Lab Digging up Drip System

Hi T.! I Had the same promlem with digging dogs. I would suggest covering you lines and dripper heads with chicken wire. I did this in my flower beds. In the fall after my perriniel flowers were done doing thier thing, I cut them back, put a layer of chicken wire down and it worked great! The next year the flowers just grew through the wire. No more digging!

We also have a LAB and she chewed up everything. The carpet was her favorite. I took her to the vet to find out what we were doing wrong (since at that time she was our baby LOL funny how things change when you have a real kid) and he said to show her extra attention seperate from our other dog and she stopped.

Hi T....I'm no expert but am an animal lover...for your curious genius I recommend the Dog Whisperer...he has books and dvd's for handling negative dog behavior of many sorts. His technique is loving as well as fabulous if you are willing to follow through with the exercises he recommends. He has his own website as well as his own show, so maybe you can check them out.
Hope this helps.
Take care and hope all of your endeavors prove to be fruitful.

Sincerely,
Becky

this is an update. be careful very careful with dogs chewing and eating things. i just thought i was going to lose my doberman last week. 1,200 dollars later, he is alive and still being a pain in the but but he almost died. he started having chills and being lethargic. i took him to the vet and he had an obstruction. he got an enema with no success. i brought him home on IV fluids and he was going to have surgery the next day. on the way to the vets he had really bad gas. so that meant something was moving. when we got there, they did another x ray and radioactive beads they had given him the day befroe so that they would be able to see where the obstruction was, had moved. the vet manually disempacted most of the poop. he had sticks, two small rocks, pecans, cotton form a stuffed toy and corn cob peices. the vet said that the cotton stuffing robably protected his stomach form puncturing too bad. but he still had some bleeding. the pecans are form our tree in the back yard and it is almost impossible to gather them all up since they fall at all times of the day and the tree is huge so we cant climb up to get them. we have gotten rid of all stuffed animals. he had one the he slept with but when it disappeared we thought the other family members had thrwon it away. the vet told us that he has done 3 surgeries on a lab and taken out rocks. not only was this expensive but it was so scary. i thought i was going to lose my baby.
my husband says to try putting some chile powder or hot sauce on the areas he chews . i think a couple of mouse traps with nothing in the bait area jsut so that the snap will scare him. i have a 9 month old doberman and he chews everythign and swallows everything. i find stuff in his poop all the time. he swallowed a pair of my panties when we locked him the the bathroom. he got into the hamper and a coupel of days later he puked up the underwear. he has also swolloed and puked up socks so i guess it has made us more awasre of stuff we leave lieing around. i tired the mousetraps on the hamper and he stays way away form that area. he got his nose caught and he wont even go in the bathroom any more. and the chicken wire aorund my =flower beds did not stop him he pulled them out and played with them . he also pulled out all our soalar lights form the yard but i have put a mouse trap on top of a couple of them and he doesnt bother those.

We heard from a friend of a spray called "Bitter Apple"made by Grannick's. My puppy does the same thing. We are waiting to replace the heads before we spray them, but our friend loves it and it completely works for him.It says it is for fur biting, hair chewing, and hot spots, but you can just spray it on the ground or on the heads of your drip as well. It's suppose to be pretty awful tasting, but safe. I think we bought ours at Petsmart?

Try running the drip in the night or very early in the morning before your lab is outside. We also had some success with red pepper flakes in areas where our dog would dig.

We have a now three year old Golden, who when she was a puppy tore our baseboards, ripped out plants in the yard, drippers and even tore in half the electric pool cover!! (That was the last straw!).
I had never thought kennels were humane. However, it was either buying a kennel and putting her in there when we were away or giving the dog up (Which would have been devastating to us).
So, we bought a kennel (keep in mind we have another Golden and a dachsund who never did any of these things) and when we were away, we put her in the kennel, while the other two were free to walk around. She loved the kennel. Just like a little kid who needs boundaries, she went in it when she knew we were ready to go out. Now we keep it open, so if she feels the need to be protected she can go in and lie down. We never close the door anymore. Needless to say, she outgrew her chewing stage and is a great dog.

Chicken wire works great for keeping dogs from digging under fences so I'm thinking that putting stips of it where he is digging may take care of the problem. Try putting mouth wash dab under his nose and on sprinkler heads or any other spot he likes to chew or get into ie garbage cans. Dogs don't like mouth wash.

Try buying LOTS of cheyenne pepper and sprinkling it around your plants...they hate it.

We had this with our lab years ago when we lived in Phoenix. I think only discipline (swat with a hose)and time healed this. Have you tried sprinkling cayane pepper around the drippers? That might work. Also, pet supply stores sell things to sprinkle on the ground. Some work, some don't. The lab may just have to grow out of it. Some day, I promise, you'll look back and laugh at this. (We just got our 3rd lab, lost our first at age 15, and she's only 12 weeks, so we have lots of repairs coming up this year, I'm sure!)

There is a training collar at petsmart or petco that does wonders. You will have to catch her in the act and push the buttons, that will give a small shock and she will back off. You may have to do this several time but she will catch on and normally wont do it again, because they think they will get that shock even if you are not there. It can be used on any problems even jumping up on people on & on

We also have a Chocolate Lab, thankfully she is no longer 1- but three years old!!! We used Bitter Apple spray (from the pet store) to help with her bad behavior inside the house and barking outback. (We didn't think to use it with our drip system issue).
You'd pretty much have to be outside with him, though- or watching from a window. Everytime he starts to dig you could spray him in the nose with it. (Consistancy is the key to dicipline). We actually only had to spray our Corona twice, after that she only had to see the bottle of spray and would stop right away. If there is anyway you could do that for about a week everytime he's outside, maybe he'd stop. If you have to leave him outside alone throughout the day, maybe crate him while you're gone until the situation is under control...
Lab puppies are so hard because they're so smart!!! If you don't want to crate and are not home all the time then maybe say goodbye to your drip system like we did! Ours is gone from when Corona was one! And she's an inside dog. The good news is, she grew out of her puppy phase at 2, and is now the best dog EVER!!! My 18 month old thinks she is his sister! ;) Good luck!

T.,

I've never tried this, but my vet told us if we have problems with our dogs digging & chewing outside, to buy one of those rope toys, soak it in chicken broth, leave it out side so when your dog goes out, he will be drawn to the rope and he will chew on it instead of outside things.
It's worth trying.

you could try having your husband pee on the areas he digs most.
it might do the trick.
it is probably boredom.
does he get out for walks?
that's the key, but the pee is a lot quicker fix.
problem is - he'll just replace it with something worse.

sounds like a bored young dog with energy to burn.
do your boys play with him?
s

Hi T.,

We had the same problem w/ our two dogs...it's such a pain!

Anyway, here's all the advice I got:

1. Put shaving cream in the hole they dug and on their nose and paws
2. Burry their feces where the dig (I thought this was rather gross; but you can try it)
3. Catch them digging and shake a tin can full of rocks to startle them. They supposedly learn not to dig because they don't like the sound of the can shaking.
4. Create a space where they can dig and burry bones there. Praise them for digging in the right spot. Every time they dig in the wrong spot, take them to where they are supposed to dig.

We tried all but #2; but couldn't do it consistently enough to make a difference. Eventually, they both stopped digging on their own.

Good luck!
G.