Connecting and Testing
Last step. Connect the wires to the control box and power on the system. Hopefully you will get a green light from the system telling you that everything is working. Hoorah. Do a quick celebration jig! (We have done a whole heap of installations and seeing that green light is still a whole lot of fun) Bask in the glow of your victory!!!
If you are getting a broken wire error from the control box, don’t fear. Nine times out of ten the break is at one of the splices where you joined two pieces of wire. Check all the joins. If that didn’t fix it skip to the section on finding a break in the dog fence wire and hunt down that break.
Now the last part of the installation is setting up the boundary flags. Adjust the boundary width on the control box so that the boundary reaches the desired width. Make sure the boundary is at least three feet wide on either side of the wire, much narrower than that and it will be hard to train the dog. It is easier to start wide, then narrow the width after the dog is trained to give the dog more space than to try and train them with a boundary that is too thin.
To test the boundary width, take the collar (making sure you are touching the probes), and hold it at approximately the height of the dog’s head and get closer to the boundary wire until you hear it beep or see the collar light flash. Now using the collar as your guide set the boundary flags at the point where the collar begins to beep and/or flash. Try to space the flags no more than two yards apart, preferably closer.
In places where you cannot plant the flags in the ground such as the driveway, lie the flags down on the ground.
Congratulations. Take a breather. Then when you are ready, lets get started on the most important part, training your dogs to use the system.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi,
Your site indicates that the flags should be placed no more than two yards apart. I will be using about 470 feet of wire. Based on your recomendation I would need about 78 flags. I believe the kit comes with 50 flags. Is there a way to just obtain/order additional flags?
Admin – Hi Tad,
You are right that the packs don’t come with quite enough flags. But is pretty close and you can make do. 500 feet of wire, usually only gets you 400 feet of actual distance due to waste, and undulation in the wire. And you can cover 400 feet with 50 flags spaced at just over 2 yards.
You can get extra flags in the wire section of our online store. You can also get extra flags at any Hme Dpot or Loews, they have them in the plumbing section. They are used to mark water mains.
Hope that helps
I’m researching products and have a question about installation. 1/4 of our yard has the neighbor’s fence – they also have a dog. I’m hoping that we could leave that side as a safe zone so our dog can go up to the fence and say hi to my neighbor’s dog. I fear that I will have to make a complete loop with the wire so it actually works as opposed to making more of a horseshoe shape. Please advise, thank you! – Andre
ADMIN – Hi Andre,
You are right, you will need to have a complete loop.
Some options to let him still play with the neighbor’s dog:
1. Put he wire up high. If the fence is high enough, put the wire high up on the neighbor’s fence so that the signal does not reach to the bottom so your dog can happily play without triggering the correction.
2. Do a double horseshoe. Do the three sides where you want the dog to be able to play and then double back on yourself, leaving 6 feet between the two wires. This does have the disadvantage of decreasing the size of the area the dog can play.
Dumb question but how do you charge the collar on the innotek SD-2100 system?
ADMIN – Hi Ray,
The recharger for the Innotek SD-2100 is built into the base station. You take the collar from the SD-2100 and you place it on top of the base station in the correct orientation. You will know when you have it right because the indicator light on the base station will change to indicate that you are recharging the collar.