Many times, finding the reason behind the digging leads to an obvious solution. For example, if you're fertilizing your garden with bone or blood meal as mentioned above, you can stop your dog's digging by no longer using that particular form of fertilizer. If the solution isn't as obvious, however, there are other things that you can do. One easy fix is to make those areas you don't want your dog digging in unappealing by applying pepper, citrus, mothballs (unsafe around children), diluted ammonia, or commercial products like No-Dig and Keep Off to those areas.

Another solution is to retrain your dog to dig in another, approved of area. This is not quite as easy as the previous method as it can take several days for this to work, but it can still be very effective. A sandy area, an area with lots of shade, or an area that has already been dug up will work and you can soften the soil there and bury a favorite treat. Show your dog the area and say the command 'dig', praising him when he digs up and finds the treat. This will need to be repeated until your dog learns what to do, and be sure that if you catch him digging elsewhere you correct him. When correcting him, say 'no', bring him to the approved of area and give the 'dig' command. Be sure to praise him well when digs there instead.

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