It sounds like she may be bored and lonely. If she's an outdoor dog getting her a buddy will help. Since dogs are pack animals they prefer to be in groups and not alone all day.

This is not a joke.

http://dogpsychologycenter.com/

Cesar Millan is awesome !!! Order people training for dogs DVD.

He has a TV show on the National Geographic Channel called the Dog Whisperer.

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/dogwhisperer/



I used to raise and show dogs, I have two sisters who raise and show dogs.

Is this ongoing behaviour or just start recently?

I just went through a similar thing with one of my dogs. A T. Walker coon hound, almost 8 yrs old, and one day just started acting really strange. He got out of our fenced yard (I don't know how) and when he was back in the yard, he spent the entire time trying to get out...he actually started to dig his way under the fence.

Things got worse before they got better. He started going to the bathroom in his "room"....a lot. He had never done this before either. He would whine all day, and if he was in the house, he would just sit and stare at you....very bizarre behavior, and had no appetite at all. It got to the point where we took him to the vet to find out what was wrong, and the vet said he would get over it. There was nothing physically wrong with him, he was just "being a dog".

After about two weeks or so, he was back to his normal self. All very strange, but he's fine now.

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Dan
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póg mo thóin

Recent problem. She's never done this before. I truly think she has gone mental or there is something physically wrong.

Other stuff: at night if she hears a loud noise she goes bonkers wanting to get in. This is new also. It started a couple of weeks back when we had a rare thunderstorm.

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man

Same kind of stuff here. It's so bizzare because she has been the kind of laid back dog that you have to check her pulse to see if she is alive.

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man

It is definitely worth having your dog checked out by the vet. There may be something wrong that she can't tell you about. Do you live in an area with a lot of wildlife? My 3 (yup 360 pounds of fun) have been going bonkers recently, trying to dig under the fence or go over the top. It appears there are a lot of critters on the move getting ready for winter and the dogs just want to have fun.

The Dog Whisperer is a great show. Well worth taking a look at.

I would agree you should consider a trip to the vet. It sounds more like anxiety than boredom from what you said. If you can, I would consider leaving her inside the house during the day for her safety since she is getting out.

These are all good suggestions. Another way to occupy her is to get a "kong" toy. Fill it with wet food and freeze it. Give it to her and she will be busy for a while getting the food out of the pupsicle. My Aussie loves this.......kj

PS:That dog whisperer is amazing, check out his website.

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Awww, Katy's not all THAT evil. Only slightly evil. In a good way. - JasoninHalifax

dog whisperer LOL

Next thing you know I will be rubbing my dogs shoulders listening to Yani in a candle lit room.

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man

His motto is "I rehabilitate dogs, I train people". He is awesome. Seriously you should watch his show. You don't massage your dog??

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Awww, Katy's not all THAT evil. Only slightly evil. In a good way. - JasoninHalifax

Actually Cesar is a proponent of treating a dog like a dog -- to many people baby thier dog and treat them like a human baby -- Hence this is why he says he trains people how to interact with thier dogs.

I have four suggestions:

1. Stinky t shirt
Assuming this behaviour occurs while you are at work, perhaps your dog is anxious. My trainer suggested leaving the dog a stinky t-shirt tied in knots. You run in the same t w/out washing it a few times. When you leave, give your dog the t-shirt. I think dogs like stinky stuff regardless.

2. Provide him a few new toys
Does he have a kong? How about a twist and treat? it looks like 2 cones that screw together. You put biscuits in the cones, screw it together, keeps the dog busy. Lastly, there are toys that dogs nudge and food empties from them. Particularly if you reduce his food by the corresponding amount you put in the treats, he should be occupied.

3. Long walks
Cesar, mentioned above, says dogs want long walks, discipline and affection, in that order. If you get a weight vest, you can transform your walk into a workout, developing your leg strength, help prevent injuries.

4. Chicken wire
A friend had a digger. He dug in only a few spots, at the base of a wooden fence. We put up some heavy wire chicken fencing in these spots to ensure he wouldn't go MIA. There is something about the wire the dog didn't want to deal with. It is cheap enough, like $12 for 40'.

Good luck.

wmh

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iambigkahunatony.com

Thank's for all the suggestions and I'll check out that dog whisper thing.

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man

November 2005
By Pat Miller

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How to safely confine burrowers, bounders, beavers, and bolters.

Otis the Bloodhound was an opportunistic escapee. I discovered his talent one day while working at the front desk at the Marin Humane Society, early in my animal protection career. A woman came in asking if we might know where a Bloodhound lived, because he kept visiting her house every day. He was charming, she said, but she worried that he might get hit by a car.




Repair any problems that you observe with your fence before your dog notices the weakness and takes advantage of it.
A Bloodhound owner myself at the time, I was curious where this errant Bloodhound might live; it’s not a very common breed. But when I asked the woman for her address, I was dismayed to hear she lived around the corner from me. Could it possibly be MY safely fenced dog who was making house calls around the neighborhood?



It was, indeed. Unbeknownst to me, Otis had discovered a hole in the fence behind some dense bushes. He waited every morning until I was gone, crawled out the hole, spent his day visiting neighbors, and returned home in time to greet me innocently at my back door.



I was lucky. Otis wasn’t a dedicated escape artist – a solid patch to the fence ended his wanderings. Other owners often work much harder to keep their canine fugitives safe at home.



Escape artists
Roaming is an innate behavior for dogs. They are hunters and scavengers, and left to their own devices will wander a territory far larger than the average backyard. Escaping, however, is a learned behavior. Dogs who are given the opportunity to escape often do. Once they figure out how, they will try harder and harder, even when the fence is belatedly fortified. Dogs who become escape artists hone their skills to a fine edge. Keeping them safely confined at home where they belong can be a huge challenge. Our nation’s animal shelters are full of escape artists.



The best avenue for managing a dog’s wanderlust is to prevent him from wandering in the first place. The problem starts when you bring home the new puppy before you are fully prepared, promising to put up that fence before Rover grows up.



A tiny puppy won’t wander far from the back stoop, even when you leave him out on his own for a bit. Before you know it, though, Rover is six months old, already has a habit of making neighborhood rounds, and you still haven’t finished the fence. When Mr. Jones from down the road calls you up and threatens to shoot Rover if he chases his goats one more time, you rush to the hardware store to buy some metal fence posts and hog wire. Hastily you throw up a pen in the backyard that attaches to the back deck. “That should hold him until I get the rest of those post holes dug!” you think.



As you settle yourself back on the sofa to watch the last half of the football game, Rover is already testing the fence; he’s late for his daily visit to the Smith’s garbage can! He checks out the gate latch, but it doesn’t yield to his tentative pawing and gnawing. He trots around the inside of the enclosure, searching for a way out.



In the far corner he finds a three-inch gap between the wire and the ground and pokes his nose under. Getting his nose on the other side of the fence encourages him to try harder. He starts to worm his way under. The soft ground gives way beneath his claws. He digs harder. Before you can say “end zone,” he’s free, headed for the Smith’s omelet scraps and bacon drippings. You eventually retrieve him and fill the hole, but the damage is done. Rover is on his way to a lifetime career as a master escape artist.



Burrowers, beavers, bounders, and bolters
Whether your dog’s escape efforts focus on tooth or claw or he excels in feats of aerial accomplishment depends both on genetics and learning. Dogs who are genetically programmed to dig, such as Terriers, are likely to burrow under the fence, especially if a handy soft spot presents itself.



If, however, the first weak spot in the fence is a loose board, we can inadvertently train Rover and our Terrier to eat their way through fences, turning them into beavers rather than burrowers. Once Rover discovers that the fence is breachable, he’ll test every spot where his teeth can gain purchase, and you’ll forever spend your football-watching time patching his holes.



Herding dogs such as Border Collies and sporting breeds like Labradors have a natural ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Given the opportunity, they’ll often make jumping fences their specialty.



However, you can inadvertently teach a less-athletic dog to bound over fences by starting small.



Confident that a four-foot fence will contain the Beagle-mix you just adopted from the shelter, you leave him in the backyard and go off to work. That night, your new dog greets you in the driveway after terrorizing cottontails in the neighbors’ woods all day. You raise the fence six inches, positive that this will hold him. Flush from his exploits the day before, your dog has to struggle a little harder to make it over 4'6", but nothing breeds success like success. A little extra oomph, and he’s out again for another rousing day of bunny-bashing.



You raise the fence to five feet this time, absolutely sure there’s no way he can get over that. But again, even more confident of his jumping prowess, your dog tries a wee bit harder, and he’s up and over. There’s a good chance that if you had started with a five-foot fence Snoopy never would have tried to jump it at all. What you’ve done is taught him to jump higher and higher, consistently reinforcing his belief that if he just tries hard enough he can make it.



Bolters have learned to watch for a moment of human inattention, then charge through the tiniest crack in the gate or door.



While the other escape methods work best in the absence of humans, bolting requires the unintentional complicity of the visitor who doesn’t know (or the family member who forgets) that Dash must be manacled and hog-tied before a door is opened to the outside world.



Once again, prevention is the better part of valor. If Dash is taught from early days to wait politely at a door until invited out, he won’t learn the fine art of door-darting.



Prevention
You’ve heard this from me before, and you’ll hear it from me again. It’s always easier to prevent a behavior problem from happening than it is to fix it after the fact. There’s no excuse for letting a puppy learn how to be an escape artist. Prevention measures are relatively simple. Don’t let your puppy learn that roaming is rewarding – keep him at home, and stop any embryonic escape attempts in their tracks by taking the following prophylactic measures:




Raise the fence
• Provide a safe, secure enclosure. Before the new puppy comes home, make sure your fence is flush to the ground, or even buried a few inches. Check for rotten spots, and crawl behind shrubs and brush to look for holes or loose boards.



• Go overboard on fence height. Raise the fence to at least five feet for a small dog (perhaps higher for very athletic small dogs like Jack Russell Terriers) and six feet for medium to large dogs. Make sure there are no woodpiles, doghouses, deck railings, or other objects close enough to the fence to provide a launch pad.



• Teach your pup to wait at doors until invited through. Use “Wait!” at every door to the outside world, every time you open it, whether you are going to let him go through it or not (see “Wait a Bit, Stay a While,” May 2001).



• Install dog-proof latches on gates. There’s no point in waiting until after he’s been hit by a car to discover that Rover can learn to work the latch. In fact, a padlock will prevent accidental release from the outside by a visitor or intruder at the same time it keeps Rover from practicing his latch-opening skills.



• Minimize Rover’s motivation to roam by neutering at a young age (eight weeks or not long thereafter), and providing him with ample exercise and companionship at home (see “A Stitch in Time,” June 2000).



• Consider keeping Rover indoors when you’re not home. Boredom and loneliness provide strong motivation to escape, and Rover has plenty of time to plan and execute the great escape when you are not there to interrupt unwanted behaviors such as digging under and chewing through fences.




A fence "roof"
The fix
What if it’s too late for prevention? Maybe you adopted Rover from the shelter after his last adopter taught him to jump a six-foot fence, and then returned him because he kept escaping. Do you give up on Rover, too? Not at all. There are lots of steps you can take to fortify your defenses and keep your escape artist at home, depending on his proclivities.



• Bounders: If you have a scaler, who hooks his nails in the chain link and climbs up and over, you can cover the inside of the fence with a flat, solid surface so his nails can’t get a purchase. A relatively new material, FRP (fiberglass reinforced plastic) that is now regularly used in animal shelters may withstand tooth and nail, but it may be prohibitively expensive if you have a large fenced area.



Or, you can install a “roof” at the top of the fence that comes in at a 90-degree angle; he won’t be able to reach behind his head and pull himself backward over the ledge when he gets to the top. Some people use wire mesh to create an angled-in barrier – similar to those at the top of prison fences, only without the razor wire! – that impedes jumping.



Another option that I’ve seen work is to top your fences with a “roll bar” that prevents your dog from getting a purchase at the top of the fence and pulling himself over. This is easily installed by running a wire or rope through sections of fat PVC pipe and hanging them along the top of the fence.




A “roll bar” fence
If you have a sailor, who gets a good running start and clears the fence with the greatest of ease, plant a hedge or place some other obstacle in his takeoff zone, interrupting his stride and making it impossible for him to jump. If you put your last fence extension inward at a 45-degree angle you may also fool his eye and foil his leap.



• Bolters: The dog who bolts through open doors needs an airlock – a system of double gates so that if he makes it through one, he is still contained behind the next. Self-closing gate springs are a must, to prevent visitors and family members from being careless twice in a row. A good solid recall – teaching Dash to come when called – taught with positive methods, of course, is an excellent backup plan for the door darter (see “Total Recall,” December, 2000). Family members also need to remember not to panic and chase when Dash slips out – a good game of keep-away just makes door-darting more fun for the dog.



• Burrowers: If you’re going to bury the fence for a dedicated burrower, bury deep – at least six inches to a foot. If you bury it two inches, you’ll just teach him to dig deeper. You might do better setting the fence in cement, or lining your fence trench with large rocks or small boulders. You definitely need a cement pad at the gate, since you can’t bury the gate.



• Beavers: If Bucky has learned to gnaw his way through your fence you could be in big trouble. Lining the inside of the fence with heavy-duty wire – like chain link – may stop him. It may not, however, and he may break teeth in his attempts to eat his way out. Sheets of FRP are good for this also. Cement block walls can be effective, but may not be aesthetically pleasing. Ceramic tiles can be glued to the blocks to make them more attractive, but they’re not cheap.



It can happen to anyone
I’m far more careful now than I was in the Otis days; my dogs are never left in the backyard if no one is home to monitor their activities. Still, that doesn’t mean that accidents don’t happen. Just the other day, my phone rang. I answered, and it was Helen, my assistant, calling from the training center a few hundred feet from the house.



“I have Lucy,” she said.



WHAT?!



Lucy was supposed to be safely in the backyard! I dashed out to find the back gate open – left that way by the usually-very-careful guy who mows our lawn. Tucker was safely indoors, Dubhy and Katie were still in the backyard – only Lucy had made the great escape, and she hadn’t gone far.



It can happen to any of us. I was just thankful someone was home.




Also With This Article
"What You Can Do"
"A Shocking Solution?"




-Pat Miller, CPDT, is WDJ’s Training Editor. She is also author of The Power of Positive Dog Training, and Positive Perspectives: Love Your Dog, Train Your Dog. Miller lives in Hagerstown, Maryland, site of her Peaceable Paws training center. For book or contact information, see “Resources.”

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