The majority of dogs really enjoy digging around in soft dirt. You want to have a nice yard and a beautiful garden and your dog comes along and destroys it all. It’s a big mess that you could hardly keep up with. You want a beautiful yard but your dog wants to have fun digging around. What is the best way additional problem?

Dogs are natural diggers. Some breeds are actually bred to dig out certain prey so this digging conduct is instinctual for them. If your dog is a natural digger it might be more challenging but there are some things that you can do to control the digging.

It’s important for your dog to engage his curiosity, learn about and explore his world. But most people want a beautiful yard too. You must contain his digging or even halt it completely if you want to keep your yard nice.

There are many causes why a dog will dig excessively. He may want to entertain himself because he is bored. He may be expressing anxiety from being separated from you. Perhaps he is planning an escape route so he can get free from the yard. It can also be that he is too hot or too cold and he is just trying to control his own temperature.

In case your dog is digging excessively, to begin with make sure that he gets enough playtime and interaction time with you. You may also give him some fun toys that he will play with and hope that they can distract him from the digging. If you give your dog a bone to chew on he will often try to bury it so exchange any bones with chew toys or rawhide bones that he won’t bury.

You should use clicker training to train your dog not to dig. Watch your dog and when he starts to dig just click to distract him and give him a command that means “no”. When he stops digging reward him with a treat. It will take consistency but clicker training can be very effective for dealing with digging.

You can also try to fill his hole up with undesirable things. It is possible to fill the hole that he has been playing in up with garden mulch, sticks, pine needles and so forth. When he comes back he will dig and get the undesirable things in the hole and he’ll stop digging. You may also bury a balloon which will pop in his face as he digs. This will not hurt him but it will scare him and he may stop the digging. Some trainers also recommend putting dog poop into the holes as the dog will no longer want to dig after he finds his own poop!

If your dog is a natural digger you can go with the flow of his natural habits and teach him to only dig in a certain area. This takes patience but it can work well once you succeed. Be persistent in your training and you can get your dog to stop digging.

Your attitude is probably the most important aspects of training your own puppy. For more information on dogs training visit us at our blog!

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 11th, 2010 at 5:02 pm and is filed under blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.