So, I'm helping a friend redesign part of their 5,000 sq.ft. urban
yard here in Washington. The place is on the corner of a busy road and a quiet side street. Their Catahoula dog runs those two
fence lines along the two streets constantly, to track and bark at pedestrians, bicyclists, mopeds... everything except cars. So, there is a well-worn trail along those two
fence lines where the surfaces are all torn up and rutted. Whether it was once mulch, grass, pebbles, whatever, now it's a dog trail. He (Cramer, the dog) has even run down a NZ
flax plant.
So my friend can't get the dog to stop, and doesn't know how to train it out of him. I realize that a dog like this needs lots and lots of work to do herding cows, but.... that isn't going to happen. We want to figure out how to re-landscape these areas with plants that will provide privacy from the roads, but won't get run down/dug up by the dog in the establishment phase. Where the dog's trail crosses a grass pathway, the grass is all torn up. Mulch cannot be applied; it only gets scattered. Same with ground cover plants. The soil here in NW Washington is so wet all winter that the soil structure is easily turned to mud and grass is easily torn up.
Does anyone have any
experience working with the flow of this kind of dog
energy to either work around the dog's activity, redirect the dog, or develop a dog-impervious planting design? Any experience training or incentivizing a dog to do something else?
What we are trying to accomplish is a way to either discourage the behavior or design around it in a way that is attractive. What we are trying to avoid is putting in plantings that the dog will destroy.
Thanks everyone!