When the dog gets close enough to the perimeter
he hears a warning beep; if he ignores the beep and keeps going
he gets a shock. You can think of it as a beep-and-shock fence
instead of a wire fence. Most of the time invisible fences
work great. I'd recommend that every dog owner buy one, if
I weren't worried about people holding me responsible when
they spend anywhere from a couple hundred to fifteen hundred
dollars putting in an invisible fence that turns out to be
more trouble than it's worth for their particular pet.
The reason some dogs don't do well with an invisible fence
relates to pain levels as well as fear levels. A low-fear,
low-pain dog like a retriever, either golden or Labrador, can
sometimes just run through them. I knew one family whose golden
retriever would bound through the perimeter on his way out
of the yard but then refuse to come through it on the way back.
He didn't want to get shocked. Apparently he didn't mind getting
shocked when he was making his Great Escape, but getting a
shock just to come home again wasn't worth it.
It was a huge nuisance, because there was one family down the street who was
terrified of that dog, even though he'd never done anything bad to them. Naturally
that was the one house he'd always make a beeline for whenever he was done with
his travels. He'd plop himself down on their doorstep and just lie there waiting
for his owners to come get him and take him home. Probably he'd noticed that
his owners always seemed to show up the fastest when he landed at the scared
family's house. That was true, of course, because the instant the scared family
saw the dog they'd start frantically calling the owners every five seconds --
and naturally the owners would race over to retrieve the dog the minute they
got the call, because they knew how upset the scared family was. Until the owners
arrived, the scared family would be locked up inside their house, too terrified
to come out. Naturally the owners lived in fear of having this happen sometime
when they weren't home. What if there was an emergency and the scared family
was trapped inside their house because the dog had busted through the invisible
fence again?
I heard about another dog, a little Jack Russell terrier, who would get through
the fence just because his fellow-dog, another retriever, could go through it.
The retriever would sail through unscathed, and the Jack Russell would lower
himself to the ground and stare at the place where he knew he'd get the shock.
Finally he'd bolt. The lady who told me about him said, “He'd decide to take
the hit.” I'm sure if that dog had lived alone, or at least in a house whose
other dog wasn't a retriever, he would have stayed put. But he wasn't going to
let his pal take off without him.
Those are the problems you can have with dogs who are low-fear (or low-pain).
They're unusual, but they do happen. The problems that can crop up with a high-fear
dog are more difficult to manage. I've never heard of a dog getting out-and-out
traumatized by an invisible fence, but I've seen some come close. Some dogs will
get so scared of the perimeter that they'll refuse to ever go through it, whether
the collar is on or off, and including when you put them on a leash to take them
for a walk. You have to carry or drag them through the perimeter.
That's not so horrible, but I also heard about a two-year-old collie who got
so scared of her own yard that she lost her house-training and started pooping
inside the house. If her owners would force her to go outside she'd just stand
on the deck barking until her owners finally gave up and let her back in. Then
she'd poop on the carpet.
These are all unusual cases. Most dogs live happily inside an invisible fence
and don't panic when you walk them through the perimeter on a leash. But even
when an invisible fence works perfectly, you still have to keep on top of the
situation. Although animal fears, like human fears, are permanent, animals will
reality-test a fear that falls short of a phobia.
I know that happens with invisible fences. I talked to a woman who bought an
aboveground invisible fence for her two young dogs. It worked like a charm, but
remembering to put their collars on every morning was a pain. (She didn't like
the dogs to sleep in the collars at night, because one of them had sensitive
skin and the metal prongs were rubbing it raw.) So she figured she'd be vigilant
for a couple of months until the dogs took it for granted that they couldn't
leave the yard without getting a shock. Then she wouldn't have to worry about
whether one of the dogs got out of the house without the collar on. She said
she based this on some story she read back in college about how B. F. Skinner
once trained some sheep to stay inside a fence, then replaced the fence with
a symbolic wire strung between posts. Supposedly the sheep never tried to get
past the wire, even though they easily could have.
I don't remember ever seeing that story in Dr. Skinner's work myself, and I'd
be surprised if that's what he found. In my experience some animals don't test
fences, but others do. That lady turned out to have fence-testing dogs. At first
everything seemed to be working out. The dogs never went near the boundaries,
whether they were wearing their collars or not. They didn't act like they associated
the shocks with the collar, either, because every time she took their collars
off to take them for a walk she'd have to pull them through the perimeter. They
were scared of getting a shock whether they had the collars on or off.
So after a while she just stopped worrying about getting the collars on first
thing in the morning. Big mistake. One morning she was sitting outside reading
the newspaper when she noticed the dogs running a couple of feet up the hill
beside her house, then coming back down again. They seemed to be doing this repeatedly,
although she wasn't paying close enough attention to be sure. She thought they
were getting awfully close to the shock perimeter, but since she figured they'd
been permanently conditioned like Dr. Skinner's sheep, she didn't worry about
it.
The next thing she knew, both dogs were gone. They stayed away for hours and
probably had a nice romp around the pond a little ways from her house. She's
been having problems with them ever since. As long as she has the collars on
and the batteries are working, they stay home. But if she slips up -- either
forgets to check the batteries or slacks off on putting the collars on in the
morning -- it doesn't take too long for the dogs to figure out they're free.
I don't know how they manage it, but it sounds like they're doing their own doggie
version of reality testing. The owner has observed that every time she forgets
the collars for a few days the same sequence unfolds. First the dogs stay well
within the invisible fence boundaries, collar or no collar. Then they start expanding
the perimeter, going a little bit farther than the collar would let them go,
but no farther. Then, not too long after that, they're gone.
What she couldn't figure out was, how do the dogs know it's okay to expand the
perimeter? They're still acting scared when she takes them through the perimeter
on a walk, so why do they test it on their own?
I think they are probably picking up signals a human can't perceive. I'm guessing
they get some kind of little vibration or early warning buzz from the receiver before they
reach the spot where the warning sound beeps. They get a warning before the warning.
Once the dogs stop perceiving the pre-warning sound or sensation, they start
testing the boundaries.
The reason I think this is that the dogs never set off the warning beeps.
That has to mean that somehow they know it's safe to start pushing out the boundaries.
If they were just sporadically testing from time to time, to see whether the
perimeter was still there, they would set off beeps on days when their collars
are on, which is most days.
However those two dogs are doing what they're doing, the Mark Twain saying about
the cat on a hot stove is true only as far as it goes. "She will never sit down
on a hot lid again -- and that is well;” he said, “but also she will never sit
down on a cold one anymore." That's true only of a cat who got burned badly enough
to be traumatized by the experience, or of a cat who didn't get burned too badly
but doesn't have any good reason to sit on the stove apart from the fact that
cats like to be up high. If the cat isn't flat-out terrified of the stove, just
leery, and if there's a plate full of yummy meat sitting up there, I predict
most cats are going to be back up on that stove.
Reprinted by permission from Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of
Autism to Decode Animal Behavior by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson.
Copyright © 2005
Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson. Published by Harcourt; January 2006; $15.00US;
0-15-603144-2.
Author
Temple Grandin has redefined society's perception of what is possible
for people with autism. Her world-famous "hug machine," a pressure device she
invented to alleviate her own anxiety, led to the invention of pressure therapies
for autistic people worldwide. She has been instrumental in explaining sensory
sensitivity as well as how autistic people think. Grandin is perhaps best known,
however, for being a passionate and effective animal advocate and for explaining
to humans how animals think. She revolutionized animal movement systems and spearheaded
reform of the quality of life and humaneness of death for farm animals. In fact,
half the cattle in the United States and Canada are handled in systems she designed.
An associate professor at Colorado State University, Grandin holds a Ph.D., in
animal science from the University of Illinois. She is the author of four books: Thinking
in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism, Emergence: Labeled Autistic,
Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals, and Livestock Handling
and Transport . Through her company, Grandin Livestock Systems, she works
with the country's fast food purveyors, including McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger
King, to monitor the conditions of animal facilities worldwide. She lectures
widely on both animal science and autism and serves as a role model for hundreds
of thousands of families and people with autism.
For more information, please visit www.templegrandin.com/templehome.html
Catherine Johnson, Ph.D. , is a writer specializing in the brain and neuropsychiatry.
For seven years she served as a trustee of the National Alliance for Autism Research,
returning to civilian life just in time to begin work with Temple Grandin on Animals
in Translation . She is the mother of three boys, two of whom have autism,
and lives with her husband and children in Irvington, New York.
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