Have a new house with almost 2 acres of already installed petsafe invisible fence. Seller stated there was a break in the wire somewhere but left all the collars / controller for us to troubleshoot. I traced down the breaks using a 4 stroke engine and AM radio (pretty cool). Soldered & heat shrunk it all back together.
Petsafe controller was happy & we were getting some beeping on the collars. Started to get ready to flag and started to see that the collars dont always beep / vibrate. Some areas they do and some they dont. Played with batteries, boundary settings, etc. A quick google search shows that the petsafe systems can be unreliable - many complaints about working fine then not working & the need to keep buying $80 collars often.
I see there are other systems - sportdog, etc. Anyone have a history of what works best? It looks like I can just reuse the wire in the ground if I wanted to use a different system. I'm sure someone has been through this before. ;)
Thanks!
I've had a PetSafe for about four years with no issues whatsoever. No problems with the collar either.
I think PetSafe and Sport Dog are the same company. We also have a SportDog collar with the remote.
My wife was gung-ho on the concept as soon as we got our puppy. I bought the one at Lowe's Depot and rented a digger-thingie and put in a few hundred feet of wire.
Our pupper is very much a house dog and a spayed female, and she is the bestest, sweetest, most obedient dog. We never saw the need to put a collar on her and start training. I can bring her up short with a quick yell, and she's never been disciplined. She's never outside when we aren't.
Installed. Never used.
Also been using Petsafe for 25 or so years. When it works, it works great. When there's a difficult-to-find break in the line, it's a BUGGER. This year I finally gave in and purchased their brand of break locator. Sends a different tone down each lead. Nifty!
Also, these systems are susceptible to lightning strikes if left on in a storm. We've lost a couple transmitters this way. I'm pretty diligent about unplugging it during storms now. Even when it means stumbling to the garage in the middle of the night when awakened by thunder.
dads had this one for four years or so now with no trouble whatsoever.
We use Invisible Fence which has been totally reliable. You are on the hook for proprietary batteries which need replacement every 3 months. Installation of the wire was $.08 per foot (including wire cost), even across asphalt. A really nice feature is that if one of the dogs does run past the wire, the system will let them back in with no shock. The system does not trigger until you are a horizontal distance of about 6 inches from the wire (up or down a couple feet does not change where you would draw the trigger line on a map). That lets you follow long/skinny parts of your property if you need to. We have not had the system go down in a storm, yet, and it does have its own 8 hr battery backup built in. You also get a "keep out" thingy as part of the training, which is an adjustable spot unit that sets a sphere with radius 0-6 feet that will trigger the collars. We use that to create a cat food/eating area that the dogs can't get to. We also have a pet door set to match the collars.
The system is pricey, but still less than 25% of fencing the one half of the yard we were planning to and now we have the whole property, though we set front and back as different zones so the dogs won't spend all day barking at people on the sidewalk. In full disclosure, real fences are stupid expensive where I live because we have a lot of small boulders in the ground. They generally have to jackhammer to be able to put in fence posts. Our quote ended up with one hour of labor per one foot of installed fence. When one of my neighbors wanted to plant trees, he brought in a two foot layer of dirt rather than trying to dig to put in trees.
Wireless. Trust me. In frost belt it's worth it. We've been using the pet safe wireless system on 3 different dogs since 2008. We did have to replace one collar because it got dropped hard onto the tile floor and kicked.
training is the important step. To be honest we haven't even had to put the collar on the remaining dog because she doesn't venture outside the "zone".
I agree with Bob, go wireless if you can.
I had hoped to, but it wouldn't work for us. I borrowed a known-good unit, and it left a huge gap on one side of the property.
As it turns out, if your neighbor has a wired system in the ground, it can interfere with your wireless system.
Our neighbors have a wired system installed right at the edge of the property line. Basically, it gave my dog an open door to the bitch next door.
We just got a puppy and have to wait a few months before we can hook it up for him. House had a Petsafe one already installed but we don't know where the lines are. Not sure if we are going to go the route of having some one come out and find the lines and be sure it still works or rent an auger and put up an actual fence.
We have a PetStop system. I think it cost $1200 installed onto our 7.5 acres and had two collars and training included for both dogs with a lifetime guarantee (more onsite training and adjustment for the individual dog if either escaped).
We've been quite happy with it. The only downside is the proprietary batteries, but at least they last about 3 or 4 months, but the system has been rock solid for the past 5 or 6 years.
Thanks all for the feedback. What about gps collars? They seem to be out there as well? I'm finding a lot of 5+ year old reviews with mixed results. There seems to be a ton of these odd / generic reviews with sponsored links to Amazon. No idea if they are valid or not.
I really have to slow down my reading. I was excited for a few seconds to read about the Invisible Dog, Francis.
Jeez.
All I have is that once I found a dog wandering my neighborhood so I stopped and grabbed it. The dog had a collar with a box and a regular collar with the dogs name and address. I grabbed a lease and walked the dog home. The dog would not get near the edge of the yard where it lived. And I realized, once the dog got out, it couldn't get back in without being shocked.
Kendall_Jones said:
Thanks all for the feedback. What about gps collars? They seem to be out there as well? I'm finding a lot of 5+ year old reviews with mixed results. There seems to be a ton of these odd / generic reviews with sponsored links to Amazon. No idea if they are valid or not.
Before we bought our system, I was looking into gps. My understanding from 6ish years ago is that gps is good when you have a large property (15+ acres) that has good lines of sight to the sky and natural boundaries, because if you're under a canopy, the "line" can change by up to 50', which means it's very hard to train to an artificial property line.
Think farms/ranches/pasture land kinda thing. I was told that my property was not a good fit because it's the smallest acceptable size and half-wooded.
