Coming back from grocery shopping today, got a call from hubby. "I just want to prepare you..."

Ami left the boundary and got into our neighbors duck pen. With the expected results. Fortunately, my neighbors are lovely people and just locked Ami in the pen and called us instead of shooting him. For which i am deeply grateful.

I've been having trouble with his fence collar receiver being unreliable so i replaced it. But the new collar strap shredded in a week. I was going to use another strap left from a defunct receiver but it was too thick and these receivers are known for the side pieces to break when putting a new collar in so i ordered a replacement collar strap and, since the old receiver seemed to be working again, i used that until i received the new one.

Welp. Last 2 nights, Ami has been coming in covered in mud and hugely excited. Last night, when he went out for his bone, he was really studying the neighbors house. After I shut the door, i started thinking about it, got suspicious and called him in. Which took quite a while and again, he was very muddy. I kept him in, suspicious that the collar may not be working. Or. That hunters had left carcasses in the back acreage.

I planned to check the collar against the fence line but had to shop today. Hubby wasn't really informed fully of my suspicions and let the mister out while i was gone. Sigh. I want to replace the ducks but they're saying "accidents happen " I'll have to work on that.

My penance? Look at this big boy,!!! Too cold to bathe him outside, the water is off as well. My bathrooms are not suitable for dog bathing (white carpets, one acrylic tub, one fiberglass shower. Neither of which will stand up to panicked dog nails.

So at the moment, it's a plant sprayer, a wash cloth and every known old towel and sheet on the laundry room floor...a long process

Oh, that is so scary in so many ways!!! It's good to have understanding neighbors but you have to wonder how understanding they can be ...

Do you have any idea where the mud that he's getting into is coming from?

I wish you the best of luck with this ... Misty managed to get a couple of chickens before I moved down here but when I paid, I think, something like $5.00 apiece for them (and there were only like 3?) he became much more agreeable - "Just don't let it happen again!"

And what's the problem, you look to have a perfectly good dryer setting in the corner ... just toss him in and set it on warm.

The mud? In that picture the mud is from the duck pen. How do i know? Stink. Barnyard stink. Mushed in, I'm sure, with duck poop

But there's more mud on the property. We have a finger of Alden silt loam that bisects the the property north to south. That soil is a very fine silt that holds water, drains poorly. The whole property east to west is on a slope, lower portion about 3%, upper portion about 6%. And with a fragipan about 18" down. So water flows downhill but doesn't permeate the fragipan. And the area of Alden silt loam is at the bottom of the 6% slope and forms the slightest of bowls before transitioning to the 3% slope. And just to top it all off, that area has a dense growth of buckthorn which shades out any other vegetation that might want to take hold. So dark shade, water holding soil with poor drainage... Leads to deep ruts of water interspersed with...MUD! Which lies between his safe zone and the neighbors pasture. But this mud has a completely different smell. Here it's a fishy, algae smell. Both, however, are quite distasteful. Here's a picture of the nasty area:

Your neighbors are saintly. I admit I am rough on loose neighbor animals. We only have a few neighbors who are irresponsible and just let their animals roam. The others are not repeat offenders and I know they are escapees. The last time kenzi got out she rolled in a two week old dead possum that was bloated up. That is a grey goo that comes with a stink I wish on no one.

I put Ami on his ecollar today and went into the woods, holding to see where he might be evading the fence wire. And hoping that i could find the boundary wire in all the leaves. Walking down the electric fence line on the east side of the garden, I was quite pleased with my foresight at replacing the green wire with yellow this summer - damn wire could be seen from 30 ft. Imagine my surprise however, when Ami blythely, slowly, walked towards the wire, stepped over the wire contained sauntering on his way. After much testing and troubleshooting with Petsafe, we decided that the transmitter may be failing and they are sending me another. For a price - this one is at least 2-3 years old. I'm a bit skeptical that it's that simple but we shall see. I really don't want to have to trace that whole line again to find a partial break that's attenuating the signal. Winter is fast coming and once snow hits, I'm done until spring!

The folks at AMPROBE have a really nice little unit that would let you slide a "probe head" onto the wire and look for connectivity and it's on sale at about $1100 (nope, there are no decimals in that, OUCH!)

Have you tried to walk him up to some other place in the wire and listened for (PetSafe beeps first, doesn't it?) or seen a reaction that says the wire is live all the way round?  I can't picture any situation where the transmitter would "choose" to disable a part of the fence but I can see, as you said,  "a partial break that's attenuating the signal."

Snow by this weekend if the prediction for Ogdensburg covers you all (I know it doesn't, I have a cousin in Ogdensburg and I keep an eye in his weather, you're what right at about 300 miles south?)

I appreciate you situation, you definitely don't want him going chicken hunting over the winter ... patience is a virtue, I'm told, but if I had chickens and a neighbors dog was making lunch I'm not sure how much patience I'd have.

Al - I've tried 3 collars at multiple locations around the perimeter and the results are inconsistent. On the phone with Petsafe, i also repeated the " short loop" test  with them. A full break in the wire results in an alarm - which i know works as when i pulled out the wires to insert the short loop wire, the alarm sounded. I now have 2 theories: either one of the twisted wires that go into the transmitter was not fully inserted and thus intermittent signal. Or, it's well below freezing this morning and freezing, causing water to expand, may, in one of my slices, cause a fragile connection to more securely contact ( the splices are bare wire ends twisted together in a wire nut, inserted into dialectic grease in a plastic, sealed tube.)

I can test the latter theory this weekend, we'll be entering an extended warm period starting with close to 60° on Saturday. The new transmitter is already ordered and paid for. If it turns out my existing one was just a connection issue to the transmitter or transmitter is still weak but useable, I'll use that to make a loop around the house to keep the dogs from pulling off the downspout extension (they have a fondness for canned chipmunk). There, I only want a very narrow boundary anyway ( which is why i would need a 2nd transmitter instead of just adding onto the existing layout) and if the boundary fails now and then, the only consequence is the same as now: crawling into the foundation plantings to reattach the downspout extensions. With occasional repair/replacement of downspouts themselves.

We shall see. For now, outside of supervised only and wearing ecollar.