SportDog makes a lot of equipment for people training bird dogs. They have one dog fence in their lineup, the SportDog SDF-100. It is the longest range dog fence available, doing 100 acres and is strong. The downside is that the collar is not rechargeable, and the whole system is pretty bulky and not at all pretty.
Box Contents
Collar
The SDF-100 is one of the bulkiest dog fence collars. You shouldn’t use this on a dog under 20lbs. It also has this bright orange plastic collar, great for visibility but a little garish for most peoples tastes. The collar takes a regular 9V battery, which is good because you don’t have to buy an expensive proprietary battery, but isn’t as good as a rechargeable battery. To get to the battery you have to undo these four screw which is a bit of a pain. But the upside is that it has great waterproofing. It has a nice set of seals to make this really waterproof. The collar correction level is set at the collar, so you can set a different level for each dog. You unscrew this cover with a coin and then you press this little button. There are a total of five correction levels. Levels 2-5 are progressive so they keep increasing in strength if your dog stays in the correction zone. The probes on the collar can be switched out for either these long probes or these standard size probes.
Where this collar stands out is that it is super tough. It can take a beating and has really good waterproofing. We had a customer a couple of years ago that left the collar outside and found it six months later when they hit it with a lawnmower. They switched out the battery and it worked perfectly.
Control Box
The standout feature of the system is the control box, which can power up to 100 acres, which is nearly 10,000 feet of boundary wire. So if you need something bigger than the 25 acre range on the IUC-4100 this is the one to get. Controls on the box are pretty standard. You can set the boundary width with this dial. The side switch, switches you between beep only, correction plus beep, and correction only modes. Note that there is no battery backup on this one. Like the collar, this unit is big bulky and ugly but it does the job.
Conclusion
One other nice thing about the SportDog is that it comes standard with 1,000 feet of boundary wire. Twice as much as the standard system. Overall a good tough system that is the one to get if you need to go over over 25 acres.