Keeping a dog out of the chicken pasture

Several people warned us that a five foot high fence around our forest pasture would not be sufficient to keep the chickens inside.  Other people worried that aerial predators would swoop down and pick off our birds.  It turns out that neither problem materialized, but we did end up having a fencing issue --- Lucy.

We've been throwing all of our food scraps into the forest pasture, and food scraps are our dog Lucy's primary failing.  Try as we might, we can't seem to teach her that food of any sort is off limits.  She wanders through the garden picking strawberries, peas, raspberries, and tomatoes, and if we don't put the trash safely in the barn we'll find a ripped open bag strewn across the yard.  So we shouldn't have been surprised that no amount of training was able to get across the message that food scraps in the chicken pasture were off limits.  A few hours after I tossed the scraps in, I'd come back and see that Lucy had broken a hole in the chicken wire and eaten up the scraps, letting the flock out in the process.

Mark solved this problem with a Zareba K9 electric fence charger.  The device was absolutely perfect for our needs, with a low voltage so I don't feel so bad about zapping our beloved pet, and with no need for a grounding rod.  Mark hooked up the charger on a wire about six inches off the ground around the perimeter of the pasture, I threw in some scraps, and we waited to see what happened.  When Lucy's nose hit the wire, she jumped backwards so fast it seemed to break the laws of physics.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect Lucy might have been zapped again later on a second part of the fence, because now she keeps at least eight feet of distance between herself and the chicken pasture at all times.  The weeds have grown up to touch the wire and we haven't bothered to cut them back because I'm pretty sure the problem has been solved for good.