Hi everyone I've had my black lab puppy Otis for almost two weeks now and we're slowly getting used to each other He's a very inquisitive boy and has picked up commands like sit, down and come here really quickly and he's doing really well with those. As the weather has been so nice recently we've been spending a lot of time in our garden. Otis gets very into sniffing around and having an explore which is great, but he has now become very fixated on sniffing around and digging and eating literally anything he can (so much mud!). When I try and play with him he's not interested our plays for 30 seconds and then goes back to sniffing and eating. Has anyone got any advice on how to get him more interested in playing and distract him from the garden? Thanks Martina
WEll, this is pretty typical for most puppies and is one reason why unsupervised access to the garden isn't a good idea. Owners often underestimate quite how much of a puppy's time need to be micromanaged and closely supervised. If you need to do gardening, put him in the crate indoors. If you want him in the garden, keep him on a puppy houseline, trade treats for anything he picks up and supervise him with 100% of your attention. You can't do both at once, it won't work.
Yeah we found giving the dog "free run" of the whole garden and to be honest its not a huge garden was too much, she was always looking for a new excavation site !. We turned to an outside pen and never looked back...if we needed to do some bits uninterupted we can set her in the pen, and when she is out of the pen we can give her the focus and attention needed to avoid piles of mud or holes . Something like this -
Hi @Tini Martina We actually still have this problem and ours is 13 months old, albeit to a lesser extent than when she was tiny. We have a lot of flower beds with bark in them that just provided a twiggy buffet for Luna. We ended up fencing it all off for 8 months which wrecked the lawn, but saved our sanity. We recently opened a bit of it up to give her more space, but she was straight back in the bark. We take her out on a lead whenever she needs the loo, and when we're outside with her playing, there need to be lots of toys to distract her. Give it time (and by time I mean months!), manage the environment so Otis isn't practicing things you don't want him to, and work on playing focus games with him while he's on a lead in the garden. Good luck
Teaching the “Leave It” command is very helpful with this! My little guy is almost 14 weeks old and we’re still working on “leave it” from a distance, but if I’m within 10 feet or so and I say “leave it” he instantly spits out whatever he’s got in his mouth, stops digging, whatever it is he’s not supposed to do. He leaves it, and moves on to something else, always taking a peek at me to see if it’s ok. If Momma doesn’t say “leave it” then it’s fair game for pupper. They’re extremely smart, and pick up on these things very quickly, as long as the human is consistent with them.
Willow is the same she is 8 months old. I hide treats and get her to find then. She plays with a ball for a while but she does eat sticks and stones she is allowed out with me then I put her in the kitchen with a partition accross the door. I have just bought a muzzle so she can spend more time free running around when we are out there.
