We have a 8 week puppy and whenever we take her outside she runs off the grass and bites our plants in our garden beds. I think most of the time she spits them out, but I am tired of trying to get little rocks, little pieces of bark, and leaves and grass out of her mouth- yesterday while doing that her tooth snagged my finger and broke the skin. One thing I have tried is a harness and leash to keep her on the grass, but she just pulls at it and freaks out that she is restrained. Advice?
Hi Hazel, welcome the forum! A puppy pen in a safe bit of garden is usually the simplest way to manage this situation Puppies explore the world with their mouths, but they do grow out of it in time!
Someone told me to gently hold their mouth shut for a second and say no when they bite the plants. Is that worth trying? Is it possible to train them to avoid garden bed, and just stick to the grass? Or not chew the plants? Even if it is possible, probably not a reasonable expectation for 8 week old puppy!
No, using force to teach puppies is very outdated, and much less effective than using prevention and positive reinforcement for alternative behaviors instead. It's also pretty unpleasant and uncomfortable for them, and ideally we don't want our puppies to associate us with unpleasant and uncomfortable experiences. We want them to think we're wonderful and being close to us is always a happy experience - it helps massively with things like recall further down the road! You can indeed teach dogs invisible boundaries, but like you say it's rather advanced to expect of such a young puppy. Whilst she's a puppy, the best thing to do is stop her getting into the beds altogether, because every time she gets into the beds and has a wonderful adventure, it reinforces the idea in her mind that going there is fun. The main ways to keep her out are using physical boundaries (for example a puppy pen or a temporary fence around the beds) or by making sure she's always distracted and engaged by something more interesting while she's in the garden. The physical boundaries are much easier, and less likely to fail! And they won't have to be forever - as she grows and learns alternative habits, they will eventually become a thing of the past.
Our 8 week old was doing exactly this. Now 12 weeks and thanksfully she's moved on from chewing the garden as we are going out for walks since vaccinations have been completed.
Dealing with this very thing now. They love running along the inside of the flowerbeds. I have my butterfly garden and hate to think what happened to the caterpillars. There is also a tree root from a crepe myrtle that sticks up which they found and love to chew on. Tried to get them out and have them chew something else instead.
Exactly the same going on here! We have a 9 week old puppy and plants blowing in the wind are too exciting to resist. We expected it so not too bothered about the plants, they’ll be back next year. More concerned about any that might upset his tummy. He’s also digging up cat poo ( which looks old and he digs for it so it’s not recent) it seems the bottom of our garden has been a cat litter for a while without us knowing. It’s well dug down so can’t be seen from the surface so we’re thinking of getting a barrier for that bed until we make sure no cats are still using it. Hopefully he’ll be less interested once we can get him out or gets bored... a flapping flower in the wind is much more fun than learning recall at the moment
Wait until he sees leaves blowing across the garden ... they are the most fun ever according to Luna! We got her in August last year and time she was able to walk on the ground in September you can imagine how long walks took with all the leaves around!
Haha, he already is obsessed with anything moving! Luna is beautiful, those ears!! We’ve just discovered chicken is the only thing he’ll pay attention to so fingers crossed he’ll accept that as currency over a blade of grass or leaf blowing in the wind...
Thank you, that pic was from a while ago, this one is of her last week but she still has those 'big ears'! Thats great news now you have a reward he values but as you say is it better than a leaf ....
