Dog digging and garden destruction: six causes and what each one needs

Quick answer

Digging is not one behaviour. A dog excavating a shallow pit in the shade on a hot afternoon, a terrier working a single spot where something moved underground, a dog scraping at the fence line, and a dog destroying a doorframe while alone are four completely different problems that happen to look alike from a distance.

The location, the timing and whether you are present tell you which one you have. Get that right and the fix is usually straightforward. Get it wrong and you spend a summer filling holes while the dog keeps digging, because you have been treating boredom in a dog that was actually too hot, or adding toys to a dog that was frantic about being left alone.

Where the hole is matters more than the fact there is a hole.

• Holes in the shade, with the dog lying in them, are cooling behaviour and need shade and water, not training.
• Holes along the fence line are escape attempts and are a safety problem, not a garden problem.
• Destruction only when you are out, at doors and windows, points to separation-related distress and needs a behaviourist.
• Punishing a dog when you get home teaches it to be frightened of your return and nothing else.
• Give a legal place to dig. Digging is a normal canine behaviour and it does not disappear because you disapprove.

Decide in 60 seconds

Why dogs dig at all

Digging is ancestral and it serves several functions, which is exactly why it appears in so many different contexts.

It regulates temperature. Soil a few centimetres below the surface is markedly cooler than the air on a hot day, and a dog that cannot sweat over its body will move heat into a cool surface by lying on it. Thick-coated and northern breeds do this most, and so do heavy, dark-coated dogs in summer.

It gets at food. Dogs are opportunistic predators of small burrowing animals, and the sequence of scent, listen, dig, catch is deeply rewarding in itself. Terriers, dachshunds and many working breeds were selected to persist at exactly this.

It caches. Burying a chew or a bone and returning to it later is normal canine behaviour and appears in dogs that have never gone hungry.

It builds a den. A bitch approaching whelping, or one experiencing a false pregnancy, digs, arranges bedding, and gathers toys into a nest.

It creates a route out. Fence digging is goal-directed and persistent, and the goal is on the other side.

None of these is a malfunction. What makes digging a problem is when it happens in the wrong place, or when it is driven by distress.

Sorting the causes apart properly

Cooling.

Look at when. Hot afternoons, not cool mornings. Look at where. Shade, under shrubs, against the north side of a wall, in a border rather than open lawn. Look at what the dog does next: it lies down in the hole. The answer is shade, a paddling pool, access indoors, cool flooring, and walking at cooler times of day.

Prey.

Look at the focus. The dog sniffs intently, then commits to one spot, and returns to that spot on subsequent days. There will often be evidence of mice, voles, moles or ants. The risk here is not the lawn; it is what else is underground. Rodent poison put down by you or a neighbour is a genuine hazard, and so is a dog swallowing soil, stones or a decomposing animal.

Escape.

Look at the boundary. Escape digging goes under, not down, and it concentrates at gates, corners and the point where the fence meets a hard surface. Ask what the dog is going towards or away from. Entire males detect bitches in season at considerable distances. Noise-phobic dogs try to escape during fireworks and storms and will injure themselves doing it. Dogs in distress about being alone dig at the boundary the same way they dig at doors indoors.

Under-stimulation.

Look at the pattern. Multiple shallow holes, distributed, no particular focus, and it happens during long unsupervised periods in the garden. This is most common in adolescents and in dogs bred to work all day. The garden is not enrichment; it becomes boring within days and a dog left in it for hours will find its own job.

Separation-related distress.

Look at the trigger. It only ever happens when the dog is alone, it starts soon after you leave rather than hours later, and it concentrates on exits. There may be vocalising, drooling, house soiling in an otherwise clean dog, or self-injury such as split nails, bleeding paw pads and damaged teeth. This is a welfare problem, not a training problem, and it needs veterinary and behavioural input together.

Attention-seeking.

Look at your own behaviour. If the digging happens when you are visible and stops when you leave, and if it reliably produces you crossing the garden and talking to the dog, you have trained it without meaning to.

A dog digging with a loose, waggy, bouncy body is enjoying itself. A dog digging with a tight face and fast, frantic movement is not.

What changes by age, breed and season

Puppies dig and chew exploratively, and teething between roughly four and seven months intensifies chewing in particular. Most of this is developmental and reduces with maturity if the dog has legal outlets.

Adolescents, from around six months to two years depending on size, are the peak group. Energy is adult, judgement is not, and this is when most garden destruction complaints begin.

Adults who suddenly start digging have usually had a change: a new neighbour's dog, a bitch in season nearby, a new work pattern that leaves them alone longer, or a hot spell.

Older dogs with new-onset digging or night-time scratching at floors and doors may be showing cognitive change, discomfort that makes settling difficult, or reduced ability to regulate temperature. New behaviour in an old dog is a medical question.

Terrier and earth-dog types dig because it is what they were built for. Provide the outlet rather than expecting to remove the drive.

Northern and thick-coated breeds dig for cooling far more than most, and they do it in spring and autumn as well as summer, particularly while moulting.

Season drives more of this than people expect. Summer brings cooling pits. Spring brings nesting wildlife and richer scent. Autumn brings caching. Fireworks season brings escape digging in noise-sensitive dogs.

Giving digging somewhere to go

Build a digging pit.

A defined area of loose sand or soft soil, ideally in shade, with the edges obvious to the dog. Bury things in it: chews, toys, portions of food, a cardboard box with treats inside. Take the dog to it, dig in it yourself, and reward enthusiastically when the dog joins in. Restock it so it stays more interesting than the lawn.

Make the lawn less rewarding.

Supervise garden time while the pit is being established, interrupt calmly and redirect to the pit rather than telling the dog off, and do not leave the dog unsupervised in the garden for long stretches during this period.

Feed the nose, not just the legs.

Scatter feeding in grass, snuffle mats, hidden portions and simple scent games do far more to satisfy a digging dog than another walk. Sniffing lowers arousal; running raises it.

Give things to chew and lick.

Chewing and licking are self-soothing behaviours with a measurable calming effect. A stuffed frozen food toy at the time you usually leave is worth more than an extra half hour of ball throwing.

Secure the boundary properly.

Buried wire mesh turned outwards at the base of the fence, a concrete or paving edge along the fence line, or a secondary internal barrier. Do not rely on the dog deciding not to try.

Food that has to be worked for occupies a dog for far longer than food in a bowl, and it uses the part of the brain that digging uses.

Where the usual advice fails

"Fill the hole with his own faeces or with water."

Widely repeated and worth abandoning. It works on some individuals for some holes, it is unpleasant to implement, and it teaches nothing about where digging is allowed. A dog that finds hole A unpleasant simply digs hole B.

"Sprinkle chilli or citrus."

Capsaicin in the eyes and airways of a dog that is nose-down in the soil causes real pain, and it can be inhaled. Repellents also do nothing about the underlying reason.

"He needs more exercise."

More running produces a fitter dog that needs more running. Mental work, scent work, chewing and problem-solving reduce digging far more reliably than distance.

"Tell him off when you find the hole."

Dogs cannot associate a consequence with a behaviour performed an hour earlier. What they associate is you, returning, becoming frightening. The classic guilty look is appeasement in response to your body language, not an admission.

"It's the breed, nothing can be done."

The drive is breed-influenced and the outlet is entirely within your control. A terrier with a stocked digging pit destroys far less lawn than a terrier without one.

What never to do

Do not punish after the fact, and do not drag the dog to the hole.

Do not leave a dog alone in the garden for long periods as a substitute for exercise, company or enrichment. Gardens are where escapes, poisonings and neighbour complaints start.

Do not use an electric containment collar to stop boundary digging. It suppresses the attempt without changing the motivation, and it creates fear associated with whatever the dog was looking at when it was shocked.

Do not put down rodent bait anywhere a digging dog has access, and ask neighbours whether they have. Anticoagulant rodenticide poisoning is silent for days and then serious.

Do not ignore self-injury. Bleeding pads, split nails and worn teeth mean the dog is frantic, not naughty.

Do not add a second dog to entertain the first. Two under-stimulated dogs dig more, not less, and if the first is distressed at being alone, the second frequently does not solve it.

When to get help

See a vet if your dog is eating soil, stones or grit, if it has injured its paws, nails or teeth digging, if digging is new in an older dog, if a bitch is nesting after a season, or if there is any chance of contact with rodenticide.

Contact a qualified behaviourist or a veterinary behaviourist if destruction only happens when the dog is alone, if the dog is escaping and cannot be contained, if there is self-injury, or if the digging is frantic rather than playful.

Bring your two-week map, photographs of the holes and their locations, camera footage of the first twenty minutes alone, the dog's daily routine including how long it is left and what it does in that time, its neutering status and for a bitch the date of the last season, and a note of anything that changed in the household or neighbourhood around the time it started.

A dog that can rest properly indoors and dig legally outdoors has nothing left to take out on the lawn.