Puppy destroying my garden with his digging. How can I stop him :-((

[WTFwasthat]

in a nutshell. if i am outside with him i can get him to stop but now weather is warmer he wants to be out there more. I obviously can't spend all my day standing in the garden but what can I do to stop this. I have holes all over the frigging garden now and it is depressing me

Get him a sandpit, bury toys and treats and let him dig in it.

I wouldn't leave a puppy unsupervised in the garden. They would go outside for play times, training times etc but would not be left on their own at all.

It is much easier to prevent inappropriate behaviour than it is to retrain behaviour that has been learn when they are on their own and finding usually the "wrong" things to do

However I do always have a digging area for my dogs in the garden and positively encourage them to dig in this specific area.

I'd do as both the previous poster's suggest.

First don't leave him out there unsupervised and secondly, either select an area you will allow digging and give it some sort of obvious demarcation or build a digging box - which can be sand or soil.

Then, bury some exciting things he is allowed to have, only in that area so he is rewarded for digging only on that spot. If he digs elsewhere, just redirect him to the place you want him to dig.

ok. thankyou. my garden is not very big so to designate a digging spot would be a squeeze. i like the idea of it but it would be hard to achieve. i don't leave him out there unservised as such but when he goes out for his morning wee and i am doing breakfast/ morning chaos stuff with children it is not practical for me to be there. i will think on a plan

It doesn't have to be a very big area - think small child's sandpit. As long as he can fit in it well enough to dig it would be fine. Alternatively just a corner of the garden with a bit of lawn edging around to demarcate where he can and can't dig would work.

Could you perhaps let him out for his morning wee before the dcs get up in the morning, so you can be out there with him?

We couldn't stop ours digging but have a fair sized garden and large patio so we fenced off the patio with an ornamental fence . He has a sandpit and water tray ( when warm) to play with on the patio and is only allowed on the grass when we are outside to supervise. I wasn't concerned about the garden as such but he did try to eat bulbs that he dug up and he digs so quickly I worry about him escaping or eating the rabbit !

Our lab pup is a digger and it stresses my DH no end so he built her a little sandpit. It is one of the those square wooden frames which are normally used to grow veg in filled with sand. If she starts digging in the garden we direct her to this. She loves it - although she usually manages to fling most of the sand out of it as she digs very enthusiastically!

When our holes get deep enough I'm going keep tigers in them and ditch the burglar alarm. Luckily we're not precious about our lawn and she cant get to the veg and flower beds but I am considering the sand pit option for her as I'm not sure she's going to grow out of it (she's a year old tomorrow). The DDs are going to disappear down a hole soon...