds by snarling even louder and showing more teeth. You know he’s just iching for Buddy to get his sorry beagle ASS in his yard so that he can give him a lesson on free love.
Throughout it all, you try to maintain a placid expression, but a part of you is always wondering if this is going to be the day where Psycho decides “To hell with the jolt, I’m breaking outta here!”
Ah, peaceful walks through the burbs.
Oh, BTW, Phlosphr, most people take the flags down because they make cutting the grass a pain in the ass.
If I understand that “invisible fence” thing right, that could be very dangerous for young children. They could cross the invisible fence (which of course they can’t see) and be attacked by those dogs. It would be all very well for the owner to say, “Well, those kids shouldn’t have been trespassing on my property,” when the kids would have had no way of knowing where the property starts.
You’ve pretty much got it. It’s a nine-volt battery on a dog collar rigged up to an inductor and a transistor. A buried wire with current running through it produces an electric field. When you move an inductor through an electric field, you can generate a small amount of current. The current opens the transistor (fair warning: this is dredged from Circuits lectures from six years ago…) and allows the ZAPping part of the circuit to kick in.
The Biot-Savart Law has a velocity term and a field strength term, so it works differently at different speeds. If the dog approaches the field slowly, he can make it almost to the wire before he gets a zap. Dog approaches at a sprint, and the inductor trips much earlier, giving him a sustained zap while he’s stopping. When the dog stops the ZAPping should (in theory) also stop.
Yes, the fence is burried around a perimeter on someone’s property and the little black boxes attached to the devils spawn’s neck electrocute them as they enter the “zap-zone” and they soon learn not to get too close to the perimeter. In my case they ran right up to where they knew they wouldn’t get zapped and stood there barking.
I believe it is perfectly legal - though barbaric - to have an invisible fence with devils spawn on the other side. Small children or not. And that is the likely reason I have not gone to the authorities. Because I would most likely be told to take a hike.
Pretty much. Well, it’s not a harmful shock, more annoying/surprising/unpleasant, apparently, though I guess they can crank it up to “sorta painful” for those stubborn dogs. You get a wire implanted under the ground around your property, and your dog wears a special collar. I think the dog gets a vibration-type warning when they get close, if I’m not mistaken, and then a buzz if they cross it. This shuts off eventually in case someone does something like put the dog in the car and then drive off while the dog’s still got the collar on and is getting zapped. This lets people’s dogs have the run of their property without worry they’ll jump/dig under a fence and escape, and keeps passers-by safe.
As Philosphr said, though, it’s still scary when a big dog “charges” you, barking, and you don’t know it’ll pull up short at the edge of the sidewalk.
Giles: Well, at least this way a roaming dog wouldn’t attack a kid in the kid’s own yard. Plenty of kids who aren’t supervised end up climbing neighbor’s fences, only to be attacked/scared by dogs there - at least this way, the kid doesn’t have to climb back over the fence to escape, which is preferable. Most people who use an “invisible fence” are suburban residents with comparatively small yards; it’s not like kids are roaming acres of undistinguishable fields only to suddenly get jumped. Plus, not having a visible fence makes it easier for a kid to see a dog who might not be so friendly, before approaching it.
I personally hate, as a dog trainer, any negative reinforcement training (with the exception of one thing, and that was using a shock collar to train our SAR dogs to stay away from rattlesnakes. It was for their own safety, and it was effective after ONE correction.)
Invisible fences are a crock. Honestly. I’ve heard of and SEEN dogs who, when motivated enough to chase something, have just barrelled through the IF, gotten the shock, and carried on the chase. This is common in sheepdogs and sight hounds… of course, the fun then is that your dog won’t come back into your yard once it’s done with the chase (assuming it didn’t get run over by a car or something like that) because it will get shocked on the way in, and the motivation just isn’t there in the first place.
The thing that REALLY bothers me has been said in the post above mine - kids can’t tell where the land begins/ends and can put themselves in a dangerous situation. The ball just rolled into the neighbour’s yard… there is no fence… let’s just go get it… and whammo, they get charged by a happy bouncy lab who is twice their size… or worse, knocked down and hurt by a dog who doesn’t take kindly to having strangers on its lawn.
I know for a FACT that if my Aussie were behind an invisible fence and the shock level set high, she’d still barrel right through the “barrier” if she saw something to chase like a rabbit, a squirrel, or another dog to go play with. I’m just not going to risk that happening…
so for a truly dangerous dog breed - any chance of them taking a leaf from ‘The Running Man’ and using an explosive charge? Think of the trouble that could have been saved had this been used for the critters at Jurassic Park
Oh, one more downside to invisible fences - it doesn’t make it easier on any delivery/repair people who have to come to your front door. If the dog is growling and running back and forth in the front yard behind what’s obviously an invisible fence, you can’t get to the front door of the house.
You got it right. You bury a wire around the perimeter where you want the dog contained. Then you put a collar on any dog you want to contain in that area. It will deliver a slight shock if he attempts to cross that line. You can increase the shock if you have a particularly willful or stupid dog, but most dogs get the message with a milder shock. (There are some design flaws. For instance, if the dog breaks out, he will then get a shock entering back INTO the yard. Non-collared animals are free to enter your yard at any time and torment your dog.) But the basic idea is to contain the animal by delivering a shock if he breaches the line of demarcation. To help teach the dog where his area is, the owner will put up little flags marking where the wire is buried. Once he learns where he can go, the flags come down and thus pedestrians don’t know if a dog is loose or contained in an electrified area.
While I can see how this may seem cruel, I don’t really think it is, generally speaking. Sometimes traditional fences are just not feasible either because of zoning restrictions or because they are too expensive. And if it’s a choice between an electric fence or a rope tied to a tree, I’ll go with the fence anyday because it gives the dog free range of the area.
The owner of the property surely has a duty to protect the public from a hazard he has placed there such as the dog.
If you were to leave something dangerous lying around in your yard and a child had access to it, lets say for arguments sake the item was a gun, then the owner would be soon up in court, just because the item is a dog and not a gun, I just do not see all that much distinction, worse, the dog is capable of attack, whereas the gun will remain where it is until someone picks it up.
In this case all that’s happened is that the dangerous item is compelled to remain in the yard, but its perfectly possible for someone unauthorised to walk straight in and it is pretty reasonable to assume that a child might be that person, or even if warning signs were placed its quite possible for someone whose first language is not that of the sign, or is illiterate, to walk across the yard and be attacked.
This invisible fence thingy sounds really dangerous. What happens if the little black box gets wet, the battery is drained or something else malfunctions? Who let the dogs out?
I swear one day he’s going to herniate a disk jerking back so.