Trinity's discovered the joys of digging up the garden! She's never out there very long, only while I'm vaccuuming or cleaning Dylan's ears, and I wouldn't mind too much except she digs right next to the front path so it gets covered in mud (especially with all the wet weather) and then treads it all back inside. The front hall is constantly covered in towels in a feeble attempt to save a carpet that will be ripped up shortly anyway to make way for a more dog friendly floor :rolleyes:

I've thought of laying down chicken wire, but is there anything else I could do to discourage her?

Thanks  :-)

I don't know of anything to discourage her but have you thought about getting lamate flooring. I did it and it is brill for dogs, you can just whipe the mess away and it helps with doggy smells as well. I am not really keen on the look of it but with three ddb clomping in and out all day i had no choice.

We've tiled he whole of our ground floor - it cleans up like new even after the muddiest walk and eliminates the doggy smell that tends to cling to carpets. I would never go back to carpets now - especially with the wet winters we seem to have now.;)

Yvonne

Try burying raw fresh marrow bones the furthest point of the garden where she won`t get in trouble for digging, make her own little digging patch :)

Christine, Spain.

I have just had my garden sectioned off for the winter, my dogs now have the patio area with a gravel section that is fenced off with a gate for the winter & they will have the garden for the summer. My grass is now destroyed  and like a mud bog from having two puppies and my grown up dog chasing each other. The past few weeks have been very tiring wiping 12 paws and washing my kitchen floor several times a day not to mention shampooing the chairs and carpets! My dogs still get a run in the fields its just I can't stand having to bath them all each time they go out and washing the floor! A Dirt Trapper mat was good too.  

PS There is no answer to stopping them digging, you have to remove what they dig in.

hee hee... sounds like the new floor can't go down soon enough!  I like the digging patch idea and I'll try the chicken wire strategy on the annoying areas and if that doesn't work I'll just stop her from going out in the garden by herself while it's muddy, and stick to taking her out for walks with my other dog (against whom the fence isn't dog proof so he's never allowed loose in the garden). It's funny how people redesign their houses to fit in with their dogs :-D

Hi your lawn sounds very much like mine, well i once had a lawn oohh way back in august i think it was now,My pup and the older two seemed to have turned it into a mud bath and as for the hall and kitchen floors im so tired of moping them I had tiles put down and i use old beach towels to try and catch most of their muddy paws but to no avail. Looking forward to the summer months might just get a few days to dry the gardens out

Just wait til you need an old tree stump digging up, though - Sparky did wonders for me in the summer last year! :)

ha ha ha! :-D  That reminds me of a time I was a volunteer on a kibbutz and was set the task of digging holes and planting baby palm trees around a horse paddock. The ground was baked dry, but I enlisted the help of one of the resident dogs (Pan - a great dane x black lab... HUGE!) to dig the holes for me. He was brilliant and I got the job done in super quick time :-D

I wouldn't mind all the holes at home if Trinity actually got around to planting something in them  :-P

We got so fedup with our Cairn digging up the garden we dug him out (with his help of course) a deep sand pit and hid all sorts of goodies in it. He LOVES it and almost immediately lost interest in the garden.
A

New patio area is being built as we speak so the dogs have secure access to the garden without having to worry about muddy paws!! Am seriously considering a sand pit for her.. but imagine she'll just dig it all out over the patio within a couple of hours! :rolleyes:

we also have this problem with digging and bringing mud in to the house from the garden. During the winter we solve them both by laying a water proof sheet over the muddy area (grass long gone)and securing at the edges with bricks. still have no solution for digging in the summer though
regards Charlene

We've got a couple of flower beds surrounding our patio we put the sand pit in one of the flower beds hidden amongst the plants. It's about 3.5' square and about 3.5' deep, lined all the way around with wood, with a gravel base so that the rain can drain through. It has a small wooden wall above the ground so that Hamish can't kick too much sand out but if he does it lands on earth in the flower bed, no problems there we just top it up when we need to.
The only mud problem we have is with him scenting on the small grass patch we have and then trailing it through the conservatory and into the kitchen but we have ceramic tiles on the floor and child gates in the doorways to prevent him trailing the mud through the rest of the house.
A

I had to give up my lawn and have it all paved - it wasnt what i really wanted but it saved on SOOO much work! i just cheer it up with tubs now in the summer but its great for hosing downa nd keeping clean;-)

I agree with some of the others the dogs have a nice paved part of the garden and the rest of us have the other part of the garden.  If Molly gets into the grassed part she always digs.  They go out for 1 1/2 walk each day so they dont really need to go on the grassed part and it saves me jumping up and down and threatening deaf by lethal injection :) It also means the garden is not full of dog poos and wees.