Have you heard the scoop on poop?

Dogs dig. I’m gonna reach here and say it’s in their nature. Maybe it has to do with the whole “wolf” thing? Yes, I agree with you - you know - we’ve got these tamed wolves in our midst. The individuals in the litters that we chose over the millennia to breed for behaviors that conformed to what we as humans desired.

The digging persevered.

Digging for that mole. Digging to reach under the fence for that interesting turtle that is just out of reach, thank goodness, found by the biped just in time. Digging and barking at some long-dead thing that somehow ended up in the dog run. Digging and barking at the shed snakeskin. You get the picture.

The problem (or one problem) comes in when you’ve got a designated dog run or even a fenced-in yard and your quadrupedal housemate(s) want to dig out to get to the bunnies or the neighbor or the neighbor’s dog or just for kicks. This was our challenge last year when we had Mr. Excavator doing a systematic perimeter check like those “raptors” in that famous dinosaur theme-park movie from 1993. We have a wood-planked, triple-horizontal-board fence with 2x4-inch field fencing attached all the way around, full fence height. The fence is not new - somewhere around 30 years old. The bottom of some of the original field fencing had to be bent into a safe barrier or replaced altogether. The digging perpetrator would go from corner to corner, from side to side with seemingly endless energy, digging tenaciously, but not ever quite breaching the fence. Also, of course, there’s the worn area or path, where the dogs “patrol” on a regular basis. I swear they have Tag Team Pacing Parties out there. Both the worn paths and the holes dug make for one messy dog run when we get a good soaking from a measurable rain.

Perusing the “interwebs”, we found all sorts of suggestions, advice and products that were all mainly aimed at preventing the muddy, messy areas produced by digging and pacing. One that we eventually want to tackle is graveling or using shredded wood in an area a certain width from the inside perimeter of the fenced-in area - the “patrol” line. This gravel, smooth stone or shredded wood area not only discourages digging according to some folks but also aids in cutting down on the quantity of mud in those well-worn, no-grass patrol paths.

I can see this working as long as the material used is not too irritating to the puppy paws. The dogs deserve to have a great area to run, poo and play and not get paw cuts with any sharp-edged rocks but we also don’t mind the material being somewhat of a deterrent to the digging.

I can so visualize the intended path cover becoming the outer perimeter of a new patrol path if it’s too hard on the paws, so we want to keep a careful, thoughtful process going on to that point. We are still deciding on paths forward (pun intended) on this one, so any suggestions for safe, practical institution of a mud and hole barrier would be wonderful.

So about that poop…

We also read that to deter canine friends from digging, people have used the dog’s own poo to reduce and deter digging. Yes. You read that correctly. Poo can conceivably deter digging.

Here’s how it supposedly works.

So, in our particular situation, the majority of holes dug are just inside and headed under the fence/fencing, usually to get to a bug, lizard, turtle or a dead thing. We don’t have many holes but it’s enough to fill with water and be so darn muddy. We also don’t really want the dogs drinking too much of that water - they can pick up worms and other parasites. The trick apparently is to scoop some of your dog’s poop into these holes then cover them up with dirt. The dog will smell it (duh) and if you have a dog that doesn’t eat it’s own poo, voila! No more digging in that area. This has somehow worked for us so far. We’ve been doing this for about a year and it seems to help. This less-than-scientific review of this particular method is probably hit-or-miss, depending on a particular dog’s habits but for our two, it is continuing to help.

Yes. There are some new holes but the ones we’ve poop-scooped are not re-excavated. Whew. We also don’t leave our dogs in the dog run for very long - a tactic to help deter naughty behaviors as a result of boredom.

Whether it’s to bury something or to dig up that something later, dogs dig. Might as well recycle what they produce out the other end if it can help keep them safe, right? We look forward to researching more on materials to appropriate for the running/trotting paths but until then, there’s always poop.