Invisable fences

[KaiLouie]

Louie is having some troubles walking around our neighborhood. There are several large dogs who have invisible fences in their front yards. As we walk by, these dogs charge at us barking and skid to a stop at the last moment. Louie is starting to get used to some of them, but I think this is contributing to a bit of dog aggression we're seeing from her. Has anyone else had a similar situation or have advice on what to do?

[KaiLouie]

I should clarify, Louie is my parents dog, but I say "we" because I have often experienced this with her and them. They are her main handlers, but I spend as much time with her as I can, and give them advice from this board!

[onyx'girl]

Is she food or toy driven? I'd carry treats/ball or whatever is her favorite and redirect her to it when she reacts. Don't correct her when she reacts,because she may see the correction as coming from what she's reacting to.

The game LAT(look at that) works, maybe give it a try?
I had the same problem, in fact one neighbor would let her dog out to charge mine...then stand in the window watching the show. I got PO'd one day and yelled at her after almost slipping on the icy road. I don't walk my dogs much anymore in my neighborhood, we stick to the woods.

[KaiLouie]

Good advice, thank you! I will try it out. She is a pretty low drive girl. At first I thought that she must just be calm compared to our previous labs, and maybe this was just a typical demeanor for shepherds, but being on this site has taught me otherwise. Not much motivates her beyond being with us. She does have a good protection drive though. She calmly alerts to any significant noise in our house and physically checks on us one by one sometimes if we are in different rooms (not in a nervous way as far as I can tell). When my sisters and I are home, she sleeps in the hallway between our three rooms! Anyway, off topic there for a minute, but That is her strongest drive and I'm not sure how that could be used in this situation. After having labs (great breed) it's so different having a dog with low food and toy drives.

[weber1b]

As we walk our dogs frequently, we know every house that has dogs and their habits/traits. We have one that is similar in that they have a large yellow lab who is aggressive and they have the invisible fence. We just walk on the other side of the street from them. It's funny how our dogs know every "dog" house as well. I swear Max even chooses to do his business only in the yards of dogs he does not care for.

[Gwenhwyfair]

Another tip would be to take your dog for walks/places where there's at least less certainity of being confronted by an aggressive dog. In other words keep her exposed to positive interactions via a training class or more controlled environment to balance out the negative behaviours she's confronting. I found this helped with my female when she was going through a DA stage. The more positive experiences can help outweigh the negative.

on the invisible fences in general....

I have witnessed and read of so many cases where these invisible fences seem to go hand in hand with this aggressive charging the boundary type behaviour.

Our trainer suggests they should only be used with a visible/solid boundary as a back up for the fence jumpers.

They seem to have a propensity for creating an aggressive type response in dogs that previously were not acting out aggressively. (??)

[wildo]

Dogs (animals in general, actually) will exhibit and reproduce behaviors that are most reinforcing, so controlling the dog is useless when it comes to learning. Controlling the reinforcement is what promotes learning. Remove the reinforcement by walking on the other side of the road.

[GSKnight]

I have a neighbor with a collie and one of the invisible fences... the dog has charged at us on walks too... the first time it freaked me out (Viktor wasn't too thrilled either)