Allow me to regale you with a tale today.  The tale of Lloyd and the Invisible Fence.

We are very lucky to have relatively unspoiled greenspace directly adjacent to our backyard, and a park on one side of our property.  This means we only have one direct neighbour, and we get along just fine so we long ago decided to not build a fence in our backyard.  We reasoned that this would spoil our view, and limit our access to nature, not to mention probably reduce our usable backyard since I mow a rather, ah, generous area not technically belonging to me.  The kids and Harvey enjoyed a relatively large yard for a long time.  Fast forward ten years and here comes Lloyd.  As a fairly boisterous puppy, Lloyd was not overly concerned with things like legal property lines, the limits of our neighbour’s patience, and the amount of effort it takes to bath a St. Bernard after swimming in the Carp river.  Needless to say Nikki and I had agreed that we would get an invisible fence as soon as we could afford to (they aren’t terribly cheap).  This would satisfy our need to contain our dogs, while maintaining the fence-less backyard we love so much.

A quick web search and phone call and we were connected with our local dealer, who assured us the fence would work perfectly.  Installation day came, and we were presented with a disconcerting amount of information about how to train your dog to live with the fence.  This was news to us, but we faithfully followed the instructions and we trained both dogs to respect the little flags as a boundary (before wearing the shock collars).  It went very well, really, since Lloyd and Harvey are actually easily trainable.  Finally we worked our way to the day when we would test the actual shocking part of the shock collar.  Harvey learned his lesson in about 3/10ths of a second, and we were done with him.  Never since has Harvey even gone near the edge of our property, whether he had his collar on or not.  Job done on that dog.

Lloyd was another matter altogether.  While Lloyd easily understood that we did not want him to cross the flags, this understanding was only out of convenience as we soon found out.  He seemed unable to notice the collar when it was shocking him.  Literally, he would often stand directly in the field and casually take a leak while the collar was shocking him with the maximum voltage it could generate.  I could tell the collar was working because his jowls were twitching in time to the zapping sound, much like one of those muscle conditioning machines you see on the informercials.  Lloyd would soon be the only St. Bernard with a six pack on his jowls.  We tried shaving him.  He galloped joyously through the field at will and the Carp river smell permeated our household. He was oblivious, and we had a problem.

A call to the fence guy and he explained that he had never had this problem before, but there was a different type of collar he could order in for us to try.  We waited, and it finally came.  It was rather more formidable than the regular collar, with electrodes that made contact at the sides of Lloyd’s neck instead of together at the front.  The thinking here is the more meat the current has to pass through, the much more uncomfortable it will be.  I gleefully (by now more than a little tired of the problem, and the baths) tried to put in on him, it barely fit his neck on the last hole, but I squished it on and we used it for a few days to test it out.  There was no evidence that Lloyd could even tell that this leather torture device was frantically discharging itself into his neck.

Crap.

Another phone call to the fence guy, and he was even more incredulous.  He had to come and see it for himself.  So, we arranged a test and sure enough Lloyd couldn’t tell where the fence was, while Harvey was wetting himself trying to climb the siding on the house from the sound Lloyd’s collar was making.  The fence guy turns to me and says, ok, listen, why don’t you try putting two collars on him?

Folks, I am an animal lover, and I don’t abide cruelty of any kind.  It was only because I was so absolutely, resignedly sure of the outcome that I agreed, and we started to put two shock collars on Lloyd when he went out, which by any rights would be Freaking Painful to a normal animal.

On Canada Day Lloyd made a joyous spontaneous unscheduled swim trip to the Carp River while wearing two collars at the same time, and I left a message on Monday for the fence guy to come and get his fence and give me my money back.  I have yet to hear from him….

Lloyd is clearly unable to determine the subtleties of an invisible fence, no doubt he’s more of a physical fence kind of dog.  We will have to go back to the drawing board on this one.