PetSafe Stubborn Dog Electric Fence Collar Waterproof

I have a one year old Alaskan malamute and for the life of me could not keep her in our yard. I have a already fenced in yard but she would dig under everywhere and get out. After months of trying to fix the problem to no avail I purchased the wire fence. Let me start with first by saying it wasn’t the easiest to instal. There are multiple ways of installing this and because we have an existing fence we decided to go with the method it recommended and weave the wire through the chain link fence. Sounds easy enough but it would always get tangled and was quite the task of pulling hundreds of feet of wire (our yard is almost an acre). You also have to weave not only
Through the bottom but then come
Back around through the top and your fence must be at least 6 feet high. We had three breaks that were easy enough to splice back together. You then have to have the home base of the unit inside a warm place. We have a heated garage so we had to drill through the wall and connected the wires. After finally installing it all I could not believe that I now have a dog that no longer escapes!!!!!!!! My husband thought I was crazy and it would never work BUT it really did. She now doesn’t even go close to the outer fence and it was all soooo worth doing. I will say I have a friend who tried this without the existing fence and their dog would just run right through it.. that’s my story and I hope it all works out for anyone else who purchases this product. Cheers

We took in a rescue dog a couple of months ago. He was let go by his former owner because he kept running away and getting picked up by the pound. We were asked by the rescue association to take him in because we have a large fenced in yard with a 6 foot high wood and wire fence. Right away “Freckles” found out a way to get out under the fence. We closed up the hole but he ran away again the next day. This went on for weeks. We would fix the holes and Freckles would find a new place to get out. Thankfully he had a tag with his name and the rescue association’s phone number so we would get a phone call within a couple of hours from some friendly neighbor who had captured Freckles.

We finally realized that we could not win. Our escape artist was smarter than us. So I started to do research on electronic fences. The best rated fence is the wireless kind, but you need to have a yard that is a perfect circle for that to work. Our yard is a rectangle. If Freckles was allowed to go to the back of the yard the correction area was outside of our fence on the sides. The dog would have been able to get out of the fence and not be “corrected” (shocked) until he was in the neighbor’s yard.

So I settled on an in-ground fence. Freckles is a Brittany. Brittanys, like beagles, are known for following their noses and running off. He is not being bad – just chasing birds, butterflies, squirrels or his favorite – a rabbit.

In the front yard I used an electric edger to dig the shallow 1″ trench. This is several inches above the utilities in the front yard – so no worries. In the back yard I ran the wire along the top rail of the wood fence and used plastic zip ties to tie the wire to the top of the wire fence. It took a day to install the fence.

When I installed the battery in the collar I had the setting on the wired unit turned all the way up. So I got a shock. It wasn’t that bad. It surprised me more than hurt me. I turned the setting down to half as much and now the correction area is within 10 feet of the wire.

As Freckles approaches the fence he hears an audible tone to warn him to turn around. If that does not stop him, he gets a shock. Within an hour he learned to stop and turn around when the tone sounded. He learned quickly that he can not go out of the front door or garage door – even with the door wide open.

As I showed Freckles his new boundaries I told him to “be careful” as he approached the correction area. It was funny that he was very in tune to my warning to “be careful”. When I told him to be careful he would stop and look at me – way before he heard the tone. He is really a smart dog.

Finally our escape artist can be free to run the yard and we don’t have to worry about him finding a new place to get under the fence.

It should be noted that the brains of the system must be inside the house. It can not be exposed to rain or freezing temperatures. I installed ours above the garage door. I ran the wire along the door jamb and then into the ground. It should also be noted that corners can not be run at 90 degrees. All angles must have a 3 foot arch to keep the corner from becoming a dead zone where the dog can get out. The 500 feet that came with the fence was not enough. Our friendly home depot sold us another 500 feet of wire for $25. The wire is not in the electronic section. It was with the ceiling fans.

After a lot of research, I decided to purchase the fence from Amazon. They have always been great with their return policy. They also had the best price. I paid the extra $10 to have the fence sent to me in two days. You only save about $40 on a used unit from eBay with a good chance of getting a used unit that doesn’t work.

The lighting protection unit by this manufacturer is not very well rated. So I purchased a $20 surge protector to plug the extension cord into. I ran the extension cord from the light in the garage door opener to the fence system “brains” above the garage door. I attached the wires in the garage and on the wood fence with small 1 inch fence staples – being very careful not to puncture the wire. Where I had to coil up the extension cord I used a 16 penny nail to hang the wire on.

So the bottom line is that this thing is great. Highly recommended.

We moved into a house that already had an in-ground invisible fence installed. When we adopted a stray Pit Bull we were concerned about how well it would work with such a strong dog with unknown behavior. Since the dog had run off before and there are many dogs in the neighborhood I had my doubts that this would work at all for our situation. Our yard was way too big to fence in so we resorted to tying him on a lead which he hated. I purchased this “stubborn dog” model since pit bulls have a high pain tolerance and we were having issues controlling him as is. I was so weary of even trying him on it that the collar sat in a drawer for a couple months!

We used a behavioralist to teach us how to work with our dog better and one of our final lessons we decided to set up the flags and see how he responded with the collar. We guided him around the yard on very light rope so he could learn the boundary. When we were finally ready to test it we had it set on 5 (max). When he decided to go beyond the boundary he was yelping and thrashed in a pretty disturbing way. He tested it a second time and again loud screaming as he ran right back to us. This was hard to watch and if I was doing it again I would start with the lowest correction settings like the instructions recommended. The result is that the dog has been very skittish outside now and it has taken quite a while to get him comfortable being outside again Overall though he loves the freedom and it’s so much easier just letting him go out the door especially in the winter months.

I highly recommend these systems. Yes my dog is pretty spooked by the boundaries to this day. However, I now have the piece of mind that my pit bull won’t go sprinting through the neighborhood and get in trouble or danger. Earlier this week as I let him out and a cat was less than 10 feet away. He quickly chased it for a few seconds and stopped immediately as the cat ran out of the yard. Perfect!

The best thing about this particular collar is that it takes 9 volt batteries. If you read reviews of other PetSafe collars people complain a lot about the proprietary battery. The fact that this uses 9 volts is great. I haven’t even replaced it yet in 6 months of use. This collar as a result is bulky and heavy. I take if off whenever my dog is in the house. The actual collar part is not very high quality and I could envision replacing it down the road if a clip breaks or something.

Pros
– It works! Your dog will stay in the yard.
– Uses 9 volt batteries and gets good battery life.
– Highest correction probably too strong but works on big or aggressive dogs.

Cons
– Heavier and bulkier than standard Petsafe collar. You won’t want to leave it on all the time.
– The strap on the collar is flimsy and will probably fail before the actual receiver does.