Stop Your Dog’s Digging Problem

I want to tell you about a great way I learned to prevent your dog from digging up your yard or garden. A few days ago I ran into town with my friend. When we got back, we were unable to drive through the front gate. That’s because his pack of dogs had dug an enormous hole over 5 feet wide and a couple feet down. Because we are living at the beach the digging is pretty easy for the dogs.  This was not the first time this has happened either. My friend didn’t have a clue how to prevent his dogs from digging up his yard.

There could be several reasons why your dog may be digging up your yard.  It could be because of boredom, or separation anxiety, an attempt to escape, an attempt to dig down to cooler moister soil during hot weather, or a predisposition based on the type of breed you have . I will mention some ideas for stopping your dog from digging in your yard or garden. Because my neighbor’s dogs had dug up right in front of the gate, it was probably a mass escape attempt.  However, on other occasions these same bored dogs have dug holes in the middle of the yard. His dogs would also dig up any recently watered areas of the yard because it is so hot at the beach. The need to prevent these dogs from digging up the whole place at my friend’s house was long overdue.

We used a tip from my favorite dog training book to build his dogs a separate play area, where they could hang out and dig to their heart’s content, without messing up the rest of the yard. Because my neighbor’s lot is sandy, he didn’t need to do anything beyond enclosing a nice sized area with fencing to create the enclosure. He also was thoughtful enough to his pets to provide shade cloth above for protection from the heat. My neighbor even put in a wading pool and some chew toys. He obviously loves those dogs. Since the dogs only dug up the yard when he was away he has now learned how to prevent the dogs from digging up his yard using a win-win type of solution.

You may not live on a sandy beach lot, but you can still make a suitable area for your digging dog in you own yard. You can find an area of the yard to enclose and create the substitute digging area for your pet by putting a sandbox filled with loose soil mixed with sand for digging. Try to make sure the chosen area has some shade and that you can enclose it to keep your digging dog where you want him to be, with water and some chew toys to keep him occupied and not bored.

Besides stopping your dogs from digging up the yard, it also gives them a cool place to hang out while you are gone. If you later notice your dog is only digging in his new area, you can try letting him loose again even if you are not at home, and it is quite possible he won’t dig up the lawn. This probably won’t hold true for the dogs that dig for escape purposes. If you follow this tip, you’ll have stopped the yard from ever getting dug up again.

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