I wanted to let you know that there is this great Dog walking service called “Just Wag It”. They’re great I was able to get a video of Lila on her walk the other day. These guys are super and I thought others should know because I am very picky with who watched Lila. Oh yeah they also do free tick checks after walks! Anyway I was impressed.

I took her and her 8 puppies and moved to the country, 6.5 acres. The first week was great. She took to the place and seemed to come out of her shell. I adopted out 7 of the puppies and kept one for her companion, a daughter. BI had both Mother and Daughter spayed.

However, one problem, mother dog was real protective of our new home. Two of the nearest neighbors started complaining that she would run at them barking. One shot his gun at her and told me if she approached him again, he would kill her. She would chase cars on the road almost getting hit. It was dangerous.

Also, I have livestock & poultry that the two dogs were naturals at protecting so they kept the coyotes out, the raccoons out, fox out, etc. (I have not lost anything to a predator). So one of my purposes was to have the dogs outside to keep other things from coming in, which they did. Being a Shepherd mix, they are bigger & stronger than coyotes. They learned to work as a team.

I decided to try the IF. I had it put around my entire 6.5 acres. Being a stray, the mother dog was not very leash trained and I just had to wave one flag at her and she ran like I had hurt her. She got shocked once and that was it — she immediately associated the beep with the IF, and I have had no problems with her. I waited until her daughter was older before training her. I also waited to see if she would simply learn to stay in the 6.5 acres with no collar. Over time, her independence took over and she was out barking at the neighbors and scaring them as well. So she got a collar & training. She seemed to train easily but after a few months, she learned to be OK taking the shock and going through when she wanted to. I adjusted the levels & gave her a bigger collar.

Soon after adjusting the strength of the IF to try and contain the daughter dog, I came home to find her dead from being run over by a car. I found the collar smashed in the road and saw where whoever hit her had drug her. Since I wasn’t here, I do not know what happened. My guess is she ran through the IF and the shock was bigger than normal so she was afraid to come back through, ended up in the road and a low brow, inbred driver ran her over (not an accident)

My choices were limited, in that, I have a dangerous highway, outside dogs, the need to keep animals out by having dogs who must stay in or get shot or run over. Mother dog still obeys the IF completely.

The IF is not a solution for everyone and things CAN go wrong. I am pained by the daughter dog who was killed, but those of you who criticize must realize that this is but one option. It can work but it also may not work for all dogs. It depends. I have a little dog and a large (blind from birth) dog who live indoors and they never go out without me– The IF would not work for them because of some of the arguments above. But it has saved my Mother (former stray) dog’s life. It killed her daughter. Just though someone might benefit from hearing both sides in a full story.