The Importance of Boundaries

The only way to teach Murphy that the yard had boundaries was to shock the shit out of him.

For a year, Murphy constantly ignored his “stay” and “come” commands. Once he was outside (usually by pushing his way out the front door) it was like he suddenly went deaf. I’d stand five feet away from him and call his name and the dumb dog would stare at the sky or lick his crotch or thump his tail happily against the dead grass. After a second, it’d click in his head that he wasn’t wearing a leash and could do the one thing he loves: run. He’d take off like a huge, clumsy bat out of hell, and do doughnuts in the yard. And our neighbor’s yard. And our neighbor’s neighbor’s yard.

Then he’d race to the front yard, and burn circles out there, too.

His enthusiasm for the outdoors never surprised me. Murphy didn’t grow up in the city. Until he was eight months old and shipped off to the busy suburbs of a Northern Virginia county, he lived with his mother and brother on a small family farm somewhere in Missouri. He could sleep outside, and eat outside, and run through pastures until his feet felt like they were going to fall off. He didn’t have any boundaries, until he came to live with me. Acres turned into a small, wooded backyard, and Murphy’s just a dog; he doesn’t understand the concept of space. He doesn’t understand that the yard is broken into zones, like the “belongs to the county” zone, or the “we didn’t buy that house so that’s not our property” zone. All Murphy knows is that outside smells good. He runs to those smells, before he just runs for the pleasure of it.

The need to stretch his long legs has almost gotten him hit on a few occasions. After one particularly close scare involving a black Ford F-250, I went out and bought a stake and a bright orange harness. My idiot dog wanted to run and almost get himself killed? Fine. He could run. He could run back and forth, in the backyard, all he wanted on heavy-duty dog-run cable, and look like a blissed-out, furry, four-legged traffic cone while he did it. 

Of course, the joke was on me, because Murphy slipped out of the harness and again ran towards the front yard, and the road. I bought a thirty-foot leash. Murphy somehow slipped out of that. The choke collar wasn’t an option. The regular leash was too short. I didn’t have the money for a fence, physical or electric.

The only option, besides permanently keeping the dog indoors on his treadmill, was something known as an electronic collar. It’s typically referred to as an E-collar (or the more humane sounding “Dog Training Collar”), and is a great, portable, relatively inexpensive alternative to the electric fence. Dogs who field train, like Labs or Goldens, often wear E-collars during retrieving events, because it’s a way for their handler to communicate with them. A dog runs to fetch whatever was tossed, or to flush out birds like ducks or pheasants, and then waits for the handler to press the button on the E-collar’s remote control. The E-collar will briefly “nick” the dog with electricity and give the Retriever the information it needs, like which direction to head and what bird it should or should not pick up.

They're a useful training tool, and have started to find their way into the homes of difficult dogs. Of course, like everything concerning dogs these days, the E-collar is controversial. Some believe that it’s cruel to electrically zap dogs. Some believe the shocks are unnecessary. Some think E-collars shouldn't be available to regular dog owners, because regular dog owners don't always do the research, and end up hurting their pets.

I agreed with the arguments against E-collars. At least, I did until I had to actually use one. It wasn’t an easy decision: I researched, like a good dog owner, and felt sick to my stomach at having to invest in something that would give my dog an electric shock. How freaking inhumane. But, really, what were my options? I didn’t have the money to put up any type of fence, I’d already tried everything else, and there was no way in hell I was going to give my dog away.

The only thing I could do was buy an E-collar and hope that the shock would at least distract Murphy, so he could finally hear me. I bought a bright orange SportDog FieldTrainer 400, which had a remote that allowed me to change the level of nicks Murphy would receive, every time I pushed the button. (The lower the "nick," the less electricity goes through the E-collar's prongs, which means the dog feels less of an electric shock.) It took over a week to arrive. While I waited, I bit off all my nails. I cut my hair. I watched Murphy escape the house twice and stopped feeling bad about introducing electricity into the dog training.

When the E-collar finally arrived, I pushed a happy Murphy out of the way, sucked in some air for courage, and pressed the collar's metal prongs to my forearm. No sparks flew. I didn’t have scorched skin. The shock literally felt like someone was pressing a vibrating phone to my arm. Obviously, I was stumped. I couldn’t figure out what the hell everyone was talking about. Controversial? I didn’t think so, at least not the piece of equipment I had purchased. Murphy wasn’t going to get hurt. Me resorting to the E-collar wasn’t inhumane. In fact, it was the most humane thing I could have done for my dog: Murphy picked up the boundary training almost immediately. Within three days, he had stopped running into everyone’s yard, came the first (or second) time I called, and generally stopped pushing past people when they opened the front door.

It’s been two years. Murphy knows his boundaries. He listens. He obeys. He still wears his E-collar; it's always turned off.

What he doesn't know won't kill him.