Tim Dowling: the dog is destroying the lawn, but I need to catch her red-pawed

The Guardian

5 days ago

Shortly after its first birthday, the new dog suddenly starts digging giant holes in the lawn. I don't know why I imagined a year would be a cut-off point for a dog developing new unwanted behaviours. Why shouldn't an adult dog find a hobby?
Anyway, these giant holes represent one of the key challenges of canine training: encouragement is easy; discouragement is hard. It's easy to teach a dog that peeing outside is good. It takes a lot longer to teach it that peeing inside is bad.
Discouragement requires, at the very least, the possibility of connecting any negative reinforcement to the bad thing in question, which in this case proves impossible. When I discover a new hole in the morning, I call the dog out to the garden. She arrives instantly, tail wagging.
'Is this you?' I say, indicating the fresh, football-sized crater. The dog looks at me in perplexity.
'I don't even know why I'm asking,' I say. 'Of course it's you.' The dog stares expectantly, as if something fun might be about to happen.
'I will catch you in the act one day,' I say. 'And there will be consequences.'
No one who's seen my lawn would dare to suggest I'm precious about it. I cut it infrequently and never bother with edging. At this time of year it's mostly brown patches and spreading weeds, and I don't care. But the holes are deep enough to represent a hazard, so I fill each new one and sprinkle grass seed over it. If I don't have enough soil, I top them up with espresso grounds. It would be fair to say none of this is working.
It's a difficult time of year in the garden all-round. Half the crops in my pretend farm have failed, while the others present a problematic success. My wife comes out to my office shed while I'm staring at my raised beds.
'I'm going to the supermarket,' she says. 'Do you know if we need anything?'
'Don't buy courgettes,' I say. 'We have, like, eight.'
'Don't worry, I won't,' she says. I poisoned my family with toxic courgettes four years ago and it put all of them off courgettes, possibly for life. But I still grow them because they're easy, resulting in an annual glut.
'This year's ones are fine,' I say. 'You've actually eaten some already, without knowing.'
'Anything else?' she says.
'We have shitloads of radicchio,' I say. 'And one cucumber. Otherwise, as far as I know, we're out of everything.'
Soon after my wife leaves, I discover that the everything we're out of includes milk. Instead of texting her, I go to the nearest shop.
'I'll be back in 10 minutes,' I say to the dog. 'Don't dig.'
On my return I run into the middle one, who stopped by on his way back from work and found no one home.
'I ate your cucumber,' he says.
'The whole thing?' I say.
'It was delicious,' he says.
I spend the rest of the afternoon watching from my desk as the dog lies on the grass chewing on an outdoor cushion. It's bad behaviour, but it's not a hole. If I am to apply negative reinforcement to the correct crime, timing is everything.
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An email pings into my inbox. I turn to read it, and then, grudgingly, answer it. When I turn back the dog is gone and there's a new hole alongside the gutted cushion.
I examine the hole carefully – it looks to be one I have already filled and re-seeded once – before calling the dog's name. The dog appears at the kitchen door, yawning and stretching.
'Come here,' I say. The dog walks across the lawn and sits at my feet.
'What's this?' I say, pointing to the hole. The dog looks at my outstretched finger, and then at me.
'Your new hobby is unacceptable,' I say. 'I'd only just filled it in yesterday.' The dog tilts its head slightly, as if to say: is this about the cushion?
'This is about the hole,' I say. 'Whatever it is you're looking for in life, you won't find it a foot under the lawn.'
The oldest one, home from work, walks into the kitchen. The dog runs in to greet him.
'Hello,' he says. 'Why is your nose covered in dirt?'
'You in tonight?' I say.
'I think so,' he says. 'What's for supper?'
'Dunno,' I say. 'Whatever mum brings back, plus courgettes.'
'Ugh,' he says.
'It was four years ago!' I say. 'Four years of everyone rejecting my courgettes!'
'And yet,' he says, 'you persist.'