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6 Posts
Hi all,
My 18 month pit mix is determined to leave my yard. I have a 6 foot fence (was 4, but she can jump 4 so I added 2 more feet) around my 1.5 acre property. She continued to leave by digging under, so I got deer stakes and staked the fence down. For awhile, she was leaving daily between 4-7pm. We called it the witching hour. After I secured the bottom, she'd leave less frequently. She'd find a weak spot under the fence and dig it out and go galivanting in the state park behind my house. I try to keep an eye on her during that time, but invariably, one of my kids lets her out of the door when I'm making dinner, or we'll be outside and I start working on something and it slips my mind (yes, human error) and before I know it, we have no idea where she is.
I run this dog between 3-7 miles a day, sometimes on foot at around a 6 mph pace, and sometimes by bike at a 10 mph pace. She has no problem keeping up on a 7 mile bike ride. I leash her for most of the runs, and let her run off-leash with the bike, stopping and leashing her if we see another person. She sticks with me like glue 95% of the time while exercising, just running ahead now and then to chase a rabbit on the trail. I say this because I think her wandering is because she thinks the park is just an extension of our yard. But I just can't see a way I could exercise her as much as she needs, timewise, without those crazy fast bike rides off leash.
10 times out of 10, she goes into the park behind the house. However, now that I've secured most of the boundary, she can't seem to squeeze back in the way she came. Last night, while I was at a meeting, my daughter and husband were home and let her out. They lost track of her and a bit later she showed up on the front porch. We live on a busy road and I know it's a matter of time before she sees a deer in the fields across the street and gets hit by a car.
She has a pretty high prey drive compared to my other dogs, but not insane - we have cats and chickens on the property and she hangs out with them without issue (she can jump into the chicken coop from a sit and sometimes goes in to hang out with them and eat compost).
I toy with the idea of an electric fence, but to be honest, this dog has so much determination that I don't think the shock would do anything but make her fearful and aggressive. Maybe I'm naïve. Our property is really not designed well for laying a fence either, because there would be a break and we'd have to go through forested land. Frankly, I don't want to go through the effort of laying the fence just to find out that it's ineffective.
I've never done boundary training, thinking (again based on my past dogs) that a freaking 6 foot fence would do the job of keeping her put. And really, I don't know how training would keep her in if a fence doesn't... I don't think she cares whether she's being a "good dog" or not... I have found that she is easily trainable in the sense of learning new skills and tricks, but she does them on her own time when she feels like it.
Ugh... this dog is making homelife pretty stressful. I honestly have more and more moments where I want to just give her back to the shelter. But the kids love her, and I've never surrendered an animal before. She's so amazing in so many ways, but she's such a burden in so many other ways...
My 18 month pit mix is determined to leave my yard. I have a 6 foot fence (was 4, but she can jump 4 so I added 2 more feet) around my 1.5 acre property. She continued to leave by digging under, so I got deer stakes and staked the fence down. For awhile, she was leaving daily between 4-7pm. We called it the witching hour. After I secured the bottom, she'd leave less frequently. She'd find a weak spot under the fence and dig it out and go galivanting in the state park behind my house. I try to keep an eye on her during that time, but invariably, one of my kids lets her out of the door when I'm making dinner, or we'll be outside and I start working on something and it slips my mind (yes, human error) and before I know it, we have no idea where she is.
I run this dog between 3-7 miles a day, sometimes on foot at around a 6 mph pace, and sometimes by bike at a 10 mph pace. She has no problem keeping up on a 7 mile bike ride. I leash her for most of the runs, and let her run off-leash with the bike, stopping and leashing her if we see another person. She sticks with me like glue 95% of the time while exercising, just running ahead now and then to chase a rabbit on the trail. I say this because I think her wandering is because she thinks the park is just an extension of our yard. But I just can't see a way I could exercise her as much as she needs, timewise, without those crazy fast bike rides off leash.
10 times out of 10, she goes into the park behind the house. However, now that I've secured most of the boundary, she can't seem to squeeze back in the way she came. Last night, while I was at a meeting, my daughter and husband were home and let her out. They lost track of her and a bit later she showed up on the front porch. We live on a busy road and I know it's a matter of time before she sees a deer in the fields across the street and gets hit by a car.
She has a pretty high prey drive compared to my other dogs, but not insane - we have cats and chickens on the property and she hangs out with them without issue (she can jump into the chicken coop from a sit and sometimes goes in to hang out with them and eat compost).
I toy with the idea of an electric fence, but to be honest, this dog has so much determination that I don't think the shock would do anything but make her fearful and aggressive. Maybe I'm naïve. Our property is really not designed well for laying a fence either, because there would be a break and we'd have to go through forested land. Frankly, I don't want to go through the effort of laying the fence just to find out that it's ineffective.
I've never done boundary training, thinking (again based on my past dogs) that a freaking 6 foot fence would do the job of keeping her put. And really, I don't know how training would keep her in if a fence doesn't... I don't think she cares whether she's being a "good dog" or not... I have found that she is easily trainable in the sense of learning new skills and tricks, but she does them on her own time when she feels like it.
Ugh... this dog is making homelife pretty stressful. I honestly have more and more moments where I want to just give her back to the shelter. But the kids love her, and I've never surrendered an animal before. She's so amazing in so many ways, but she's such a burden in so many other ways...