Case Study For Olive A Beagle That Likes To Dig

During a session in Witney, Oxfordshire I met a beagle named Olive. She is a lovely dog, but she loved to dig, and had dug so much, that her owners garden was starting to look like an exploded mine field.

Dogs dig for many reasons, through breed type, frustration, or boredom. With Olive, it was partly to do with breed type but also that she simply loved it as well.

This was, however, a big problem for her owners, and a solution needed to be found. At home Olive was in full control of everything and everyone. If her owners told her not to do something, she would bark defiantly at them and continue with whatever she was doing.

Dogs need a degree of rules and boundaries, they love to have purpose and a job to do. Without these things they can lose direction and fall to their own devices, which is what had happened with Olive.

Although there were changes that needed implementing within the home, the main problem was still the digging. Olive’s owners had been trying to work out how to stop her digging, but sometimes it is not always a matter of stopping a dog from doing something it clearly enjoys, but rather working out how Olive can dig without it being an issue. My suggestion to Olive’s owners was to buy a box, or sandpit that could be hers for the sole purpose of digging.

Now, each day, Olive’s owners bury part of her daily food as well as toys in her sandpit and allow her to dig to her hearts content. It is now an activity that the whole family can be part of, but more importantly it means the Olive is no longer destroying the garden!