Dog Digging Holes… Try a DigBox!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.       How long each day does your dog spend outside in the backyard?

 

And

 

2.       What activity have you provided your dog while he/she is in the backyard?

 

Let’s face it most destructive behavior, especially those that occur in the backyard are boredom created… Which in a matter of speaking really lays the blame at the feet of the people not the dogs… Look at it this way… When you got your first office, cubicle or individual space at work you were really excited! You went to the office supply store bought a pencil cup, a desk calendar, hung your diplomas and even put up family pictures… To begin with you loved that space it was yours and it was stimulating, but fast forward 4-6 months and you are doing anything possible to get out of that particular space because it has lost its luster and now is boring… (Sound familiar)… Chances are the first several months that you left the dog out in the back yard there were no problems either!

 

Let’s look at the back yard from a different perspective, and one that just might not make everyone real happy… Backyards are not a good place to leave a dog!!! Dogs are social animals they want to be around their family… So some of the destructive behaviors might just be coming from the fact that you have a young juvenile dog that you have banished to the backyard due to problem behaviors you did not want to deal with… So you just stuck the dog in the back yard so you did not have to deal with him or her… Hey don’t shoot the messenger; I am just sharing a common cause I have seen over the years for all of this backyard mayhem…

 

Let’s face it backyard time for a dog should really just be time to go out do their business and then to come back in and be with you their family… If you leave the dog out any longer than that, the dog is gonna get bored and when bored he/she is gonna look for something to do and as my mom says “Idle hands are the devil’s play toy…”! So just how do we solve this problem? I have two suggestions.

 

1.       Doggy Day Care

 

Or

 

2.       A Dig Box

 

The first suggestion of Doggy Day Care is going to be for those folks who don’t want to admit that the reason their dog is continually being tossed in the backyard is for their convenience and refuse to bring the dog back in the house and train him… Look that training could be a crate or a long term confinement space to make sure the dog is managed while you are at work as well. Many folks reach the breaking point only because they gave the dog too much freedom to soon and the dog could not handle all of that free time in the house and became destructive… These are the same folks who become shocked when their destructive indoor dog now becomes destructive dog in the back yard as well… Doggy Day Care give you a great option to not only wear the dog out but keep the managed and supervised by folks who know dogs and will actually monitor your pooches behavior….

 

For those of you that cannot or will not consider the option of Doggy Day Care there is another option but it is again gonna require time and effort on your end to make it work! That is the creation of a Dig Box…

 

All a Dig Box is, is a sandbox you build in your back yard out of landscape timbers! Depending on the size of your dog the size of the box should be around 3×3 to 5×5 if you have giants like mine! Fill it with sand then make a trip to your local Super Store and buy a bunch of toys, chew toys and doggy biscuits and bury them all in the sand. What you have done is create a treasure chest that once you train (yes I actually said you would have to train the dog) Fido that it is way more fun to dig in the treasure chest than it is in the flower bed. You will have given him/her a choice of where to dig and where to get his/her chew on… However if you plan of leaving the dog outside in the back yard more than a couple 2-3 hours I hate to break it to you but even the treasure chest is gonna get boring…

 

So the moral to this article… even with a lot of creativity and work the backyard is never going to be a great long term confinement area for your dog and just like you when the dog gets bored he/she is probably not going to make the best decisions… It is up to us as dog owners to manage our dogs till they are 100% trustworthy in all situations because if we don’t we are simply training them that making bad decisions are Ok… Like I said don’t shoot the messenger… Just get out there, spend time with and train the dogs and while you are at it have fun doing it also! After all isn’t that why you bought the dog?