Some Supervision Required

I started working with a new client last week.  She's always rescued adult dogs and this is her first puppy.  She brought the puppy home and was working on house training by ringing a bell on her backdoor and then letting him outside to relieve himself.  She made one mistake, however, and that was walking away to find her phone.  While she was looking for her phone inside the house, he managed to find a small hole in her fence and make a break for it into her next door neighbor's backyard!  That might not seem like that big of a deal but her neighbor has a dog who is very territorial and doesn't like other dogs at all.  Fortunately for my new client, the neighbor's dog was inside when the puppy entered the yard, but he was barking like crazy from inside his house, alerting his owners to the little interloper.  Needless to say, my client raced over, apologized profusely, and found a board to fix the fence.  She honestly could not believe how quickly this puppy found that fence hole; it was behind a bunch of bushes, in a spot where she hadn't even thought to check because her previous dogs never went back there.  Leave it to a puppy to find a previously undetected escape route!  Luckily, the neighbors with the territorial dog were also my clients and recommended me to this new puppy owner for a bit of help.

When I arrived at this client's house, we headed straight for the backyard.  I found several places where a puppy his size could escape the yard, including under the gate that led right out to the front of her house and the street beyond.  Besides the potential escape routes, she had two oak trees which means acorns on the ground in the Fall; acorns are potentially toxic to dogs when eaten.  She also had a smallish oleander and several hydrangea, both of which are hazards to dogs.  Then there were the palm-sized stones in her succulent garden and the water fountain feature in one corner of the yard.  All I could see in this yard were invisible flashing hazard signs!  After scoping out the yard, we headed inside to talk about yard safety for puppies.

She hadn't even thought about her yard being hazardous, though she had addressed potential hazards indoors by covering electrical cords, putting remotes out of reach, and raising her indoor potted plants up off of the floor. She had baby gates to block off rooms and plenty of toys and chews available to redirect her puppy to should he try to chew on something indoors that he shouldn't.  She was crate training him and had a pen for him when she couldn't watch him inside the house.

There are a lot of potential hazards outdoors, and not just on walks.  Whether it's your front yard, back yard, or a side yard, you need to get down at a puppy's eye level and think about the space from their point of view.  If you have hazardous plants in your yard, you have two options.  You can remove or replant the plants in another area where your dog won't have access to them, or you can fence the area off so your dog can't get into them.  For big hazards like an oak tree dropping acorns, you'll need to be diligent during the fall about picking up those fallen acorns before letting your puppy in the yard, or, again, fencing off the area where the trees are dropping their nuts to the ground.  If you have rocks small enough to be picked up (or worse yet, swallowed) by a puppy, consider changing out this garden feature for something else, or again, fencing off that area.  Puppies will definitely pick up bark, twigs, and leaves, but these items are less of a risk overall.  If you begin teaching your puppy "leave it" and "drop it" early on, you can actually have them pretty consistently trading you their found items for a tasty, more appropriately edible item.  And water features are lovely as long as your puppy can't get into them.  Water features that contain even just a few inches of water are a dog drowning risk.

My client was frustrated because her yard had all of the features I just mentioned, plus the fence holes and the spot at the gate.  She wondered aloud if she was going to have to fence off her entire yard to make a safe zone for her new puppy.  I told her that she was on the right track, but it didn't have to be as horrible as she was thinking.  Rather than fencing off portions of her yard, instead, she could put a large x-pen out there and simply make sure the area inside the x-pen was free of acorns, rocks, etc.  When taking her puppy out to toilet, she could place him in his x-pen and know he was safe.  If she needed to walk away, even for a moment, she'd know exactly where he was and what he'd be doing.  I told her doing the x-pen in the yard method had the added benefit of teaching her puppy where she wanted him to toilet long term.  When he was older, she could remove the pen and he'd go to that area when she sent him outside to relieve himself.  Because she also had a side yard, there was the additional option of building an outdoor kennel or run in that area to serve not only as a safe yard and toilet area, but a place to kennel her puppy outdoors when he was older.  

The real take home message here is this:  Prepare your yard in advance as best you can.  Never leave a puppy unsupervised in a yard, even for a moment, that hasn't been puppy-proofed.  Better yet, never allow your puppy to use your yard without being with you on a leash or long line, or in a pen.  Once your dog is a year to 18 months of age, you can likely expand their yard usage safely.  However, if they are still thinking like an escape artist, that outdoor kennel mentioned above may be your best option to safely confine your dog and allow them to have outside time without 100% supervision.  And it goes without saying that if you bring home a new dog, even one who isn't a puppy, you should still supervise them in your yard until you figure out what type of a yard dog they are.  Do they try to climb the fence or dig under it?  Do they eat plants?  Are they picking up rocks or getting into your water feature?  If the answer is no, they just go out, relieve themselves and then walk around the yard enjoying their outside time, then your yard is probably safe for them and from them.

As always, if you have questions about your pet's behavior, you know where to find me.

Here are Henley and Zelly, when she was a puppy, in my back garden.  I have bark everywhere, a few large stones, and a couple of hydrangea.  I also have edible fruit and veggies that I always hope to harvest before the dogs do. Zelly was supervised in my yard until she was over a year of age because she loved tearing up my drip system.  Now she can be trusted to be out there by herself with Henley and Ozzie.  The biggest "risk" now are those strawberries!  I've gotten exactly two this entire summer, the rest have been eaten by the collies.