Digging

Question
Dear Chris,

We have a 12 month old St Bernard who has recently developed a passion for digging. As a younger puppy the digging phases came and went but in the past few weeks she would dig everyday while we are away at work.

We believe this behaviour is due to boredom. To keep her occupied we give her chew toys with treats in them have also started to take her for runs in the park every morning (to tire her out). But she continues to dig. In order to protect our lawn we have laid some netting over the turf however she still tries to dig through the netting.

Some online forums have suggested that we fill the holes that she has dug with water and put her face in the water. However, I skeptical as I'm a believer that one should only punish one's dog when it is caught in action.

We would appreciate any advice or suggestions you may have.

Thank you.


Answer
You are probably right on when you say the problem is due to boredom.  The perfect solution would be to find some way to keep her challenged during the time you are away from home.

Behaviors that occur away from our presence are extremely hard to correct.  You are correct in that the punishment needs to be immediately when the dog is caught in action.  Dogs have a short memory, so corrects that are done after the behavior has occurred are useless.  To be effective, corrections or re-direction must be administered within several seconds of the behavior occurring.  That's why professionals advise against punishing a dog for housebreaking accidents when the owner comes home and finds them.  The dog has absolutely no idea what the punishment is for.

Anyway, getting back to your problem.  Some people suggest putting the dog's feces in the holes; or inflated balloons.  Then the dog gets a rude surprise when it digs into the hole.  I have not personally found that to be effective.

This article gives some suggestions, but I think you may have tried them already.
http://www.ddfl.org/behavior/digging-probs.pdf

Can you hire a neighborhood kid, relative, or pet-walker to come over during the day to play with her or walk her?  If that's not possible, the only fool-proof way I can think of is to keep her crated indoors.  Sometimes the only way is "management."  I also caution people against leaving their dogs outside unsupervised for long periods of time because there are unscrupulous dog nappers that will steal dogs from yard to sell for research or use for bait in fighting.