To Ask My Neighbour To Put An Electric Fence Up?

[midori1999]

I'm not sure...

My neighbour has a large dog. It frequently jumped into my garden as a puppy and so she made the fence between our gardens taller (from 3ft to 5ft) to stop the dog jumping it. However, the dog still jumped it.

Then she fenced off part of her garden, also with a 5ft fence, so the dog has a seperate part of the garden to her children and they can play undisturbed. So, the do ghas to jump both 5ft fences to get into my garden. The dog can and does still jump both fences. Within seconds of being let out. Every single time.

So, she resorted to tying the dog up on a long line whenever it is outside, to stop it jumping over. Dog can no longer get into my garden.

However, in the last month or so, since I have had chickens, the dog has jumped into my garden twice. Today when it happened I was very luckily in the garden and managed to grab the dog by the collar as it opened it's jaws to grab one of my hens! I think it may have made slight contact, but the hen seems OK.

I would be devastaed if the dog killed one of my hens, as would my children. They are pets. I'm thinking of asking the neighbour to put a strand of electric wire on top of the dividing fence to hopefully be an 'emergency' fail safe to stop the dog jumping into my garden if it should ever get out/be let out without being tied up. Is this unreasonable?

True MitchyInge, you mean not everyone has one?

maybe a very long chain would be better than a rope

An 8ft fence? That's the max allowed and but backwards do there's nothing for the dog to scramble on. We use that with ds1

If they have already been willing to fence off a separate area in their garden, why don't you suggest they buy a proper dog run. They are secure - police dog handlers have to have them at home so the dog can't get out and no-one can get in.

They usually have a 'ceiling' of wire across the top, rather than just fencing around the edges (sorry not describing it too well, but I hope you see what I mean!).

"Get a chicken coop that is enclosed but which you can move around. As someone said foxes enjoy a nice chicken as well.

I come from a farming family, I would tell the neighbour that if you catch the dog on your property again you will shoot it.

This thread will now explode..."

"bit of an empty threat unless OP actually has a nice long barrelled shotgun to hand "

As I said earlier in the thread, we own several shotguns. However, I wouldn't actually use it on a dog and in any case, we wouldn't be able to use it in the garden due to near neighbours etc.

I appreciate foxes are also a risk, but because of where we live, the risk is really extremely minimal, plus my own dogs are in the garden most of the time, which would deter foxes anyway.

I have spoken to my neighbour, who apologised profusely. (she really is very nice) It seems that today was a one off incident. Someone had gone in their house to collect their spare car keys as they had somehow managed to lock themselves out of their car while out. Said person for some reason or other decided to let the dog out in the garden and the dog obviously promptly jumped the fence. She has promised to be extra careful in the future but that if it does happen again we'll try and sort out a fail safe solution. The dog is normally tied up if outside at all and doesn't try and jump the fence when tied up.

I have trained my own dogs not to chase/be interested in my hens, so I might discuss this as an option just in case the dog gets over again. Not entirely sure it would be as easy with dogs that don't live here/arfe a bit dim though...

Good news

If the fence is high, one thing you can do is line it with perspexo on ehr side so animal can't get any kind of scramble hold. That might work?

How about working with your neighbour to try and train the dog to stay out of your garden?

For instance, get her to give you a knock just before she lets the dog out, then stand in your garden with a high powered hose pipe and blast the bugger back as it launches into the air. It only gets wet and shocked, not hurt and it shouldn't take more than a few goes before it gets the message that over your fence is not a fun place to be!

I have kids, horses dogs and electric fence. In the case of battery powered fencing, it's a case of 'the kids will only touch it once!' the sort that runs off of a car battery won't kill them. They will get a jolt, and learn a lesson, thats all. The dogs hate it. Mains fencing is pretty strong, but I would still use it, these fences are for containment only. As the fence is 5 feet high, if she ran a strand of tape or wire along the top, about 6 inches above, the kids probably wouldn't be able to reach it anyway. For a dog to jump a 5 ft fence, it would have to come into contact with the top of the fence, so electric wire Along the top would be extremely effective. To be honest, I think you would be reasonable to ask this, and she needs to contain her dog.