ADMIN – Hi Jennifer,

Most collars will not be affected by systems that are from another brand. Some systems like the Invisible Fence, the Perimeter Technologies systems, and the new SportDog systems allow you to switch frequencies to avoid interference with neighboring systems.

ADMIN – Hi Jery,

The system doesn’t work well on a bare wire. When the wire is uninsulated, anything touching the wire becomes part of the transmission loop and distorts the signal. (Much in the same way that the new iPhone aerial is sensitive to being touched) For this reason, if the insulation gets stripped, you often get a drop off in performance as the current shorts to ground.

That said, if you already have the wire set up around your home – you can always give it a shot. Let us know how it works.

ADMIN – Hi Janna,

I’m not sure if I completely understand your property, but I’ve drawn a layout option based on what I could formulate from your description.

The way you describe using the twisted wire, however, cannot work. The fence must be in a continuous loop, meaning that the wire must go out and return to the wall transmitter. Twisted wire is two separate wires twisted together which means it will have two wires on each end that will need to be spliced to their own wire. Our twisted wire page will help: http://www.dogfencediy.com/installation/plan/twisted-wire/. Twisted wire can only be used to connect the wall transmitter to a boundary loop or the boundary loop to a secondary loop. So, you cannot run the boundary wire, splice in twisted wire, then go back to the boundary wire to create a “dead” area for the dogs to pass through.

So, that’s why I’ve drawn up the double back method for you install. If you have any questions about the sketch, please let me know.

ADMIN – Hi Tracy,

There is unfortunately no getting around having a complete loop of wire. Doing a triple twisted wire does not work. One thing you can do is either make the wire high enough above the dogs or deep enough below the dogs that they don’t get the correction. So either string the wire high above the lake side of your property (perhaps in some trees) or run the wire out into the lake and sinking it to the bottom. If you sink the wire deep enough, the dogs will effectively be able to swim over the wire without getting any correction. The only other option is to do the double U-shaped loop.

The grounding rod trick is really inconsistent in our experience. The idea is that you complete the circuit by having a copper grounding rod on either side and the signal goes through the soil. When we experimented with this method it worked very inconsistently and seemed very sensitive to the soil moisture and the type of soil. So sometimes it would work fine, and then other times it would stop working when it got a bit dry. Also you often had to turn up the signal strength really high to get it working which leads to having very wide boundaries. You can experiment with the copper rods, but I would not rely on it working.

ADMIN – Hi Kim,

It does sound nutty, but sometimes dogs with a fat neck and small head are a problem because the collar will not stay on and just slips off the dog’s head. Generally, if a regular collar stays on you will be fine. But, if you have trouble keeping a regular collar around the dog’s neck then you will have the same problem with the correction collar and the system will be ineffective.

ADMIN – Hi Dan,

10 feet is a good recommendation but I think if you stay a minimum of 6 feet away when running parallel to any kind of utility lines. If you need to cross a utility line, make sure to cross over it at perpendicular angle.

Make sure to run the wire and test it before making the install permanent. That way you can easily adjust it.

ADMIN – Hi Jen,

The boundary kits each come with an additional two splices to help you connect the two segments of wire. You strip a half-inch of insulation from the end of each wire. You twiste the exposed wires together in the supplied wire nuts, then place the wire in the waterproof gel capsule to seal it off.

ADMIN – Hi Eric,

You can run as many loops as you want from a single transmitter, provided that the total length of wire does not exceed the system capacity (rarely an issue on any lot less than 5 acres). But, instead of running both loops to control box (in parallel), you want to have one loop hang off the other loop (in series). This pretty easy, just splice some twisted wire into the primary loop at any point, run the twisted wire to the secondary loop, and splice the twisted wire into the secondary loop.

The reason that it is better to run them in series than in parallel is two-fold. First, in series you will be alerted of any break – in parallel if one of the two loops get a break you will not get any notification from the system. Second, if you run it in parallel the two loops can have very different boundary widths – if you run them in series the boundary widths will be the consistent.

ADMIN – Hi Jeff,

Landscaping edging is so small, it would be very unlikely to cause a problem. One thing to watch out for is to make sure you don’t put it on the side of the edging that is actually edged with an electric/gas edger or with a weed whacker. They are notorious for tearing up dog fence wire, so where possible we want to either avoid those locations or protect the wire in those locations by putting it in some stronger conduit.

ADMIN – Hi Jennifer,

Sometimes you will get interference with an electric horse fence, it is really hit and miss. The only way to know for sure is to test a small section. You will be able to tell if there is interference if the collar does not start beeping in the test section where it is near the fence but works normally elsewhere. You also want to check that the dog fence signal isn’t getting into the electric fence and causing the collar to trigger wherever the horse fence runs even if the dog fence is not in that place. Again, the best way to test is to take the collar and see if it beeps in any sections of horse wire where there is no dog fence wire.

If you do get interference, you want to move the dog fence six feet away from the horse or cattle electric fence. As always, test to make sure the interference has stopped.