Tony, I covered about 2 acres. just laid the wire on the ground and plugged in the controller module. did not take long at all .. the training of the dog took two weeks but - after he went through it once when defending... it caesed to be a fence. Others may have different experiences with invisible fences but it did not work for me in my situation. Another thing, because of rough play - (Sars and CO do play rough) they would routinely damage the receiver module on the collar and thak got to be expensive replacing them.