Any way to stop dogs from digging?

Baroque Brass

Senior Member
Does anyone have a proven method to stop dogs from digging? I’ve spent a lot of money on sod and I’m sick of my dogs digging holes daily. One is a year old mix, part of which may be Jack Russell. I know digging is their nature. The other is a six month old Golden Retriever that’s just as bad. I’ve tried scolding, I’ve tried hot sauce and cayenne pepper but nothing seems to work. Maybe shock collars?
 

DSGB

Senior Member
Lots of exercise and crate them when not supervised.
 

Redbow

Senior Member
A good whipping with a rolled up newspaper stopped 2 of ours years ago when we lived in SC...The newspaper doesn't really hurt them its the noise it makes when you smack them that they don't usually like...Its a Dog's nature to dig as you said especially in hot weather. A shock collar might be good to try..
 

oops1

Buzzard Expert
I used orange painted mouse traps to keep them from chewing the house and cable line. It may work for digging too. It would take a lot of them though.
 

TJay

Senior Member
Our dog was a digger. I saw something online about collecting some of their poop and putting it in a hole they were digging. Any time she would start a hole I would put some of her poop in it. She'd go to her hole to do a little digging and see that poop in there and she'd get the funniest look on her face. She quit that summer and hasn't done it since.
 

4HAND

Cuffem & Stuffem Moderator
Staff member
Our dog was a digger. I saw something online about collecting some of their poop and putting it in a hole they were digging. Any time she would start a hole I would put some of her poop in it. She'd go to her hole to do a little digging and see that poop in there and she'd get the funniest look on her face. She quit that summer and hasn't done it since.
I may try this. Our dog digs to lay in cooler dirt.
 

Baroque Brass

Senior Member
They’re pretty much inside dogs except when they go out to play and poop. We put them outside when we have to be gone. They just dig random holes, so I don’t know if the poop deterrent will work. Someone suggested they may smell moles in the ground and that’s what they’re after.
 

Baroque Brass

Senior Member
A good whipping with a rolled up newspaper stopped 2 of ours years ago when we lived in SC...The newspaper doesn't really hurt them its the noise it makes when you smack them that they don't usually like...Its a Dog's nature to dig as you said especially in hot weather. A shock collar might be good to try..
They know they’ve done wrong when I catch them digging. If I try to catch them for punishment, they run from me and then it’s a game to them because they know I can’t catch them.
 

Redbow

Senior Member
You gotta sneak up on them while they are concentrating on their digging, hee, hee.
 

pjciii

Senior Member
i have a digger. great Pyrenees. actualy an excavator. i conceded to the fact that i cant stop her. what i did was fill her favorite hole with mulch. she digs it out and i rake it back in same hole. she thinks she is doing something and it has limited the places she digs to 1 or 2. during the summer she is just looking for a cooler place to lay. it works for me.
 

GeorgiaBob

Senior Member
Very fine ground black pepper sprinkled generously over the area your dog is most likely to dig. Every "digger" is first a sniffer and your pet is much less likely to dig somewhere his/her nose has been abused by pepper. The down side of using pepper is that it will require reapplication often. That can add up to a lot of pepper.

Prior posts make the very valid point that digging dogs are unlikely to stop digging and must be diverted or distracted to prevent them from destroying your entire yard!. It would help if you could discover what, precisely, the dog is digging for. If your dog is smelling insects or critters in the ground and digging to expose a "snack" then you could do something to eliminate the pests.

I've got a 1 yr old Springer that went through several months of digging holes all over the back yard. Turns out she enjoys nibbling on grubs and also was chasing (unsuccessfully) moles. I peppered the areas she was digging and treated for grubs, so she mostly stopped digging. When my back yard was mole free (they left when there were no more grubs to eat) the digging stopped completely. She will still stop ocassionally when we are walking woods or fields to quickly dig where she smells a treat!
 

Crakajak

Daily Driveler News Team
Very fine ground black pepper sprinkled generously over the area your dog is most likely to dig. Every "digger" is first a sniffer and your pet is much less likely to dig somewhere his/her nose has been abused by pepper. The down side of using pepper is that it will require reapplication often. That can add up to a lot of pepper.

Prior posts make the very valid point that digging dogs are unlikely to stop digging and must be diverted or distracted to prevent them from destroying your entire yard!. It would help if you could discover what, precisely, the dog is digging for. If your dog is smelling insects or critters in the ground and digging to expose a "snack" then you could do something to eliminate the pests.

I've got a 1 yr old Springer that went through several months of digging holes all over the back yard. Turns out she enjoys nibbling on grubs and also was chasing (unsuccessfully) moles. I peppered the areas she was digging and treated for grubs, so she mostly stopped digging. When my back yard was mole free (they left when there were no more grubs to eat) the digging stopped completely. She will still stop ocassionally when we are walking woods or fields to quickly dig where she smells a treat!
I have also used an small kids pool filled with dirt or sand. Hide a dog treat in it and the dog learns to dig there instead of the whole yard.
 
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