“Can Ya Dig it? Yes Ya can!”
When we introduce a small, furry puppy into our lives it can be easy forget how novel, new and wonderful even the most simple things in life can be. Every day is a potentially brand new experience of discovery, exploration and adventure. Often this doesn’t always fit in with our busy lives (We’re all just jealous, let’s be honest!) but it is going to happen and when it comes to Pups discovering a new favourite activity we can either embrace it and make it appropriate or we can try and suppress it. The former will undoubtedly provide your pup with a past-time to enjoy and wear themselves out with – similarly making you look extra awesome as you provide this output. The latter approach will often stop the inconvenient behaviour until Pup waits until you’ve disappeared or they may find another activity equally annoying, more destructive and generally inconvenient for us.
A common example of one of these conflicting behaviours for owners is our pups discovery of digging. This can occur even from day one in their new garden or begins to develop later on into settling in their new home. Either way, it’s almost inevitable and there’s always a certain amount of sacrifice you’ll have to make now that you’ve brought a Puppy into your lives. Nobody that gets a puppy ever goes back to their impeccably clean lives and scissor-cut perfect lawns (It is easier, if like me, you never did have either of those things!)
Digging is very natural for our dogs.
Digging can fulfil that desire to search and scavenge for food, or can be used to hide high value treats/chews for later. It’s a survival tool, and survival tools need to be practised and perfected for the future, just like chasing, sniffing, play-fighting and many more behaviours your dogs choose.
So let’s think about alternatives to stopping our dogs from being dogs and look at how we can embrace this!
No doubt one of the things that drew you to THIS articles was the photo included, if it didn’t you need to seriously go away assess your life – LOOK AT HIM AND HIS SANDY CHOPS!
The photo’s are of Bailey, a Cockerdor currently enrolled on my Puppy Package. This is his new Sandpit, and even with this still photos I think anyone with half a brain can see he’s having a grand old time in there. He can did to his hearts content without damaging Mum & Dad’s very nice lawn or flower beds. By giving Bailey a ‘legal’ area to dig where we can bury new toys or even get involved and join in ourselves we are creating the BEST place to dig for Bailey. The place he wants to return to, to dig.
Now sometimes Bailey might drift away and find a new spot, or forget about his old spot – but that’s okay, remember our pups are like little Drunk people, rubbish at everything except eating, sleeping and pooping. Sometimes Bailey’s Mum & Dad will need to just redirect him back to his sand pit because his attention span is like that of a gnat. That’s Puppies folks – nobody said they were easy, but damn they’re cute!
Hopefully you’ll all be hurriedly clicking on Amazon to order your sand pits and bags of sand, but take one more thing from this article if you can. One thing is absolutely always consistent with each and every one of your puppies. They’re just being puppies.
You can embrace it and make that appropriate for your lives or you can work against it – I know which one feels better, and so does Bailey.