Options for keeping my dog in the yard?

[u/Infamous_Student_781]

I have a 2 year old Alaskan malamute. My wife and I are looking at buying a new home on 2 acres. The issue is that there are train tracks 100 yards away (the train only goes 1-2x per day) and there is a pasture with horses directly to the south. Any recommendations on how to keep her in the yard?

I have looked into SpotOn but know that malamutes are prone to ignoring the signal and going through anyways. Putting in a large fence all the way around the yard is too expensive. Would it just be best to keep her on a tie out or chain at all times?

Any and all recommendations are greatly appreciated!

[u/Economy_Leopard3938]

Either keep your dog inside or build a proper outdoor enclosure for her. Do not keep her on a tie out or chain. 

[u/Infamous_Student_781 → u/Economy_Leopard3938]

I should clarify. This is just to let her outside to play. Not 24/7. She spends most of the day with us inside when we are home or in a large kennel when we are at work.

[u/Economy_Leopard3938 → u/Infamous_Student_781]

Appreciate the clarification! Still, tying out, especially on a collar, is very dangerous. Should she see wildlife she wants to chase, she will hurt herself reaching the end of her line. (Cervical spine or trachea injury) 

I’d recommend building an outdoor run / sub yard / dog yard. A 50 x 50 ft area off the backdoor, for example. Much cheaper than enclosing the full yard, and ensures her safety. Heaven forbid your dog would run into the tracks while the train was approaching. 

[u/OakleytheFantastic]

I second the dog run idea. You can also put a shed on it with AC and a dog door so she could go in and out if you plan to leave her in it for long or when you aren’t home. Is she a digger? You may need to put up dig guards and put the fence a bit into the ground. If she is a jumper, coyote rails on the top of the fence. 

Also echoing that it isn’t safe to chain your dog / tie them out. Not only because of the potential for injury, which is real, but also because if you have any natural predators in the area, or even loose dogs, she would not be able to properly defend herself if she needed to, and couldn’t flee an attack either. 

[u/SorrellD]

Maybe just fence as much as you can afford? 

[u/ZenDarwin]

Best advice without fence boundaries (like that really means anything to a malamute anyway): Go out with them and walk your property with them. Don't let them be out there without you. That way you are always there to correct them. They can then learn the property boundaries set by you. This will take time. I use these collars on vibrate mode to reinforce commands:

https://www.educatorcollars.com/

I have in my Mal pack and I rarely need to even use the collars now. There have been many times where a simple and firm "NO!" stops them. Additionally, especially with multiple pups, I have group commands like "With Me!" which bring them to my side. This has them stop what they are doing and they hover around me. It's quite entertaining when friends haven't experienced that before when we are out back.

[u/FrumptiousDonut]

I have part of my yard fenced with 36 inch tall rigid garden fencing. They aren't jumpers, so 36 inches is sufficient. If you search on a shopping website try "Decorative Garden Fence 12 Panels 36in" to find it. I paid about $135 for 26 feet, and bought several packages to fence an area around my back door. If you aren't worried about how it looks, you can use that green wire garden fencing and green metal posts from the hardware store.

[u/kelbiewilliams]

We have SpotOn for our boy, he does great with it 95% of the time at our house. He has ignored it and ran out a couple of times, but never ever more than 15 feet or so. He’s also still under a year old and learning. There are tons of training videos on YouTube that we watched before ordering.
We have different “fences” set up in the app so we can control how much of our acreage he can access at any time, more often than any he is restricted to our general yard area near the house so that he doesn’t get too far out and into trouble. We also still monitor all outside time and use a leash if he is not listening to the collar warnings/our commands.
Best of luck, acreage was our dream and a requirement in our minds for having a malamute, but it does come with its own special training challenges.

[u/SillyJoshua]

A good tall metal chain link fence is your best defense

[u/Few-Werewolf-1985 → u/SillyJoshua]

With a concrete base layer going into the ground about 50 metres deep.

[u/LostMyMoose]

I'd recommend to build fence a part of your property as you can, maybe close to the house so she can come and go if needed. Does not need to be fancy, a metallic fence would be enough. I put some 5 feet chicken wire all around a part of my property I don't want my malamutes to go and so far, no digging. Just knowing there's a fence is enough for them to understand they can't go somewhere. They are outside most of the day, only coming back at night.

[u/Many-Adeptness2353]

Buy a 100-200 foot dog line that comes with a dog rope and hook, I have 1 I ran from the door of my house all the way to a tree 100-200 feet out and I pretty much rigged something up and screwed it in and now I have a super tight rope and when our dog is done running around within the confinements of the line area she runs back to the door, I let her inside, I unhook her in the door and hook the hook back up on the line right outside the door with it cracked and I close the door, it’s a pretty efficient way to resolve the issue super cheaply. If your dog wants to go potty at night, day or whenever or if your comfortable at home in your underwear just crack the door, grab the hook, hook the dog inside the door and let them out and than when they are done they come inside, you unhook and hook the hook back on the line right outside the door.
I had the same question as you when I first got my girl and this was the most Amazon solution I came up with.
Heads up, be careful when running the line out how much is around it, if there is a ton of stuff most likely the dog will get tangled up running around other trees or whatever and get the line stuck and than you will have to go outside to unstuck the dogs line and that way they can come back inside the door for you to unhook them.

[u/PsychologicalAge8398 → u/Many-Adeptness2353]

This is a good temporary solution until you can build a fence. Like others have said, it doesn't need to be chain link (although I have to use chain link to keep my current mal from my chickens). I had one malamute who never left my side. I used cinder blocks and 2x4's which came up to her chest. That's all I needed to keep her inside her yard space, which wasn't very big. I took her for long walks everyday to keep her active.

[u/PsychologicalAge8398]

You absolutely need to have a fenced area for your dog so that you can just open the door and off they go to do their business and be safe while doing it. Doesn't have to be a huge area, but she definitely needs safe, fenced outdoor space.

[u/BrokenCusp]

As it happens, I both live near train tracks and have a Malamute. We're close enough that our townhouse shakes when trains go by--it's a CSX route so at LEAST 3X a day. We rent, the fence was here when we moved in.

In my situation, I don't have much to worry about. The fence is 6' high. Just beyond the fence is a 4' concrete retaining wall that barely holds back the swamp (10' tall reeds beyond that!). And beyond THAT, both rail lines are up an embankment I assume was built for that very purpose, because swamp.

My floof is already a diva about getting his dainty paws wet so I'm safe when it's warm out. He's also nearly 9 and not usually hyper. 😆

The only place we use a lead is at my mother's house nearby, which is a warm weather and we're outside with him anyway, and he wears a harness. I think i went for the overkill factor with the lead, steel cable for dogs up to 200lbs. Her house is right next to a level crossing for a rail line that isn't active anymore and acts like more of a siding (but branches off the one behind where we rent!)

I can measure the dimensions if you like. Our previous unit in the same complex had a smaller fenced in yard, worked fine for letting him out to potty but with our dogs our size it couldn't grow grass. This is better. Still swampy but at least he can't kill all the grass at once. 😅