ugh!! hunting breeds!
I hate to say this, but I am at the point where I think I have to realize that my dog is eventually going to get out of the yard and I will either never see her again, or I will be scraping her off the pavement of the nearest highway.
I just cannot, cannot, cannot contain her in my yard if there is something really worth chasing. I have been trying for years.
We got Tomoe, the three-year-old Kishu Inu, a Garmin GTU-10 and it alerted us this morning, and we were able to track her through the brambles and bushes of the neighborhood.
So I see her, and I call to her, and she comes over to me. I crouch down and I keep my voice calm and enthusiastic. I spread my arms wide and do not reach out at her. She comes running up to me...and when she two feet away her ears suddenly go flat and she picks up and bolts away at MACH 3.
We were near her five or more times this morning. If you call to her, this seems to enervate her to run the other direction. I have never been able to get this dog interested in coming towards me, ever. It is so incredibly frustrating to try to train a dog like that.
I think there is something going on in her brain with dopamine or whatever the doggy equivalents are. She is drawn towards at-risk behaviors because they give her a rush. She loves her family, and her house, and her yard, and her routine. But she gets the call of the wild and she just needs to answer it. Then apparently "avoiding daddy" becomes part of the enjoyment.
So completely depressing.
On a positive note, pretty good experience with that Garmin GTU-10 this morning. We were able to track her general location on our android phones. We had the thing set to five minute updates which is fine for when she is not actively chasing a deer. You can't set to continuous updating from the phone app; next time this happens I might do that before heading out to chase her.
I just cannot, cannot, cannot contain her in my yard if there is something really worth chasing. I have been trying for years.
We got Tomoe, the three-year-old Kishu Inu, a Garmin GTU-10 and it alerted us this morning, and we were able to track her through the brambles and bushes of the neighborhood.
So I see her, and I call to her, and she comes over to me. I crouch down and I keep my voice calm and enthusiastic. I spread my arms wide and do not reach out at her. She comes running up to me...and when she two feet away her ears suddenly go flat and she picks up and bolts away at MACH 3.
We were near her five or more times this morning. If you call to her, this seems to enervate her to run the other direction. I have never been able to get this dog interested in coming towards me, ever. It is so incredibly frustrating to try to train a dog like that.
I think there is something going on in her brain with dopamine or whatever the doggy equivalents are. She is drawn towards at-risk behaviors because they give her a rush. She loves her family, and her house, and her yard, and her routine. But she gets the call of the wild and she just needs to answer it. Then apparently "avoiding daddy" becomes part of the enjoyment.
So completely depressing.
On a positive note, pretty good experience with that Garmin GTU-10 this morning. We were able to track her general location on our android phones. We had the thing set to five minute updates which is fine for when she is not actively chasing a deer. You can't set to continuous updating from the phone app; next time this happens I might do that before heading out to chase her.
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We learned that following her in the car and yelling out "wanna go for a ride" is what works every time! She hops in and looks at me like she's just had the time of her life...
Fortunately none of my JA want to run off, just Gryphon. I have successfully used one of the other dogs (usually a puppy with much better "follow" instincts than an adult) to lure Gryphon back though.
I'd say a better fence. But I know that's expensive.
I never saw the point of using an e-collar as a recall--you're going to shock your dog to get it to come back to you? Why? But I find the e-collars and shocking of dogs really repugnant.
A wire fence barrier does work but keeping it maintained is a pain. I would definitely not use a ecollar to get a dog back. All you will do is teach the dog to correlate you with pain and you will never get that dog to come back.
Best thing is to reinforce the barriers, make it high if the dog jumps or make the surface hard if the dig. Use wood screws instead of nails if they push the fence planks out (like my dogs).
I think these dogs have something going on in their brains that other dogs do not - like they get a flood of dopamine from the chase, and then when I appear and try to get her to come over to me it just makes it more of a "rush."
Eventually, we just ended up using a tie-out cable even inside our fenced yard if we weren't directly supervising her (i.e., if we didn't want to accompany her outside, or were going to do something like take out the trash while letting her pee). I still don't know if it was the best solution, but it did keep her from ever getting out and getting hit and it was easy (aside from the handful of times she slipped her collar, which I suppose could have been combated with a harness). We always made a point to make sure that the cable was long enough for her to move around, but not long enough that she could get to the fence and risk hanging herself with it... and I would not tie up two dogs at the same time even for such a short period of time. I also seem to recall it taking a little bit of work before she wasn't concerned about the cable snaking along the ground behind her, but... she's 12 now, that was a long time ago and I was young and don't remember the details.
I never wanted to use an e-collar with her. But she's a soft dog but also determined--so I was never sure if being shocked would damage her recall with bad associations, or if she would just rather chase a strange cat even if it meant getting shocked than come back. The GPS sounds -cool-, though!
So really, aside from physically preventing a dog from escaping... I don't know what to suggest, really. That would be a horrifying realization, though--that you're bound to eventually lose your dog...
The human-controlled e-collar does require training that incorporates the idea of applying punishment if the dog deliberately, knowingly disobeys his owner. This is done on lead first and proofed on lead first without the e-collar. The dog should be solid with the recall even if a rabbit were to hop around in the same field.
It's only then that the lead is phased out and someone who knows how to time and operate the e-collar is brought into the picture. The collar needs to be a subtle addition so the dog does not become equipment savy.
@shishiinu - After the dog experiences the hotwire and knows where it is located, they won't repeatedly test the wire for something like a joy-lark around the neighborhood. Even if the hotwire does become inconvenient to maintain, it's better than seeing your loose dog get hit by a car or, even worse, going after a person because that person came off as a threat to them.
I've also heard of doing something similar with the brackets that hold barbwire, replacing the barbwire with either meshing or plain wire strung through pvc pipes. The angle alone can be daunting to any animals without thumbs.
So last night I let her out and checked on her through a window five minutes later. She is standing on the logs. So I opened the window to yell at her and as soon as she hears me touch the glass she JUMPS off the logs and looks around to see where I am! I know most theories of dog cognition wouldn't support this but I'll be damned if she didn't know I would be pissed if I saw her trying to get out of the yard again.
So I moved the logs. It is just a matter of time before she finds a new way out.
IF ONLY I COULD CONVINCE THIS DOG TO DO SOMETHING WITH HER INTELLIGENCE THAT I CONSIDER USEFUL!