If I hadn’t of read that this was an official complaint by a minority group of dog owners, I would have found it hard to believe.

Can you imagine people complaining about a dog digging, or barking or being a dog?

Yes there are excesses of any dog behavior, but often these problems have simple solutions that people just don’t want to hear, as it will involve work or them changing their own behavior.

Very few regular dog problems turn out to be a random dog illness where it is doing anything other than would be expected of it in a given situation.

Consider this scenario. A lady in her 80’s gives a dog away that her daughter gave her because it was being a nuisance. It was barking a little bit, but mostly it was digging and escaping the yard. It was marking territory in her house and generally being unruly.

This lady had exposure to dogs in her youth, but none had been such problems.

The dog in question was a two year old jack Russel neutered girl dog.

The issue was simple.

This dogs full name is jack Russell terrier. Terrier dogs dig out their prey and go down holes to fiercely do battle with vermin, drag them out and kill them. They are trained to do this hundreds of years ago and selectively bred for this very handy trait.

That is their day job, their reason for existence and what they want to do for their human.

Many humans in urban environments don’t want these dogs to do this. This killing thing is foreign to many dog owners and presents some nasty corpses.

So what to do to solve dog digging problems?

You can give a dog away and make it someone else’s problem. but if the dog is nice natured, the reason that it is doing all of this, particularly for an 80 year old lady is that it has too much energy. If it can’t dig and can’t kill it still needs to release that energy and have a fake hunt.

Its called a regular off lead dog walk in safe parks.

Drain the energy, keep the dog social and most of the desire to spend long hours digging will be reduced to near zero – particularly when the dog grows up a little more.

Dog walks daily are ideal but most people manage it three to four long walks off lead per week.

this ladies problem was all but solved. The dog still caught introduced birds and presented them at the back door. And it occasionally urinated inside, but it pretty much stopped trying to escape and almost never dug again.

Please tell me you got the moral to this story !!