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Repairing the Invisible Fence

What happens when the wire is cut

In December of 2004, a car going too fast managed to hit some ice and slid across the street and right into one corner of our wooden fence. We were actually away that day visiting from friends, so you can imagine our surprise that evening when we came home and saw the demolished fence. The police had been by and left a report about the incident, and we knew it would probably take a few months to sort everything out.

What concerned us most, however, was the state of our Invisible Fence system. After all, we depended on it to keep our dogs safe in our yard. We could block off the part of the yard with the demolished fence (to keep them away from the debris) but we still wanted the Invisible Fence to keep them contained within the remaining part of the property.

Luckily, the accident hadn't cut the wire, so the system was still intact. You can tell this quite easily — just check for the green light on the control unit. So the system was still working, which means our dogs were still protected.

When the fence was repaired, though, we had to cut the wire to get it untangled from the debris. But it's just a wire, luckily, so all you do is rejoin the two pieces using a standard wire connector and the system is back to normal. Again, the green light on the control unit makes it easy to determine if the system's working or not. And if you want to be doubly sure, just remove a dog collar and hold it up near the Invisible Fence boundary — if it starts beeping, you know things are working.

This is Stage 1 of an AdSense case study. Copyright 2005 by Eric Giguere.