How To Stop Dogs From Digging Quickly And Easily

Dog who likes to dig up your yard can be a tremendous problem.   When we come home they find these monstrous holes one of the things we’ve got to consider is this: is the dog getting enough exercise?

That’s first and foremost what needs to be considered.  

Dogs need to run. 

Period.  They don’t need to walk on a leash around the block.  They need to run. The dog needs to be taught retrieving-bringing the ball back.  Bringing the toy back and giving it up to us every time so we can throw it again.  This must be taught and understood by your dog.

Don’t think you need to drive to a dog park every morning with your dog and take an extra hour and a half to do this either.

All you need to do is get up twenty minutes early find a piece of grass near your house if your house doesn’t have a big enough yard. Find a grassy section of space, even by a roadside.  Anything will work, just find some space.  If it’s along a road,  teach your dog how not to run out into the street using the perimeter training sections of our website.

Throw your ball get them tired. If they have that exercise in the morning they’re going to be more compliant and more relaxed.  And if you’re able to come home at lunch time or have someone come over to run them again, especially if they’re young, it gets that energy burned out of them.  Try to get at least a minimum of two runs a day.  This is going to help the situation immensely.

What If They Still Dig?

If the dog is still digging at this point then we’ll have to fall back to standard lead training. Take the dog up to the hole that they’ve dug, show them, and take them by the back of the neck.  Show them the hole; stick their face right up to it.  You want to start to show a little agitation with the dog.  Say “did you do this? I don’t want you digging! No digging!”

You can snap the line as you’re admonishing the dog and increase the severity of the correction a little bit each time until the dog starts to realize it’s not an acceptable behavior.  Remember,  it doesn’t matter if you caught them in the act or after the fact.  It is just as appropriate and just as effective even if it’s later.

You need to have your collar and line on the dog when you make the correction so that if they squirm they cannot get away from you.

Another technique to try Is when you fill the hole, fill the hole in almost all the way and place some of their dog poop on the top of that dirt.  Then cover all of this over with a thin layer of dirt on top of that.   Be sure you put the dog away before you do this so they don’t see you doing it.

Then let the dog out and go about your business.  Now when they return to that hole later to dig they’re going to start digging through their own mess and they’re not going to like that.  You may have noticed that many dogs like to poop off into a certain area of the yard because they don’t want to step in their own stool.  When they start digging up their own their own feces it’s going to put them off.

It’s a quite a good deterrent for many dogs so give it a try.  It is one thing that does work!