Steve:
I’m Steve with Contain my Dog, and in this brief video, I’m going to explain to you some yard configurations or some questions I get asked on occasion, about ways of setting up the electric dog fence, that either are not possible, or not particularly very practical. The first one I’m going to talk to you about is, “Okay, I have a house, and you know what? We would just like to have the dogs not have the whole yard, not have the back yard. We just want to give him this little area in the back yard. Can you just make a little dog fence area in the back yard, the way you would with a physical fence?”
First of all, if we were to do that, you would have to take your dogs from the house and walk them without their dog collar into this area, then put the collar on them in here, and then, of course, after they were trained, they couldn’t leave. If you wanted to take them out of this area, you would then have to remove the containment collar, and then walk them out. Having a little area in the back yard is not a very practical way of doing it, at all.
The other way of doing this, stepping out there for a minute. The other question we get asked periodically is, “You know what? We actually have a physical fence, like a wood or chain-link fence that goes around our yard, and we have this driveway. All we need to do is, can you just do an electric dog fence across the driveway?”
Well, yes, and no. The way the electric dog fence works, as we pointed out before, is it must make what we call a complete circuit. If we were to do an electric dog fence just across the driveway, for example, we would actually have to make a circuit, meaning a cable going across, down, across, and over. We have to do this, because it has to make what we call a loop or circuit. These cables have got to be about eight feet apart. Still need all the same equipment, still have to have a transmitter in the house, still have to have a twisted pair of cable to bring the signal out there. Then we’re just basically making this big loop in your driveway.
Remember, this has got to be about eight feet apart, these cables. This may be an application that may not be particularly, although we can do it, in many cases it may not be the best solution for you, if you’re just looking to keep the dogs out of a driveway, or out of a walkway, for example.
The next one that we have is, “I just want to keep the dogs in the back yard with an electric dog fence.” We can do that, but here’s how it has to happen. The electric dog fence has to make at least, as we said, a complete circuit. Meaning the wire has to start and end … I’m just going to draw this. It has to make, again, it has to come back and connect to itself. If we did that in the back yard, we couldn’t, for example, go out the back door, and then go across the back. Of course, if this is the back door and the dogs are going out, the dogs would get a correction shock, leaving the yard. We can’t do that.
Remember, because it has to make a complete circuit, there’s basically one option. We can make what we call a double loop. Now we spoke about this earlier in the driveway. We actually have to take this cable, and we actually have to make a eight-foot … Forgive the neat handwriting. Kind of a horseshoe, here. This will actually, as you can see, make a complete circuit. The wire goes around and comes back, and touches itself. Important thing to remember is, this distance has got to be about eight feet. You have to ask yourself, is your yard really big enough, or is making this eight-foot boundary going to cut down so much, that you really don’t have much of a yard, an area for your dog, to be able to run and play with. Those are the rules that have to happen. You still have to have a twisted pair of cable, connecting this now loop, we call a banana loop for obvious reasons, or a horseshoe loop, connecting that to the indoor transmitter. That’s about it. We could do it that way. Typically, a better way that we recommend, and I will tell you that there is zero cost savings in doing that. Typically what we recommend doing is basically what we call a front-to-back loop.
What a front-to-back loop is, is this. It makes that complete circuit, but it does it this way. You want the dogs in the back yard. You don’t want them to go from the back yard to the front yard. Here’s how we do it. We actually make a loop in the back yard, and then, instead of making a double loop, we bring it around the front. This is preferred for many reasons. One ias I was saying earlier, there’s no cost difference. Two, and really importantly, is that what this now does is, it protects every part of your house. If you had a garage here, for example, if you had a garage here, this would extend out, okay, so that if the dog got out the garage or if it got out the front door, there is no way that the dog would be free. This is typically the preferred way, and typically the way that we tend to install the systems, if you primarily want to keep the dog in the back yard, and don’t want them to have access to the front yard on their own. People like that for many reasons. Sometimes they just don’t want to have the dogs in the front yard. Sometimes they just want to keep nice grass in the front. Sometimes that’s just what you want. That’s the preferred way to do it.
Those are the three ways of setting up the electric dog fence, that require a little bit more explanation. Again, if you haven’t seen it already, the basic video on how the electric dog fence works, you may want to take a look at that, as well. I’m Steve from Contain my Dog. I hope this was helpful. We’ll see you soon.