Digging and destroying plants

[ldelagar]

Looking for Advice for my 2 one year old boxers.
Here is my delimma:
My wife and I have 2 one year old boxer: Rocky and Nellie(brother and sister).
They love to dig holes and destroying plants in the back yard. They are destroying my backyard. We leave them alone every day for about 5 hours. They have access to both inside and outside the house via doggy door. They never destroy anything when we are in the house; only when we leave.
Both dogs are well behaved UNTIL WE LEAVE THEM ALONE. I don't want to lock them up in the house for 5-6 a day until we get home but this might be our only hope.

Can you please advise. These holes in the back yard are HUGE and making my yard look like Crap.



Larry Delagarza

 

[Jan]

It is not really safe leaving your dogs out in the garden when you not home. Dogs get stolen all the time. 5-6 hours would not be too long to be in a crate, though I would not want to leave them much longer than that.

For the digging, you need to give them somewhere where they are allowed to dig. You need to build them a digging pit, preferable filled with sand and then you can bury things for them to find in there. Like bones and toys. Praise the dogs for digging in the right spot and redirect them when they dig elsewhere.

Good luck!

 

[courtney323]

I would get rid of the doggy door and crate your dogs (or baby-gate them in a "safe" room) when you are gone.

Boxers are sort of like 2 year old kids. Would you leave your 2 year old in the backyard unsupervised for 5-6 hours at a time? NO WAY!! There are WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too many bad things that can happen.

My 2 Boxers can jump a 6 foot privacy fence. They can also dig under one. They would eat plants (some plants are poisenous) and grass and throw it all up later inside my house. If you look under the "lost/stolen" forum on this web site, you will read about people whos Boxer has bean STOLEN from their backyard, or poisoned. A fellow Boxerworld enthusiast on this very board lost her female Boxer to a VISCIOUS attack by a neighbor's Rottweiler next door....


My point is that too many things can go wrong. If you ar fine with that, then okay. But I feel MUCH safer knowing that my Boxer is sleeping on my bed right now, as I work.

Good luck to you