I was surveying a house on Jupiter Island, this is a place with Multi million dollar homes. Very wealthy.

The owners of the house had just had a contractor install their invisable dog fence. They were giving it a test run while I was there. I stopped to watch as I had never seen one in action before.

They got excited as their dog walked towards the driveway about 25 feet from the road out front. It was about to cross the line.

As it got too close I guess it got shocked a little, so it jumped in suprise. Then it got shocked a lot and jumped really high landing on the other side of the wire, and bolting in fear right into the road. A car was coming.

The car locked up its brakes and came screetching to a halt a few feet from the startled dog. Then the dog took off for the yard afraid of the car, yeah, shock again, jumped again freaking out.

It took everything I had to keep from laughing in these poeples faces. They were in horror, the contractor looked like he wanted to run. The ensuing conversation between the VERY angry homeowners and contractor was not pleasant.

Tim, Be careful with the device you describe. If the wire gets hung up it will snap very easily. You'll also want as few splices as possible.

What do they have to be angry about? The TOLD him to install it. It's THEIR fault if they don't like the outcome. He just dug the stupid trench and buried the wire.

I was over the house of one of my daughter's friends. They just had a fence installed and as we stood on the front lawn the father remarked on how "fluffy" was shivering on the lawn again. (This was when I was reading up on different systems.) Apparently the system malfunctioned and started frying Fluffy. I recommended they remove the collar and call the contractor.

It was none of my business, but from what I could discern he was also the person that sold them the unit then installed it.

Yup, the services around here charge quite a bit...part of the package is to train the dog AND the owner.

So if Tim has a invisible dog does that make him a invisible man?

My neighbor used a small, hand-held garden trowel (?!?!?!:rolleyes: :confused: ) to bury their invisible fence when we first moved in. Of course, he had very little success, and the wire would rise to the surface in several places every few months over the course of several years. He would go back out, use the same trowel and bury it again only to have the wire rise to the surface again in a few months.

This past fall, he contracted a guy to come out and bury the fence properly. As fate would have it, the contractor turned right when he should have turned left and cut the coax cable that ran to both of our houses. If I had not been at home, I would have never known what happened. It didn't take very long for the contractor to fix the cut cable and to finish burying the fence line... :D

Here is an irrelevant but interesting observation. When they bury pipe for the purpose of transportation of fluids (like water from a reservoir to a city), they coat the inside of the steel pipe with concrete. Because concrete doesn't wear as fast as steel. Go figure.

And they use enough concrete on the outside and the inside of the pipe so that when the pipe is empty (full of air), it still is denser than water. If they do not do this, the pipe floats up out of the ground.

I am almost embarassed to post these pics because I just "threw" this together and it looks like @ss, but it will be a one time use tool and I don't even know if it will work, so pardon my crudeness (is that a word?). :D

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1175735715.jpg http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1175735938.jpg

Tomorrow I will drill and tap a couple of mntg holes to attach a couple of tow bars that will either hook to my 4-wheeler hitch or my drawbar attached to my 3 pt hitch on the tractor. I will also add a couple tabs to mount the spool of wire.

Tim, Looks like solid core wire. Is that the case? Solid core is recommended for applications over 1000'.

He didn't bury it properly. They actually sell kits to "staple" the wire to the surface of a grassed lawn. the grass overtakes the wire in time and embeds it totally. As mentioned earlier, a cut on an angle is the best insurance for keeping the wire intact.

No, it is the 500' roll of 18 or 20 ga copper stranded wire that came with the kit.

The instructions claim the unit works for up to 5 acres (about 2000') and I bought 3 additional 500' rolls to cover the 2000' feet, but I might snag a 2500' roll of 16 ga from work to use instead if we have any old obsolete odd colored rolls taking up shelf space. ;)

Our local tool rental has a converted roto-tiller with one disc blade and the wire feed behind it. Only goes down about 3" or so. I've seen the professional installers with a similar rig.

Lightning took out our underground dog fence and transmitter recently. Time to put in a new and improved wire (14 ga solid vs 20 ga stranded I originally installed 4-5 yrs ago).

My old tool was not working too well in our soggy ground (clumps of grass were lifting unit out of ground requiring multiple stops/back up/re-start. I got disgusted so yesterday morning I cobbed up a new rig to attach to my 3 pt hitch back blade. Worked great and I put in the remaining 1500' by myself yesterday afternoon with no problems including crossing 3 stone driveways. :eek:

Here are some pics of my obamanation.


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1354551641.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1354551695.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1354551740.jpg

this story would be awesome if the dog's name was "lightning" or "sparky"..

good luck!! i have no skills or skillful opinions to add. :(

If I was not worried about damaging visiting friends airplane propellers/engines, I would just let the little bastard run free... If he is dumb enough to run away or get hit by I truck.... so be it. I am pretty sure however that the dumbazz would get into an airplane propeller and the resulting prop strike might require an engine tear down and new prop (20k plus damage possible :eek:).

rent a mini-sneaker, job done one day.