Free Tools

Fence Troubleshooter

Beeping transmitter, silent collar, or a dog that suddenly ignores the line? Answer a few questions and get the diagnosis, the fix, and exactly what you need. No guesswork.

Start here

What is your fence doing?

For wired in-ground fences: wall transmitter + buried loop. GPS or wireless collar system? Pick 'My fence has no buried wire' below.

Most faults fall out in two or three questions. The stubborn ones get the same checks an installer runs, cheapest first.

What this tool covers

102 diagnostic paths across every common failure, in the order a professional installer would check them: cheapest and most likely first.

Wire & signal faults

Beeping transmitter, buried wire breaks, bad terminals, twisted-pair leaks, signal hotspots, metal interference, inherited or discontinued systems

Collar & battery

Silent collars, tone-only settings, fit and contact problems, fast battery drain, pairing mismatches, indoor beeps, nonstop-correction emergencies

Weather & intermittent

Wet-weather dropouts, winter battery loss, snowpack escapes, frost heave, random cut-outs

Escapes & training

One-spot escapes at crossings and corners, narrow warning zones, run-throughs, re-entry traps, yard-fear recovery, training regressions

Field notes behind the diagnoses

The tool's recommendations follow the same physics and failure statistics our guides teach. No part gets blamed before the free checks rule everything else out.

Loose or corroded terminals cause more “broken wire” alarms than actual breaks: A bad connection at the terminal block reads exactly like a cut loop, and the transmitter can't tell the difference. Pull the wires, strip back fresh copper, and reseat before you dig anything up.
The two-minute jumper test settles transmitter vs. wire: A short scrap of wire across the terminals replaces the whole buried loop. Alarm stops: the break is in the yard. Alarm continues: the transmitter is the problem.
A bare wire nut fails underground within a season. Sealed inside a gel capsule, the splice lasts the life of the wire: The splice is the weakest point of any repair. The right method uses both parts together: cap the ends with a wire nut leaving no exposed copper, tie a strain-relief knot 3-4 inches back, then seal the nut inside a gel-filled direct-burial capsule and record the location. Bare nuts and taped joints corrode underground and have you digging again by next spring.
Batteries fail quietly before they fail completely: A weak cell powers the warning beep but sags under the correction load. Replace on a fixed 3-month schedule (6 weeks in freezing weather) from sealed, brand-name packs.
A running dog crosses a narrow zone before the correction lands: At full speed a dog covers 25+ feet per second. Containment comes from a wide detection zone (manufacturers recommend 12 to 24 feet total), not from a harder correction.
A loose collar fails exactly like a dead one: Both contact points must reach skin through the coat, with the strap one-finger snug. Raising the correction level while the undercoat blocks contact is the most common misdiagnosis, and it fixes nothing: the dog feels nothing at the higher level for the same reason it felt nothing before. Re-check fit after grooming, after a seasonal coat blow, and each fall when the winter coat comes in.

Want the full procedures? Start with the signal troubleshooting guide and the collar troubleshooting guide. Diagnosed something you'd rather not fix yourself? Get a repair quote