electric fence

[ginger]

My dog is very friendly, but some guests may be afraid of her, or find her love too much. Guests are usually gathering on our big terrace, which is also an important place for us and the dog if guests are not present. As a result, I need a method that keeps the dog away if I want, but lets her into the area if guests are tolerant. A long chain could be a method, but...

1. If I use chain, does the dog associate it with me? What is its' message?
2. Is there a way to create a "dog god" effect, eg. using elecric fence combined with some other sign or stimulant, to create a "binary" result?

thanks and best, Ginger

[Mike D'Abruzzo]

Hi Ginger,

There could be a few different solutions for your situations:

1. You could use a chain, but this could potentially cause frustration and barking which would obviously be disruptive. Also, be aware of safety issues - your dog or guests getting tangled. If you give your dog a treat after putting her on the chain I wouldn't think that there would be a bad message associated with you.

2. You could use an invisible fence system that prevents her from going to the guest area only when guests are there. You could easily associate flags or other visual associations with the fact that an invisible fence collar is turned on. You could only put the visual associations out when guests are over.

3. You could also do something similar using a dogtra training collar. The difference is that this would be manual besides on auto-pilot. There are pros and cons to each way, but either way if this is something you would like to do we should discuss a plan to make it effective and fair to the dog so that there is as little stress as possible during the training process while maintaining reliability. It can be done and shouldn't be that difficult.

4. You could also train the dog to full phase 3 obedience and we do a "leave it" to teach the dog to not engage with certain guests and redirect the dog to other guests or to something else such as a resting place in the area.