Most Difficult Install

When I first started my Dog Guardbusiness, I had someone to run the equipment, I usually did inside work and the public relations, small service work, scheduling appointment etc.

This is my experience of my first dog fence installation.

So, 13 years ago, the summer of 2005 it was 90 degrees out at 9am, it was miserable, but we had an install to do and the people were anxious to get their fence in. It was 9am and my worker wasn’t showing up-10am looks like I’m on my own. I was a little upset to say the least. So, I loaded the truck and off I went, thinking the whole way there how am I going to pull this off, I had never put one in all by myself and I watched the guys do it and they struggled some, ugh.

I arrived at the house and met the customer outside, went over where everything would go and of course acted like it was all second nature doing this all by myself. I was a hot, sweaty nervous wreck, lol. Got the inside work done, no problem, now go to run the machine and run the concrete saw. Let me explain the yard… it was new construction and the yard was half way in and being it was on a hill it had that plastic mesh to hold the grass seed in place. The yard was cracking open due to heat and it was as hard as concrete. The plastic mesh was getting pulled up in the blade of the trencher, I had to stop ever 20 feet to cut it out and I’m putting all my weight onto the machine to try to get the blade in the ground. The concrete saw was hard to start but got it going, got it done, wow that thing was heavy! Okay now it’s time to flag the yard, yeah right, they didn’t want to go in the ground either. Job complete 5 hours later, 5lbs of sweat, muscles that hurt that I didn’t know I had and tears after I got home, oh my gosh that was so hard. I got up the next day and did it again. I was determined! It’s a job that would now take me 2 hours by myself. I can now look back and have a little laugh!

Lesson learned, don’t run a business if you can’t do it yourself!!

Heather Cottingham