Keeping Our LGD In – SpotOn Fence Review. My thoughts on the GPS fence collar and tracker, how it’s set up, and how it works!
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When we moved to Texas we immediately started having issues with our livestock guardian dog Hans, that we had not experienced before.
Our property we raised him on in Montana had been fenced a lot better. Especially as he became an adult we finished the front fencing and put a big gate in. So we never had an issue with him leaving the property there.
Unless of course the gate got left open for long enough he’d go see what he could find in the neighbor’s pasture.
But our new property here in ETX only has 5 strands of wire for the boarder fence. Which is great for cows, but not anything else that we have raised. The dogs, chickens, guineas, ducks, geese, hogs, and especially those wily sheep!
Hans started roaming more and more.
Especially to the west of our property. That neighbor has horses Hans would go visit.
He would also go through our side fence and then down the adjacent property a ways and then back through our fence so he could go exploring in our woods without having to cross the electric cow strand.
It worried me because I know the neighbors would be within their right to shoot him, even though I knew he wasn’t hurting their animals. But he just wouldn’t listen to me, as soon as he thought I wasn’t looking he’d run off exploring. It’s not his fault, livestock guardian dogs have that tendency because they are patrolling and making sure that around their home is safe from predators. It’s a good instinct, but not always safe for them.
Especially on the front of our property that is off a highway, I was so worried he would go out in the road and get hit by a car!
So we kept him inside at night and whenever we left the property and would only allow him out when we could at least be partially watching him.
That’s when I decided that we needed to find some sort of electric fence collar solution.
We couldn’t afford to completely update the fencing on our whole property to make it dog-proof.
We also couldn’t continue to keep Hans locked up so much, he was going stir crazy. He started to hide from me when nighttime would come around. He wanted to be left outside to do his God-given job and guard. And certainly didn’t want to be stuck inside away from the action! So he started hiding under the house when it was time for bed, refusing to come out.
I tried a collar off Amazon but once it got here I realized that you could only set up a fence in a perfect circle. Our property is so long and narrow so Hans would have had almost no room to roam. It needed to at least be able to be a rectangle, but ideally be able to custom set the boarder to any shape or size. I just wasn’t finding that customizability I needed with the cheap brands popping up on Amazon.
Keeping Our LGD In
That’s when I found SpotOn collar.
They were so kind to send me a collar for Hans. And let me tell you, it has been the best thing for him!
I was pretty nervous about how it would go. I wanted to make sure we did it the right way so he wasn’t traumatized. Thankfully I was able to talk to someone at SpotOn and get all the details on how to go about doing it and it made me feel so much better.
The day finally arrived.
The long awaited gps collar was here!
We were almost done having to keep poor Hans locked up!
I got it all charged up and then before I set up any of the fencing I just put it on him to let him get used to it. I let him wear it for a couple days before actually setting up the fence. He needed to get accustomed to the feel of it before it started to make beeping noises and scaring him.
The app that you will download to set up the fence has all the instructions and videos that are easy to follow.
You can use your gps maps to drag the boarder of your fence to whatever shape or size you need. Literally any size from ½ acre to 10K+ acres! Or you can walk the perimeter and that’s slightly more accurate. But we have so much thick brush on so many of our boarder fences I decided to just set it up on the app.
I got the fence set up so easily, then I set up the safe “home zone”. I loved how precise you can be with the shape!
It was exactly what I was hoping for.
How it works is that 10′ from the actual boarder they will get an alert beep on the collar. Then it’ll change tone as you get closer. After that it’ll vibrate. And finally it’ll do an electric shock (if you have that set up on the app). I don’t even have the electric activated because the beep alone does the job for Hans now that he’s trained. He only got one vibrate and that was enough for him.
It’s also an important feature to note that this collar will never correct your dog for returning back to the property through the fence, only when they leave.
You can also get the boundary boost plan where you can actually track your dog in real time. To find them incase they run away or just to see where they are on your property. It also has a recall alert you can train your dog to, that you can activate with the click of a button. It also has boundary alerts where the app will actually keep track and notify you if your dog has tried to breach the fence. Or if they have actually gone through it.
Fences work without cell service & without a subscription.
You would just need the optional subscription for the tracking and recall.
The fact that it continues to work without cell service was vital to our situation. We have terrible cell service in east Texas. On parts of our property we don’t have any bars and can’t call each other on the phone. But once that the fence is set up the fence is SET until you change it, no matter the service in your area.
It was also super important that it is waterproof. We have a large pond on the property that the dogs love to swim in to cool off during the hot Texas weather. The collar can go for a swim right along with them without me having to worry at all.
Hans has been such a happy camper now that he can stay outside at night like he wants to.
Hilda and him stay out together, she has always stuck around so well I don’t have a collar on her.
I charge the collar every day. I bring him in sometime in the evening while I have it on the charger and it fills up pretty fast. Then it goes back on and he gets to go back outside. It does need to be charged daily because it’s basically like a cell phone and having such a precise gps fence takes a lot of power. But we’ve gotten in a really good routine of charging it. Plus it hardly takes me any time to get it on the charger and then back on him in about an hour.
The app has videos on how to actually train your dog to it, for the best chance of success. But it was super easy!
We have really loved the SpotOn collar so far. We’ve used it for a couple months now with zero issues. Hans hasn’t tried to breach the fence even one time.
Now he can guard the land at night like he wants and he has kept all our other animals safe and sound. Especially now that we have chickens and little piglets! We have heard or seen zero coyotes, wild hogs, skunks, or even snakes since Hans has been able to patrol full time.
I hope this review was helpful and gives you and your dog another good option for fencing!
And blessings!
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