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My family and I live on a busy four lane street. When we first moved here, my older dogs were pretty well trained to already stay far back from the road. My almost fifteen year old corgi has never made it past greeting friends on our sidewalk. However, three years ago after losing my blue heeler my family and I adopted a new puppy named, Diesel.

Diesel was and is a fantastic listener. That is, until he see’s a squirrel or bunny. It doesn’t matter where the squirrel is, Diesel is going to go after it. We have chased him out of the road two times now in three years, and down both streets near us a couple times. It makes my anxiety crazy to think that he could so easily be hit by a car, just for wanting to say hello to an animal. With our zoning codes in our town, we can only have a thirty six inch high fence along the majority of our property. The problem with that is, our lovely little Diesel likes to climb things. He climbs our kids play set every single time he is outside, and he loves climbing in and out of our pool. He can also jump rather high. So a fence that low to the ground would be useless to make sure he stays inside. My husband and I talked about the traditional “invisible”  fencing, but both of us have had problems in the past with those fences actually working. Also, the amount of work to bury all the lines with those types of fencing, is a lot of work for our large yard.

While researching we came across SpotOn Wireless Fence. This virtual fence communicates with three different GPS networks, making it so you are able to have your dog contained without having to dig any of your yard up, or hook up a base station in your home. The recommended training time is two weeks, which we have been working on with Diesel, and it has been going well. He learned within about a week where he was and was not allowed to go. Setting this wireless fence up took so little time. You do need at least a half acre yard, or at least eighty feet of empty space for it to be used effectively. You should make sure to build a fifteen foot buffer zone into your map when setting up your fencing. As the GPS systems can shift from three to ten feet.

You want to make sure you charge your collar up nightly, The screen on the collar has a full menu This menu shows the following:

• Bluetooth Connection
• Cellular Connection
• GPS Fix
• Battery Life& Status
• Your Dogs Name
• Phone Number

Creating a map around your home is super easy. Using the menu on the dogs collar, you simply find “create map” and follow the instructions. You walk with the collar at about chest height, and wait until it has GPS signal and walk your path that you want your dog to stay in. Until you are close to your ending point, and there is an “end” selection on the collar.

SpotOn also gives you flags to set up for training. I found these to be super helpful. Diesel learned to just steer clear of anywhere near the flags, and after I removed them, he continued on with sticking back. With SpotOn, you are also able to reset your dogs map rather easily when out an about visiting, or camping. It can store ten different locations. If your pet is close to their barrier zone it will let out beeps. You also have the option to use static correction. With there being a GPS locator on your SpotOn collar, if your pup ends up leaving the permitted area for any reason, you will get an alert on your phone. SpotOn will also use the GPS tracking to continue to track your dog for you while you go to retrieve them. If your dog is returning, SpotOn will not use static correction on the way back into the permitted area.

 

I also absolutely love that SpotOn is waterproof. My dogs love swimming, and like to hop in the pool when no one is in with them to swim around and play (supervised still of course). It makes it easier knowing that Diesel can go swimming without having to worry about putting his collar on and off each time.