Digging comes naturally to lots of dogs - especially Terriers.
Dennis, Daisy and Milly love playing outside.
But their owners John and Sue aren't so keen.
Their once beautiful garden is now full of deep holes thanks to the dogs.
I still call the lawn the lawn, but it's not a nice green sward of grass that's got a nice
green stripe that way and a nice green stripe that way.
It's just tufts of grass interspersed with soil and the odd hole.
It would be nice to be able to have a proper lawn, yes.
John and Sue would love to be able to sit out in the summer and enjoy their garden.
But there's no point spending a fortune on a new lawn if the dogs are just going to dig
it all up again.
But it's never too late to tackle the problem.
Dog Behaviour Expert Jane Hanshaw is here to help.
So we've got a couple of things wrong that come to mind.
One of them being, as we've said, that we've bred them - we've bred terriers to dog.
So it's no surprise when they do it.
What I'd like to do is I'd like to teach them a command which says leave it, don''t do that.
But we've got to give them the opportunity to do that behaviour, so what I thought we'd
do is we'd try a sandpit.
You can't fill it with sand because that's quite dangerous, so you just fill it with
ordinary soil.
And then what we're going to do is we''ll interrupt where they did where you don't want
them to, and then we'll take them to the sandpit and say yeah, this is where we dig.
If you've got a really determined digger, then it might be sensible of portion part
of your garden off.
Then the dog can have some area which he can dig to his heart's content and you can enjoy
the rest of the garden.
Before Jane can tackle the digging problem she needs to make sure the dogs understand
a training basic - 'Leave It'.
Alright, so I'm going to give her a little treat so she knows something's up for grabs.
I'm going to put it in the palm of my hand, and if she goes for it I'm going to close
my fist gently and ask her to leave it.
Leave it.
Good.
Take it.
So it's important that you give it to her with a take it command so she knows.
Leave it, good.
Take it.
So once they've got an understanding of what leave it means, leave it means back off something,
leave it.
Good, take it.
That's when you can use it to interrupt other things.
So digging on the lawn is leave it.
And then you run over to your sandpit area or your digging area that you've created and
that's where you can dig.
And if you interrupt every once, they don't get anything really for digging in the inappropriate
place, but they get lots for digging in the place that you've selected.
Now that Daisy and Dennis seem to have got the hang of the 'Leave It' command inside.
It's time to see if they can do it outside in a more exciting environment.
He's going it now look, you see.
Well, that's obviously a good place to put the sandpit, if that's where he thinks is
a good place to dig.
So what we're going to do is we can see if we can get that 'leave it' outside first,
and then we've got something to use.
Alright, so put the treat on the ground.
So leave it.
Leave it.
Good.
Take it.
Try with her.
Leave it.
Good, take it.
That's lovely.
So we know that we've got that command outside.
So if we set the sandpit up, what you would do then is if ' if they're digging here, I
would come up and I would go - if they were in this bit, I'd be going, leave it.
And take them over to where you want them to dig.
So always interrupt where you don't want, but give them lots of opportunities to get
it right.
Whilst digging is fun for the dogs, it can actually be quite dangerous.
Lots of bulbs or plants are very toxic to dogs.
And what can start out as fun, digging, can end up with a trip to the vets.
Back with Daisy and Dennis - any child's sandpit will do.
But make sure it's got a lid -otherwise cats will end up using it as their litter tray-
and dogs eat cat poo.
In this case the dogs are Terriers and they were bred to dig.
Jane doesn't want to stop them digging completely but she does want to get it under control.
If they dig in the sandpit area it will allow John and Sue to keep the rest of the garden
nice.
Right, so you need to come with them, Sue, to start off with.
You need to encourage them that this is the area, and it's not going to be very scenty
at the moment so I would dig some '- put some treats in there so they can start digging
for it.
And then put a handful of their favourite toys in there.
So Coms and things like that are really good.
And then you can really encourage them that this is the place that we dig.
So that�s the sort of behaviour -yeah, well, good girl.
Really praise her.
Well done.
Don't think a digging puppy will simply grow out of the behaviour, it won't.
Very often it will just get very, very good at it.
Deal with the problem sooner rather than later.
Whenever you're trying to change any dog behaviour - remember to be consistent.
Deter any digging in the wrong place
Leave it.
- and reward digging in the sand pit area.
Daisy and Dennis certainly seem to be getting the idea