How to Keep Dogs Out of Your Yard

If the neighborhood dogs are coming into your yard and causing damage, there are a few steps you can take - short of calling Animal Control.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Bitter Apple Sprays
• Wire Meshes
• Chile Peppers
• Gallon Milk Jugs

1. Place one gallon plastic milk jugs filled with water around the perimeter of your property. This folk remedy works more often than not.

2. Stop using fish emulsion fertilizer, bone meal and blood meal. Dogs, cats, raccoons and skunks are attracted by the scent of these organic products. If you use them in your yard, cover the scent with a bitter apple spray like that sold at pet stores.

3. Spread ground hot chile peppers over newly planted beds to prevent dogs and cats from digging. The capsicum (the chemical in the pepper that makes it hot) will deter most creatures from digging.

4. Protect fragile individual plants by placing wire mesh around them.

Tips & Warnings

• The seeds from ground chile peppers may germinate into little pepper plants. If this happens, pull them out and toss them into your compost pile.
• Build a stout fence around your property to exclude dogs, as a last resort.

on 11/22/2005 Read about the "Scarecrow", it is a sprinkler spike that you hook up to a garden hose and it reacts to motion with a strong spray of water for a couple of seconds.

on 11/22/2005 For cats that spray in one particular spot, you can (if it is legal in your municipality) pour male urine on that spot. This one works GREAT! Another remedy that you can use is the distribution of ammonia in a "hot spot" or around the perimeter of your yard. The smell will fade quickly, but the results will not. These two techniques mimic a new alpha male or a larger male cat marking their territory. Good Luck!

on 11/22/2005 Take a quick trip down to your local garden shop. Most will cary a variety of pest control products. The one that worked for me consisted of green menthol crystals. They are safe in your garden and disintigrate after a month with rainfall. Worked instantly on a VERY tenacious cat and he still hasn't come back after 6 months!

on 11/22/2005 Put vinegar in a spray bottle and spray it around your yard's perimeter. This should keep most dogs out.

on 11/22/2005 Put white vinegar in a spray bottle and spray your perimeter. The smell will keep out animals even after you cannot smell it. Do not spray directly on plants because the vinegar will kill them.