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Hi Joyce,
Often in these cases, the initial escape conditioning training wasn’t complete and the dog panicked and ran through the fence vs the inside.
A consideration is that once a dog learns that the shock goes away when they run through the fence , the retraining needs to be more thorough than the initial training.
In the past I had to put a manually controlled collar on dogs to make it very bad experience that doesn’t go away once they go through the boundary and a long line to make sure they go back toward the inside, followed through with the highest level that can safely be on the invisible fence collar for the dog.
This is a life and death situation and requires true avoidance training, where the dog 100 percent wants to avoid the punishment associated with the boundary.
In my opinion, and I can back this up with science (this is a good lecture for this: (https://dogtraining.world/knowledge-base/punishment-level-considerations/)
electric fence systems should always be used on the highest levels safely possible for the dog so that they NEVER challenge the fence.
The giant caveat to this is that we need to make sure that the dog knows where the boundary is, understands the warning tone on the collar, and knows that the only way to escape the stimulation is by running toward the inside of the yard.
If this is done correctly, and the dog completely understands cause and effect and especially how to avoid that from ever happening again, there will be no logical reason why the dog would suffer any long-term consequences besides a healthy fear of the boundary, which is what is desired.
So, during retraining, the dog would need lots of safe walks around the boundary, then long line work where the dog gets a high level on the collar and is given the chance to run through the fence or back inside. If the dog runs through the dog would need to either remain in the shock zone by limiting how far the dog could go with the long line and than coaxed inside or have a manual collar attached.
This is the very short version, so if you are considering it, make sure you put together a good plan that makes sense and does enough retraining that the dog likely will need just one very bad experience to give the best possibility of a longer and safer life where he is still allowed freedom in the yard.
This lecture is also very relevant to this situation: https://dogtraining.world/knowledge-base/operant-conditioning-definition/
