In both these cases, something must be done to remedy the situation or the electric fence won't work. One's first impulse is to get a more powerful electric fence charger or perhaps increase the number of electric fence ground rods. However, these are not ideal remedies. They may improve matters, but they don't get to the heart of the trouble. The best answer, and the only one if the trouble is really bad, is to replace the absent or frozen soil moisture with something else.
Suppose, for example, that you string another conductor on the electric fence that is 6 inches to a foot away from some charged conductor. This conductor, however, is not charged, because it is not connected to the charger's positive terminal. Instead it is connected to the charger's negative terminal, and things are arranged so that it does not touch any active conductor. Then, when the animal comes along and touches the active and inactive wires at the same time it gets a shock—with the charge passing from the active wire through the animal to the negative wire and over to the charger's negative terminal, thereby completing the circuit.
