I have a wonderful tibetian terrier x boarder collie who is 7 months old, I do walk him at least once a day and he has two 15 minute training sessions a day too, I play find it games and spend a fortune on puzzle toys for him, but I do have two young children that also demand my time and because I can not let Alfie have the full run of the garden as he keeps jumping the fence, or digging under the hedge to get to his girlfriend, who loves Alfie but unfortuanatly she has very bad hip displacement and finds Alfie too over powing at times, I have to teather him up at times.  It is only short periods when I can not watch him and when he need the toilet but he only has to be out there 5 minutes and he starts digging, he dug a hole that big last week (over a few days) that when he lay in it we could only see his head and tail!!  I have buried lots of ballons, hoping that the shock of it poping would scare him in to thinking that diggings not a good idea, but he still carried on, have tried training disks too, and as soon as I have turned my back he starts again, Does any one have any more ideas please, before my husband goes mad!!!  Thank you Colette.xx

One of my girls likes to dig but she is only 10m and my other girl liked to dig at a young age too she is now over 2yrs.
It depends on the size of your garden but we have a very big garden and have fenced it off and put a gate on so that they go up the garden when supervised, the area they have to play in etc is quite large and paved they can play and run around with no worries about them digging up the garden when I leave them for 5 minutes LOL
Also during the winter months I have no muddy feet to contend with when they run out to toilet and I dont loose sight of them down the garden at 4.00pm in the afternoon on a winters day!

~Roni

I have a dog that loves to dig, rather than try to stop him, have tried but as soon as you fill in holes he digs them out again , i have given him an area for digging in, away from boundary fences and plants. with the fencing stuck a foot or two in the ground. :)

Thank you all for your advice, but before we start spending a fortune on lanscaping the garden (cant really afford it at the mo, hugh vet bill coming up or do it as hubby away for two months) Do you think that the smelly keep of stuff will work?? xx

no not really.
I think the only other way  of keeping on top of it is to not leave him un-supervised.
(doesnt cost much for a fence we used posts that would normally be used for holding up young trees that were treated from B&Q and a roll of chicken wire stapled it also has a ledge on the top so that the dogs cannot injure themselves and you can make it any height you want ..beardies are pretty good at jumping!! .... it doesnt block the view up the garden and looks really good course my OH is a joiner so he's pretty handy..

~Roni

My girl is from a breed with a renowned love of gardening and I have found that putting some of her poos in her recently dug holes and then filling them in does deter her, not everytime, but it does seem to work most of the time.  Other than that I just live with the fact that I'll never have a beautiful garden, just a beautiful dog! :D

I would definitely create a digging pit for him.  Bury lots of bones and toys for him to find and once he has exhausted himself and fulfilled his digging need, the great thing is you can do it all over again the next day with the same stuff!

Cheap, fun and a good way of tiring him out both mentally and physically while he searhces for treats etc.

The poop in the hole trick worked for me too.  Just kept filling in the holes till she dug one where I didn't mind and let her have that one.