The Inconveniences of Fencing and of Vinegar

SUMMARY: Related to dogs.

Posted on FB 10/8/21. Edited to post here.

This story has two parts.

Part 1: Fencing

Someone has to stay inside until late this afternoon. This never happens. He has words to say about this.

The middle portion of my north-ish fence began leaning/bowing in towards my yard last winter, I believe. But it stopped when it encountered a tree to lean on, so... [shrug]

I'd been meaning to take a photo of its relaxed state for months.
Too late--the fenceman had already propped it up to work on it
before I realized something was happening.

While I think that it is super cool that apparently the neighbor has hired someone to replace the rotted posts in that section of fence between us at his own expense (since he has said nothing*), I think that it would have been wise--given that he knows that I have dogs, having lived next to me for 20 years--to give me advanced notice that the fence would be down for half a day.

I am sooooo thankful that I was home when they started sawing away at the posts.

---

 * Just saw him, I said let me know what I owe you. He grinned, waved it away, and said, "Don't worry about it." After he denied me a 2nd time, I'll take it. 🙂

Part 2, later the same day: Vinegar

I sit in the green chair. Zorro is on a 15-foot lead. 
He'd rather be on his own.
That fence thing is still in progress across the yard and he must see!

Poor Zorro. Has an uneducated Human Mom.

I had potstickers for lunch. I love them with white vinegar, so I poured it onto the plate from the large bottle. When I finished, some vinegar remained on the plate along with Maybe half a dozen crumbs from the potstickers themselves. I put it on the floor to see whether he'd lick it (he hardly ever turns things down), thinking that he probably wouldn’t like the vinegar. He definitely tried to stay away from it while he tried to pick out the orts. I left him to it.

Now the gross part:

About 10 minutes later, he walked down into my office and threw up a good portion of his breakfast (of course onto the carpet, not three inches farther onto tile floor).

While I tried to keep him from re-eating it (a dog's first instinct, of course), his head made that little bobbing movement, and I pushed him over the tile floor where he threw up another large portion of breakfast. And after that, while I petted him and he eyed the two yummy piles of food, it started again, and I kept him on the tile for a third portion. Stomach pretty much emptied according to that third one.

OK, so at this point I didn’t even really have to look it up. But I wanted to know how much gastrointestinal distress or damage the vinegar might have done. Online vet sources say "some dogs can't tolerate it" and it could cause vomiting and diarrhea--for up to 48 hours afterwards!

OMG. OMG. And of course today is the only day in his Entire Life that he has been restricted to the house, without free access to the yard. (Maybe a few others here or there). 

Pretty sure he had been intending to go out to the yard to handle his upset because where he decorated the floor was only about 2 feet from the actual door he would normally go through.

So I’ve been outside with him for about 20 minutes. Shows no signs of wanting to throw up or poop. just hanging with me. 

Fingers crossed. I need to go back inside.

If I had a good place to hook his 15 foot lead without risk of it tangling up, I would do that. But I don’t.  And unwilling to try to set up a fence for just a couple more hours. I already went through that when I thought there was a skunk in the yard. And it was exhausting and painful.

So, here we are.

Oops. Now what?

An hour later, he still seems healthy. I just happen to have some leftover steamed white rice. 

"Ready?!?!"
That always perks him up.
Gave him the rice. He loved it. 

Hold Me Back! I'm Gonna Kill Him!

SUMMARY: Fences don't always make good neighbors.

Let me say first off that this isn't a horror story about some psychopathic neighbor. It's not even a horror story. But I remembered it just now, so am plugging it into this hole that my blog has become lately.

Twenty years ago I lived in a different house, big old half acre, a very long and narrow lot. The north side had an old wooden fence backing up against about 4 different houses. They all had dogs--one had a beagle (who howled all day while his family was gone). One had a big German Shepherd--like, tour bus sized. Big. The next one over had a huge Rottweiler. Maybe I've known only female Rotties up close, because this boy I swear loomed twice their size.

Here's how Remington was about little dogs: Loved them. Wanted to play with them. Kept getting his nose bitten because he'd stick his big face right up to them. He never retaliated or fought back.

Here's how Remington was about big dogs: Had a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Would stiff-leg up to them with hackles up and tail stiff. Got into a tussle a time or two, when I wasn't paying attention, with random dogs (no blood shed, just noise). (He and Jake also fought way too often, but the only time blood was shed was once when I tried to interfere.)

Anyway, Rem and those big neighboring dogs used to fence fight all the time. You've never seen so much righteous anger and hurled invectives and screaming as those huge bodies (Rem's 55 pounds was nothing in comparison) slammed against that old crumbling fence. This went on for a couple of years. My original obedience instructor thought that this was one of the reasons why Rem became more dog aggressive over time and suggested that I put a stop to it. Well, I didn't confine him and I wasn't there most of the day, so that didn't happen.

Anyhoo, one day, came home from work to discover that a huge section of the old fence between my house and the other two yards had finally given in to termites and rot and had collapsed--and Remington was nowhere to be seen. My heart rammed itself into my throat as I ran around into the back quarter acre--

--where Rem and the two ginormous dogs were just hanging out together, wandering around the yard in a little group, acting like the oldest BFFs ever. They all looked up at me as one, and when Rem casually said "Hi, Mom," (you know how kids always act more subdued with their parents when friends are around), the other two also give a little hello wiggle and they all went back to investigating random weed patches.

You think maybe *all* of us would be better friends and neighbors if we didn't wall ourselves up the way we do?

Invisible Fence Saved Our Siberian Husky

SUMMARY: My experience with the so-called invisible fence.

An "invisible fence" isn't really a fence at all. It's a transmitter attached to a wire that you place around the area in which you want to keep your dog (or to keep your dog out of). The dog wears a collar receiver that's a shock collar; if the dog gets within range of the wire, she gets a shock.

You don't just put the collar on the dog and wait for it to work. You train the dog by first putting up a visible indicator of the wire's range (kite string attached to stakes, for example). You walk with the dog on leash, and when you see the dog react to the shock, you immediately run with the dog into the yard where it's safe, and reward the dog for running back into the yard with you. You do this for a week or two, first with the visible indicator, then without it. It's time-consuming training; you never want the dog out in the yard without you there until they've learned the right reaction.

I refused to put something on my dog that I wouldn't try on myself. So I did: wrapped it around my bare arm and walked within range of the wire. Zap! Very startling, but didn't seem much more painful than when you get a really sharp static discharge on a dry day, walking across the carpet, and touching something metal.

The only reason I went for this option was because we tried for 6 years to keep our Siberian Husky in the yard (I won't bore you with the long list of all the things that we bought, installed, fixed, and/or methods we tried) and we finally put her up for adoption, only to realize on the night before handing her over that we couldn't do it. We needed another option, and I had recently heard about the Invisible Fence.

It succeeded much better than anything else. Her yard escapes reduces from nearly constant to almost never.  (We could also have built a kennel with a concrete pad and solid walls and a roof. I preferred the option of letting her roam the yard and house.)

Our yard was fenced but it was very large (half an acre). We attached the wire to the fence around most of the yard, and cut a groove through the driveway to install it under the pavement where it crossed the driveway.

Its major use is for yards that don't have fences--usually because the yard is huge and the cost of fencing is prohibitive, or the local CC&Rs don't allow fencing (we had a friend who lived in such an area back east).

In 1996, I sent a friend an email about some of the advantages to invisible fencing:

• It can be used inside a yard as well as around a yard, for example to keep the dogs out of the vegetable garden.
• It can be used around yards that are, for whatever reason, difficult to fence.
• It requires much less maintenance and is easier to install than a regular fence.
• It costs much less than a regular fence.
• It can be used  around fenced yards for dogs who are escape artists (our situation).
• Used with a regular fence, if your regular fence is damaged somehow (e.g., wind storm, rotting, whatever), it ensures that the dog won't get out before you notice the damage.
•  It works almost all the time--compared to all of our other methods and fences, none of which could ever be relied on to work. But we did use it in conjunction with a real fence.

I also noted that, like most solutions to behavioral issues, it is not without its caveats:

• You must train the dog to recognize that staying in the yard (or running *into* the yard when startled) is the safe and correct way to avoid the fence's correction. This is not a replacement for training, but a [very strong] supplement to it.
• You must regularly test the collar to be sure that the battery is functioning or simply replace the battery on a strict schedule (the Invisible Fence company has a battery-subscription plan where they simply send you a battery at some fixed interval!).
• You must monitor whether the wire that provides the "invisible" fence is intact and has power. Ours came with 2 lights that remain lit as long as these 2 things are ok.
• Densely coated dogs (like a Siberian Husky) have to have a small patch on their necks trimmed or shaved on a regular basis for the collar correction to work.
• Because she had to have it on 24 hrs a day "just in case", she occasionally developed small sores where the contacts rubbed on her neck and those needed care & prevention.
• A dog working under a lot of adrenaline can power right thru the fence barrier. In theory, the more they're trained at the beginning, the less they're inclined to try it, although Sheba figured out pretty quickly that, if the gate was left ajar, she could make a break for it and be gone. (And the dog might hesitate to *return* to the yard. If I knew that somehow Sheba had gotten out with the collar on--e.g. during a power failure when I wasn't home--I'd turn off the fence til she came back.)
• Intelligent dogs who like to escape will test the fence occasionally--we knew when we had neglected to shave the neck, replace the battery on a regular schedule, or check that the line was still working, because Sheba would vanish.
• It will not keep other things *out* of your yard, such as other dogs, and your dogs are then more or less trapped in your yard.
• If you forget to take the collar off when you put the dog into the car, and then drive the car over or near the fence, you are torturing your dog. I did this once. Gods, I felt awful!

For more on the down side, here's an interesting post, "The Illusions of Invisible Fencing," from someone who almost lost their dog who powered through an invisible fence (with no supplementary fencing) in front of a car.

The result, however, was that our dog was out roaming only on rare occasions; I spent so many sleepless nights before that, agonizing over whether she'd be hit by a car or we'd never see her again. It was amazing how often she left and yet we got her back again. We were very lucky. Our lives got so much better with her in the years after we installed the fence, and she lived to be 17.