Electrical fences, Simply a very bad idea.

In the past month I have received multiple calls of individuals who decided to buy an electrical fence. Every single one of these individuals called initially because their dog was exhibiting aggression. The conversation always starts the same. My dog is barking, but lately has been growling. He has never bit anybody, but I am afraid he's going to. I say, well has he always been that way? They say, no, when we got him he was just fine. Very sweet dog. So I say, anything traumatic happen in between the time that you got your dog and now? Not that I can think of, and then they all say the same thing. "We did get an electrical fence about a month ago" In case you don't know. Electrical fences are fences that are designed to send a dog an electric shock to the dog's collar, inflicinting enough pain to tell the dog "Don't ever come here again." At least that's the idea. As an experiment I put a shock collar on my wrist (without the strap, so I could drop if I had too) then turned it too the maximum level. It hurt so bad, I immediately yelped...me a human being. Actually yelped, along wtih some curse words. It reminded me of when I was a kid and got electricuted. That is the type of pain we are talking about in some of these cases. I don't think that electrical fence companies tell their potential clients that "this might happen" as I read in a lot of articles. They probably don't say anything at all. Either they don't know, or they don't want to know.

Electrical fences are supposed to keep dogs wtihin a perimeter. Which they might, but if the dog keeps on trying to go after something he sees, and he keeps on getting shocked. This dog will initially become fearful, and eventually aggressive. In case you are wondering none of these characteristics are something that we would want to be. How would you like to live in fear, and become an aggrssive individual?

Electrical fences are signicantly cheaper then real fences. They do not block the view of your beautiful house and most companies are not going to tell their customer "Hey by the way, it might turn out that your dog is going to need extensive treatment after we put this up". Even when I look online, some vet's say..."Well there is a chance that something like that could happen" Interestingly enough, I always hear negative things about shock collars, but in those same articles nobody ever talks about electrical fences. Getting back to what to expect. An aggressive dog, that is now territorial, after having been shocked at high intensity every time they see want to chase a squirrel. They have natural pray drive. Why would we punish a dog just for being a dog? I digress, this aggressiveness character trait is now instilled in this dog and will now need extensive training by a trainer, a behaviorist and will most likely need to be on medication. So, please if you are considering putting up an electrical fence, please reconsider and do your research.