Ditto, we had a Carin growing up as well, and I have never seen a more viscious prey driven dog. Two anecdotes for you: Once when the parents were not home we let a squirrel get quite close to our porch…being prey driven, he (our Cairn Stiltin) [I know weird name] did not make a peep…Until I let go and said really fast…go git im!! I should not have done that with the benefit of hindsight. We had to wash the blood and entrails off Stiltin’s coat before mom got home…
two: One day whilst playing at a BBQ, we saw stiltin digging an eliptical hole in the ground roughly the size of him…when finished, he sat in it…So his eyes were exactly grass level. He sat there the better part of an hour…then we finally saw what he was doing. The sun was going down and the rabbits in our field were starting to graze…getting ever closer to him…When one finally got about 15 feet away…he shot out like a lightning bolt! Didn’t het it, but certainly got the taste of some fir in hus little mouth.
Any way, I love Cairns. I love my Rhodesian now just as much, it’s been a good 25 years since we had our cairn…
For the record, it doesn’t even take a power failure. A sufficiently motivated dog is not even slowed down by the shock. Ask me, who was chased my the driveway by the neighbor’s rottweiler. I saw him cross the fence to chase folks trying to walk their dogs down the street. He crossed any time he felt like it. Telling the neighbor he crossed the fence did no good. I had to get pictures of him outside the yard and get animal control to dispense a hefty fine and a declaration of a potentially vicious dog to get the animal actually confined to feel safe enough to go to my own mailbox or take out the trash. Research shows that in some states, invisible fences are not a lawful system of confinement. To my way of thinking, this needs to be the case everywhere.
The ‘Invisible Fence’ collar also beeps when approaching the limits of confinement, an audible signal that the dog quickly learns not to ignore, because it proceeds a mild shock. Once the dog demonstrably heeds the audible signal alone, the shock part of the training can be turned off, and only used as an occaisional reinforcement or reminder.
Friends have a dog who is a kitten killer (I know, I’d put her down, too). The dog is enclosed in a fence, but they also got an invisible fence for training. If she’s wearing her collar, the dog won’t go past the boundary for anything, whether the fence is on at all (no beeping, even). If the collars off, she’s gone.
I kind of miss mine too. The year she passed away, she’d turned 13 that summer and had dug out a nest of mice from the corner of my parents’ yard. I distinctly remember the squeak-THUD sounds they made as she grabbed them and threw them against the fence.
She once took down (and killed) a groundhog - got a few scars to show off to her doggy buddies… and she also attacked a skunk in our yard… Didn’t get it, but we certainly felt the pain for weeks and weeks every time it rained out there…
While my parents had her, they had no problems with rodents in their house or eating their garden. All our neighbours did (they live up against a wooded area), but we never saw a mouse or a rabbit in our yard… until the Cairn died. Then my parents got a Golden. Sophie likes to sit and watch the “cutsy widdle bunnies” eat my mom’s vegetables and thinks squirrels are kinda cool to watch empty out the bird feeders.
Or not. My sister had a dog who was so stupid that he’d wander across the fence line time after time. She said it was funny. She’d be around the corner and hear a surprised yip, followed soon after by another surprised yip as he recrossed back. She was sure that he was coming back into the yard because he knew he was supposed to be there and just didn’t remember the shock he had just gotten.
He was a mellow shephard who was no danger to anyone, they just didn’t want him wandering while they did yard work. Didn’t work.
PhL I believe I’d get me some of that invisible pepper spray for the next time I have a problem with that invisible fence. OR someone…NOT ME or you might just give them Dobies some invisible sleeping pills in a couple of biscuits. I hope the owner does what’s right. I love animals especially them sweet little puppies.
Just heard on the news about a foster daughter who was constrained by an invisable fence. But for the dog problems, I have encountered this before, and peper spray also will stop the dogs in its tracks, I suggest you carry some.
What the OP described is dogs running up toward him as if to attack and not stopping short until they were very, very close. Just how to close does a person have to let the dogs get before he could shoot them in self defense, given that, as the OP states, there were no flags indicating the presence of an electric fence?
I’d say that a person could reasonably plug the dogs from quite a few yards away to ensure his own safety, or that of others around him.
Another vote for ‘smaller is not necessarily nicer’. My parents have a chihuahua, like the very small ones, he sleeps in a shoe. I have never seen a crankier and more vicious dog (that coming from somebody who has been attacked by neighbor’s dogs twice, both dogs had to be put to sleep). My mom doesn’t know exactly what’s wrong with the little rat. We’ve had dogs ever since I can remember and we never had that problem. He charges everybody but our family, regardless of the size.
There are always children in or around my parent’s house. My parents had to split the backyard and put a fence to keep Tommy during the day, and bring him back inside at night. All the chihuahuas I know are nasty little creeps.
Juice the dogs as they charge up to the line of demarcation and just keep on jogging. If the owner objects, point out to him that his little electric fence is useless if the power is out or the battery is dead on the collar. Tell him to put up a real fence or put the dogs on a chain.
[hijack=“pet peeve”]
Invisible fencing is punishment, not negative reinforcement.
Punishment is conditioning to minimize a behaviour by introducing discouraging stimulus when the undesired action occurs. Negative reinforcement is conditioning to maximize a behaviour by removing discouraging stimulus when the desired action occurs.
[/hijack]
Are we talking “shoot” as in shooting a GUN or shooting pepper spray? I can’t imagine how you could pull off shooting a dog while out jogging without breaking some law or putting yourself, or others, into needless danger.
Scenario 1: You’re jogging down a residential street with a loaded gun in your pocket. That’s carrying concealed, which is a felony is some places, not to mention recklessly stupid. The chances of you shooting off your own foot seem far greater to me than the chances of you getting mauled by a loud dog.
Scenario 2: You’re jogging down a residential street with a loaded gun in full view. Something tells me that you’ll soon be visited by a police officer who will NOT be very sympathetic with your story that the dog down the street is intimidating you.
Scenario 3: You make it to the yard, wait for the dog to come bouncing up, then shoot it, in cold blood. Gee, the first question the plaintiff’s attorney would ask is, “If you FEARED the dog, why did you continue to jog past it?” The second would be, “Did you attempt to contact the owner or the police and lodge a complaint to see if this could be amicably resolved OR did you just take a gun out and start shooting?”
Scenario 4: You shoot the dog and subsequently get arrested for reckless endangerment for dispensing a firearm in the middle of the freaking suburb. This assumes you don’t hit little Johnny, who is minding his own business and just happens to be in the trajectory of the bullet meant for the dog. If you do, then you’ll be seeing the inside of a jail for no other reason than you’re a freaking idiot.
Kids playing in the neighborhood + untrained accessible Dobermans = a disaster waiting to happen.
Kids are supposed to be able to play in their neighborhoods. Yours sounds like a very nice neighborhood for kids, Phlosphr , except for this jerk and his dogs. And it is the owner at fault, not the dogs, but unfortunately he is not responsible and they are therefore dangerous.
I would start putting it all in writing…to this owner, to my city councilman, to the local police. If there is not a local Ordinance in regards to this; new ones can be written. Enlist your neighbors, esp. the ones with children. Maybe a neighborhood association or neighborhood planning unit would be a good ally.
I have never seen an invisible fence used for dogs like you describe. The few I have seen in my neighborhood were for little poochies which would most likely lick you to death…used mostly to keep them from wandering off.
There ought to be a law :mad:
Maybe you can make one
I was thinking “gun” since i don’t know what effect pepper spray has on large dogs (if any). Oh,and nice use of the word “needless.” I’d say the guy who’s letting his Dobes or whatever charge innocent passers-by is the one who’s putting others in needless danger.
Scenario 5: You’re jogging down a residential street, two large dobes charge at you, you do nothing because to defend yourself would be nasty to happy puppykins, and they burst through the electric fence and you get severely mauled.
Yesterday my wife came with me past said house, and this time the owner was outside mowing his lawn…said dobes came tear assing around from the back when we jogged by and did the same thing…The guy only called them off, and they went over to him…and kept right on barking in our direction.
My wife recommended getting some of that bear spray from the hunting store in town…I hear it packs quite a whollup! I’d just love so see those little fuckers with two eyes full of 100% pepper spray…
Heh. My son was at a party where they had an invisible fence. Some drunk chick was getting kind of obnoxious, so the guys put the dog’s collar on her. She’d teeter over the property line every so often and…ZAP! Then the guys gave her the slightest nudge, and…ZAP! Hilarious!
If you ever see me jogging…YOU better be jogging too. Cause I promise ya whatever it is that has ME running down the road is too big and bad to shoot. and I gotta sawed off dbl bb shotgun w/ 3" mags. which would be overkill in this case. The pepperspray should suffice. I’d probably have a conversation with the local authorities too. If for no other reason than preventing a tragedy that is bound to happen. Somebody that isn’t aware of the situation is going to get hurt (that’s a promise) it’s a wonder YOU didn’t have a heart attack. My folks like to take a stroll in the evening. That’d be the end of 'em… what about somebody walking their little dog on a leash. No electric fence is gonna help. Either the pooch or grandma is gonna flip. If one of my kids took a shortcut across an open yard with NO signs and no dogs in sight. I don’t care if they were “trespassing” they’re kids. The owner of those Dobies…is gonna be dogfood.
t-keela is right. Eventually a kid is going to get hurt by simply taking a short-cut through this idiot’s yard. And I don’t want to hear about “trespassing” either…they are kids for pete’s sake…who of us never cut through a yard when we were kids?
