The invisible fence

I'm writing a Product review on what I consider the worst Product invented for dogs - the GPS invisible fence, or electric fence (e-fence). For those that don't know what or how an e-fence works. It consists of an electric shock collar that goes on your dog and when they get close to the boundary of your yard the dog begins to feel the collar vibrate, then if the dog keeps moving toward the boundary it will get a shock from the collar. And, in a perfect world, the dog will turn away from the boundary and return home.  

Because it's an ‘invisible fence’ there are no obvious signs to the dog to let him know why he was shocked, leaving it up to the dog to figure out the cause of his pain. If you are ‘lucky’ - a word I don't like to apply to my dogs training - they will learn to avoid a treeline, or the road. If you are unlucky the dog associates the shock with kids, people, or other resident dogs, leading to fear or aggressive behaviors directed to what the dog associates as the cause. This was something that science showed us, a 100 years ago, thanks to John Watson's Little Albert experiment. Watson put 9-month-old Albert in a room to play with his toys, as Albert played, they introduced a white rat, and at the same time Watson made a loud scary noise. This startled Little Albert, who began to cry. After a few repetitions Albert starts to cry at the sight of the white rat, having learned to associate the scary sound with the sight of the white rat.

Little Albert

There are two kinds of 'invisible' fences. The traditional version required you to bury a cable underground, put up flags around the boundary, and asked the owners to spend 3 weeks training their dog to associate the shock with the flags. The training was done so the dog doesn't associate the pain from the collar with the kids running around and this freed the company from any fallout aggression behaviors that could come from what the dog may associate as the cause of his pain. In all the home visits that I have been to for behavioral issues where the dog had on a e-collar, I have never seen flags in the yard.  Even when I ask the owners, did you do the training for the fence? The majority of them replied no. I mean, why would you? it seems pretty straightforward - right? - dog walks to the edge of the property; dog gets shocked; and dog returns home. 

Which brings me to the other version of the 'invisible' e-fence - the GPS e-fence.  Promoted as hassle free, no buried cables, with cute ads of dogs running free and campers in the middle of a beautiful secluded oasis, you could hardly guess at the hidden dangers lurking for your dog.

The danger is referred to as GPS drift. I'll let Wikipedia describe it;

‘Satellite drift refers to the gradual movement of a satellite away from its intended position in orbit over time. This movement is caused by various factors, including solar wind, radiation pressure, and imperfections in the Earth's gravitational field. To maintain a satellite's operational position, especially in a geostationary orbit, station-keeping maneuvers using thrusters are required to counteract this drift.’   What this means is the boundary changes - a lot. 

GPS drift based on a runners mapping system.

In the promotion videos GPS drift is mentioned as a little issue that has the boundary shifting 8 to 10 feet - sounds like a small amount - essentially one car length. Accept GPS drift is closer to 100 feet - 10 car lengths. Really? This was confirmed because of another GPS device called Tractive. This works exactly the same as the e-fence but without the correction shock part.  

The GPS Tractive alerts me if my dog has gone beyond the boundary of my fenced yard. To set it up, I began by setting the property boundary, 10 feet beyond my fence into the neighbors yard.  Accept my phone kept alerting me that my dog had left the yard, so I kept increasing my boundary by 10 feet until it stopped alerting. This took ten tries to get it right. If this was a GPS E-fence, that would have been ten times your dog would have been shocked for no obvious reason - remember this is INVISIBLE.

Now think about this from your dog’s perspective - if your dog is sleeping soundly under his favorite tree, or curled up with your kids, and the GPS satellite ‘drifts' and your dog is startled out of sleep by a collar that shocks or beeps - what does your dog associate as the cause? What is your dogs ‘white rat’? If you are lucky, he associates it with that spot, and will avoid sleeping there in the future; if you are unlucky he associates it with the kids he is curled up beside. If that doesn’t make your spine shiver it should. Now your dog looks at the kids in fear or as a source of danger or as something to be wary of. 

Remember lucky is not a word you want to apply to your dog's emotional well-being and what the dog is learning. But if I know this, and science knows this, surely the GPS E-fence companies know this?

I think they do - because the GPS E-fence companies then suggest you use the home base safe zones so your dog won't get shocked while sleeping next to the kids and wake up fighting for his life. But again, we need to keep in mind that that boundary would also shift up to a 100 feet - imagine your house, getting up and moving a 100 feet, ridiculous, but that's what is essentially happening with the GPS - E-fence boundary - for your dog, it means they have no physical environment that is safe - including home. As for training the dog on where the boundary is, well, they don't even bother with that, because it's INVISIBLE, and it's really hard to train the dog to avoid the flags when the boundary shifts over a 100 feet in every direction. 

As for your dog, that is the saddest part of all, living in an environment that is unsafe, unpredictable, makes for an anxious dog, who is more fearful and potentially more aggressive.  

Ekaterina Kuzovkova / Shutterstock

Most people get these fences because they want to give their dog the best life. It may not look as cool as the wide open spaces shown in the marketing videos, but a tie out might be a better alternative to a GPS e-fence.