2.5 y/o Golden Retriever Escaping Electric Fence

[louislundy]

I am desperate for some advice regarding my dog who has recently began breaking through her electric fence.

I have a 2.5 year old female golden retriever who is normally very well behaved. The one issue we have always had with her is poor recall. When she was a puppy and before we had an electric fence at my moms house, she would occasionally get out which resulted in hours of trying to get her to come back / chasing her (I know you're not supposed to run after them but sometimes we had no other choice as we didn't want her to get out of our sight.) So we had an electric fence installed at my mom's house when she was around 6 months old and she trained on this very quickly & we didn't have any issues for the last year and a half. At this point we did try to continue to train her on recall but probably became too lax with it as it wasn't an issue since we had the fence.

My boyfriend & I have lived in an apartment with our dog for 1.5 years now and the dog is there with us ~5/7 days a week. We live in a city so we do not have a yard and we take her on walks whenever she has to go outside. However, on days my boyfriend can't work from home & has to go into his office we bring the dog to my moms so she can run/ play with my moms dog. And starting about 1-2 months ago, our dog began breaking through the electric fence when she sees animals on the other side of the fence (birds, bunnies, squirrels,ett.). This resulted in the same old pattern of following her, attempting to recall but very little success. She has always has an extremely high prey drive & tries to chase after animals when we are on walks but we are able to calm her down. The other main problem is she seems to only do this when my boyfriend and I are not there. So it ends up just being my 60 y/o mother (who admittedly is more lenient with the dog) having to chase after her. She doesn't have a high food drive either, despite being a golden, so attempting to lure her back or get her attention with treats does not work.

We contacted the electric fence company as we thought there may be a dead spot or that the voltage wasn't turned up high enough. They came last week & increased the voltage, replaced the training flags, and ensured there were no issues with the fence. We thought this corrected the problem apparently not. I just received a call from my mom again today that she broke through the electric fence to chase after a bunny. My poor mother ended up having to follow her for 2 hours to get her back and our dog ran way further than she ever had in the past, leaving our neighborhood & crossing main roads.

At this point it is clear that we cannot rely on the electric fence to contain her and we need other solutions. I'm scared for my dog's safety as well as feel so guilty about the numerous occasions my mom has had to catch her alone.

I am willing to commit a lot of time to retraining her or even taking her to a professional trainer but am not in a financial position to spend thousands on training. I'm also just so surprised that she is such an obedient dog in all other aspects but has began "running away"/breaking free at 2.5 years old when we haven't had issues in years.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I'm desperate at this point.

 

[houstonreborn]

@louislundy Part of the thing with recall or boundary training, especially when you have a dog with prey drive, is that it relies on you as the handler actively engaging with your dog and working with them to overcome prey drive tendencies or be at the ready to call them off of things they want to chase. Even then, some dogs have high enough prey drive that they can’t be off leash due to the squirrel chase desire. There is always a risk with this, there’s no such thing as 100% bombproof recall, but with some active leave it training you can work on ignoring squirrels. Absolute dog training has a program called sexier than a squirrel (lol) and I know some people who swear by that training program. It’s a self directed/online course.

But yeah, your mom would have to train with your dog and work on recall training with him. And even then this wouldn’t be a leave the dog outside and not be actively watching him thing. There’s still no guarantee she won’t see something and bolt after it.

If someone will be out there monitoring him, a back clip harness and a long line lead or tether is an option but I wouldn’t leave him tethered while unsupervised.

The best option would probably be something like a privacy fence that’s tall enough to contain your dog. Maybe you and your boyfriend could find someone handy who could help you guys build the fence yourselves at your moms. My dad helped my boyfriend and I put up a privacy fence at our house and it was cheaper building it ourselves versus hiring someone since it cut out the cost of labor and was only the cost of the materials.

 

[louislundy]

@houstonreborn This is super helpful, thank you!