I have a 5 month old Boxer dog who has decided to change his ID from lovely
cute I can't put a foot wrong dog, to I want to be a JCB.
He is digging holes and trenche's in my prized lawn.I have tried to cover the holes but he just goes and digs somewhere else.Can anybody help my poor lawn ?

Regards
Andy

Hire him and yourself out. Digger and driver for hire £150 a day. Then change his name JCB Sitemaster.

Mick

Sorry for that Being flippant this morning. If you concrete the gatden you wont have to clip his claws.

Andy,

You may have to get a run. My boxer did it till she was 2 years old.. Sorry.

You could make a pit and train it to go there but it may or may not.

Welcome to the world of boxers.

Pam

my 11wk old boxer bradley loves digging holes in the flower bed at the bottom of the garden he has two ongoing at the moment one he fills whilst emptying the other, keeps him amused for hours. but this is a space we reserved for him. its just a bed with a tree in the middle and no prize flowers.

Andy - my Dane dug a hole that was 4 foot square and 2 foot deep - more of a trench really. He then guarded it, dug it out if we filled it in, and inspected it every morning to check for interference. He put sticks in it, took toys in it, nearly dragged the postwoman into it!!

We moved house.

And left the postwoman under the new patio!!!

You promised you wouldn't say anything!! ;)

What about the postwoman? Not the start of another Brookie storyline I hope! :D

On a serious note, make a pit she is allowed to dig in. A kids plastic sand pit may work if she hasn't a taste for plastic. Put in a mixture of sand and earth, then mix in some small treats, toys and maybe a bone or two. Take her to it, and when she shows any interest, say "Good Girl, Dig", anywhere else she does it, say "No" and take her to the pit and keep doing this until it becomes automatic for her

Good luck, I'll be trying this in a few months, so let us know what works!

Hayley

chloe your post has just made me smile for the first time in 4 days. :) :).

Hi Andy

Our 16 month old lab Gemma is still digging lovely trenches in our garden, although she now tends to stick to one which now must be her favourite.

There was different bits of advice I read - one is to throw a bean bag at them (small) just as they are beginning to dig, another is a squirt from a water pistol, got to say though that it didn't work for me - it must be the shock effect that is supposed to do the trick. The advice also mentioned the fact that your dog is not supposed to know where the hell that bean bag came from or that squirt of water so I suppose you have to wait military style behind a bush or something and wait for your pup to start, this is probably why it didn't work for us. The theory is that they get the picture that once they start to dig something just might happen to them and they gradually learn not to. Another thing I read was to let them have one chosen spot for their digging, as it is a natural urge anyway and let them dig in that area only - this is where we are with Gemma now.

The problem we have with Gemma is that she loves to bury chews and bones we give her although I think this may be a hormonal thing as she dosn't do it continually just certain times, this time was about four weeks before her season, so she goes to her chosen destruction site and starts to bury and then push the soil back with her nose (very cute to watch) - about 5 minutes later she picks the bone/chew back out and hides it under leaves (don't know why they do this, maybe the fact that she knows we were watching her).

Anyway(sorry for going on) but that's just some of the advice that I picked up from the many training manuals I read - Oh and Gemma is also a chewer as well liking nothing more than to chew the bark of our trees, apparantly they are either diggers OR chewers and we were blessed with one who loves both (can't win) but love her to bits all the same.

Good luck!!!!!!

Lesley

Hi Andy,
It could well be that your dog is a bit bored and might need some more exercise and mental stimulation now that he's getting older. I would do some training with him and play lots of games on walks to really tire him out. If he likes tennis balls, get a chuckit, they're great for getting the ball to go miles with no actual effort!
To combat the actual digging, I think a designated 'digging pit' is the best way to go (if you have room). As charliepud suggested, put toys and treats in, making them harder to dig out as your dog gets better and better at it. It needs to be big enough so that the dog can stand in it, so a childs sandpit would be about the right size. Get one as deep as you can, so it can be really challenging for him.

If you don't want him to dig at all, or you don't have room for a pit, give him something else to do when he's out there, like providing him with a stuffed kong or a treat ball, or a boomer ball that is too big to fit in his mouth, he'll have great fun batting that around, unless you have a greenhouse or delicate flowers!

He's doing it for a reason so it's not really fair to just stop him doing it and giving him no alternative.

Lesley, I love the story of Gemma burying her toys with her nose! My Charlie does that occasionally, although he once made the mistake of digging after it had been raining, and he came in the house with a little triangle of mud on his nose, walking funny and looking really depressed. When he walked round the coffee table I could see that he had huge lumps of mud stuck on his feet, looking like giant clown shoes. He just came up to me looking sad and held one of his paws up for me to clean. Such a sweetie!! But I'm soooo glad we have hard floors in the downstairs, wouldn't have fancied cleaning that off carpet!!!

Jo

Hi Jo - I get the picture with Charlie and the triangle of mud on his nose - Gemma has the same tell tale sign she's been burying things, the problem is she usually brings her retrieved item back into the house and guess what that looks like - lovely, she will come back to the living room all proud and then thud, drops it onto the carpet. I am coming round to the fact that maybe we should get wood flooring :)