The Backyard World

[Julie and Maggie]

I want to know how much of this is just MY problem or something I need to work on and if so how. We have a rather small back yard (as suburbs in CA go). It is fenced and gated with garden and landscaping. So when Maggie is out doing her thing so far she is generally great about sticking to the grass area, mostly. What she is doing now that I find myself getting after her for is: mouthing random weeds or bushes, digging and chewing at the sprinkler head, staying out of the one corner that is only dirt (or mud), chewing and crunching up small rocks, exploring around areas that I know are prone to spiders (maybe black widows), and exploring under larger bushes that I suspect is prone to having ticks (see other discussion). 

 

That's just what she is doing now. As she is getting older she is branching out into the world. I worry about her going under the raised deck (there is one specific 3 foot spot that I might block off). She could go through my perennial garden but there are so many roses that she might realize that is unwise. 

 

What do you think about each of the things she is already doing? What is no big deal? What should I correct? What is better to alter and prevent?

 

Sure would be nice if she just sat on the grass and posed for pictures, but clearly that is not reality.

[Angel Schilling-Putnam]

Yeah for Brady! I am just reading through these responses, cracking up:-) I feel so much better! The grass pulling is baffling, Winston just pulls it for the purpose of pulling it out. We have 12 deck planters about 2x3', he's "attacked" 4 of them. I had to laugh though, because he looks so darn goofy trying to balance on the top of them. Ooohhh puppies.....

[Becka]

I have a large fenced yard with all kinds of interesting things for a puppy to get into: sticks, mulch, palm fronds, lizards... I taught Sadie not to dig in the yard early on (somewhere around 12-14 weeks) using the poop-in-the-hole trick. She digs like crazy at the dog park, which is fine with me (I hose her off before we go home) but never in the yard. The one thing I cannot seem to break her of is grabbing the stones and marble chips from my neighbor's side garden (he lives in an attached apartment), so I just use "drop it" and a treat, and it works every time. I am slowly working on keeping her out of the side yard altogether, but that's going to take a while. We also do a lot of work on come when called in the yard (she's better at it at the dog park than she is in the yard, actually).

[Judi, David & Maddie Irishdoodle]

The first summer Maddie was 6 or 7 months old she learned how to dig big holes in our grass, strip all the leaves off our euonymous bushes,  break branches off the rose of sharon bushes, pull all the heads off my hydrangea bushes, flattened my hostas by laying on them and so on and so on. 

In order to save most of our yard, we ended up fencing off a small part of our yard for Maddie and we also gated off the 3 entrances to our deck last fall when she was 7 or 8 months old. She has full run of the deck and her yard area which is part grass, mulch and flagstone.

This summer we got our main grass and garden areas looking awesome and Maddie's yard is still not so nice lol.  She has stopped digging holes since I started putting poop in the hole and covering them over as suggested by DK. She no longer tears the leaves off the plants in her area but they have taken a beating just from her running, jumping and playing. I'm still looking forward to the time when she can go outside and just lay around watching the birds and squirrels - not sure if that will ever happen though lol.

Just wanted to also mention that a member on DK had a dog get very sick from eating a Yew bush so make sure you don't have any of those in your yard. 

Good luck with Maggie and your yard.

[Lynda Kamrath]

Sounds like normal puppy behavior to me.  We fenced off our garden and spa area from the dogs, and they have a large run and deck area for playing.  Puppies just naturally put everything in their mouths.  Harpo loved to get snails and crunch them on his teeth.  Then he would come in smiling at us with snail on his teeth.  He also ate  and chewed on everything he could find.  He would try to swallow things before we could take them away from him and one day he caught a mouse and was trying to swallow it whole.  I saw the tail hanging out his mouth and took it away from him.  But you can definitely say that pups are entertaining.