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Blog entries | Gulag
Last week, we tried letting Chewy run free. She’s old enough, we thought, and never strays far from home. Besides, she has a tag and other dogs roam free in the neighborhood without problems.
Freedom lasted only a few days, though, after I walked out in the front yard one morning and saw her playing in the middle of Sandy Flats Road – a good target for cars that come over the hill.
So she went back on the front-yard tether, a 100-foot stretch of cord that allows her a wide circular, but limited, territory. She hates the tether and yelps her displeasure constantly.
On to Plan B. I tried fencing in the back yard with a two-wire, low-voltage electric fence. She hit the fence at a full gallop and went through it like it wasn’t there.
At seven months and 30 pounds, this part-Chow, part something-else bundle of uncontrolled energy can leave more damage than Hurricane Katrina in her wake. The back porch often looks like a battlefield before the smoke clears. A wicker chair is history; Remnants of various doggie toils litter the floor. The screen door is bowed out from continual assault.
A kennel is definitely in this dog’s future, along with a fenced-in back yard that allows her room to roam, We can probably fence off part of the woods behind the house with a wire fence and then put an old-fashioned wood picket fence in the more visible parts of the back yard.
But it will have to wait until after next week because an electrician is coming to run wire to our utility shed and the front-yard gazebo. But a new doggie-gulag is coming. Freedom for this mutt was fleeting.
Reminds me of an old saying:
If you love something, set it free. It will come back.
If it doesn’t come back, hunt it down and kill it.
Doug Thompson
October 22, 2005 at 5:33 pm
Been there, tried that. She laughs at the training collar and an invisible fence offers no containment for a dog that neither feels nor fears pain.
Elise
October 24, 2005 at 12:51 am
Glad to hear she’s still part of the family, how about some photos of her in the beautiful fall leaves?
Karen
October 24, 2005 at 1:13 pm
I know two guys who have dogs who are capable of shooting through the invisible fence and getting trapped on the outside, somehow unable to get back in.
My dogs are German Shepherds and similar size and temperament, so I just built a large fenced area in my back yard. It wasn’t cheap, and they don’t care for the restriction, but cars, wildlife and passing humans are all too dangerous for my family to roam free.
Carl
October 22, 2005 at 5:20 pm
Also consider an invisible fence, or try training with a training collar.
Steve
October 24, 2005 at 4:17 am
Doug,
Don’t do the invisible fence. I did that with Abigale years ago, an still to this day she reacts badly to pagers and other noises.
Try Rabit fence. It is cheap, if you curl the bottom inward she can’t dig under it, and maybe she won’t learn to jump over it.
Teresa
October 24, 2005 at 4:42 pm
We used electric training collars with our Aussie/German Shepherds. It took approx two days of watching their every move and hitting the button when necessary. They never roam now, and stay within the perimeters of our property. No electric fence, just the collars.
Once in awhile, we must put them on again for a refresher course, but not often. We pen them only at night, to protect them from packs of coyotes which roam this area.