Paul J. Perkins says:

Great psychological as well as physical deterrent. I have two dogs who loved digging up my garden and loved digging under the fence.My in-laws got me a Fido-Shock and I set it up. During install I decided to test it out, so I held the wire and waited for a zap… nothing. I double checked the wiring, held it again, and… nothing.As I stood there with the wire in my hand, perplexed, my dog jumped on me. ZAP!Aagh!Yelp!I had failed to take into considerationt he fact that my rubber shoes didn’t gound me. When the dog jumped on me she grounded us both, and we both got zapped.Getting shocked is unpleasant, more in an unnatural way than in a painful way.The fence was immediatly effective. I think they each got shocked one more time and learned their lesson quick. After three days I unplugged the Fido-Shock unit but kept the fence up. The fence was a psychological deterrent and worked for years.Eventually my wife took the fence down and six month later the dogs were back to their old tricks. My wife didn’t let me set the fence back up, as she preferred dead plants to “prison wire” around the garden.Maybe 5 years later I set up a new garden in the back yard that the dogs loved to tromp around in. I set the fence up and the dogs immediatly began ignoring it. I don’t think they ever got shocked.I left it plugged in for three days anyway (just in case) and have had it off ever since.Fido-Shock works great. The disadvantages are that you can see the “prison wire” and stakes, and you might accidently shock yourself.

dougkorthof says:

Works as advertized We love backyard habitat, but marauding Raccoons (cute, but don’t want them to use our yard as a latrine), a gang of angry squirrels and crafty giant Norweigan rats finally got to me. Being completely ignorant of zappers, it’s all new, but this unit works fine. I test it by touching the wires, to make sure it’s on; the shock is not serious, but not something you’d voluntarily repeat, so it’s not going to harm animals, pets, neighbors or yourself.There are two modes: grounded and two-wire. For fence work, the two-wire seems best; the intruders have to touch both wires, so it doesn’t bother birds (who only land on one wire).For ground use, you want to ground one wire into the ground, and string the other wire as the “fence”. The intruder only has to touch one wire and be standing on the ground.I had it in two-wire mode, with one wire accidentally touching a branch of a tree; the current went up the branch (!) and created a shock several feet up the branch.It’s branded Havahart, which is a good name; it does what it’s supposed to.Get the aluminum wire, it’s easy to cut and splice, and you need some plastic standoffs; if you get the yellow stubby ones, you will have a problem mounting them since they require a post sticking up. I nailed them directly into a wooden fence or the eave of the house, it’s a lot easier than trying to affix them to a large nail stuck into the wood.For ground use, 10″ wire sticks are great; the stubby standoffs do actually affix to the 1/8 wire, and you can adjust the height.Raccoons are members of the cat family, and their stool CAN (does not always) contain brain-worm larvae or eggs. The life-cycle of these worms starts in the intestines of cats who ingest an infected mouse; for two weeks, they excrete virulent eggs of the brain worms. The eggs are capable of surviving in salt water or your backyard for up to a year; if someone accidently touches the stool and then food, they get infested. Moreover, wind-blown dust can contain the eggs. When a human or a mouse gets infested, the brain-worm eggs hatch; the small worms go right through intestine walls, and settle in nearby cells, exploding them and multiplying to other cells, causing a mild but discernable reaction.The body immune system usually wins, and drives them into encapsulated form, in the brain tissue, but has to continually keep attacking them to stop them from spreading again and destroying the body, cell by cell.Alarmingly, 22% of the people in the US are infested with brain worms; there is no cure, the worms exist in the brain until death, just waiting for the immune system to weaken and let them continue destroying the body.The eggs pass right through sewage systems, which is probably how so meny people get infected, because cities like San Diego have a waiver from normal treatment requirements and dump primary sewage into the Ocean. The eggs remain a danger for months. This is also why the Sea Otters are dying in Monterey Bay, because they eat shellfish which are infected by nearby sewage operations where people dump cat litter down the toilet, or else when raccoon droppings get washed into the Ocean.So getting rid of cat and raccoon droppings is a matter of survival, and this is one way to discourage them. Raccoons like to create “latrines” in one area, and the whole Raccoon gang uses it. Don’t let it be your yard, especially if you have kids.