Keeping Your Dog From Escaping All the Time

Some dogs do quite well staying put, enjoying their homes, and basically following a routine with their owners. However, many canines, especially young ones, have a bad habit of wanting to get out and explore everything. It’s a bit like a kid seeing a toy store; as soon as there is an opportunity to get out and see the world, the dog is out the door or out of the backyard in a moment. Then begins the age-old chase of running the dog down until it gets tired of exploring and agrees to go back home.

How To Control Your Four-Legged Houdini

Ideally, training and trust are what convince a dog to stop trying to make a run for it, and age helps too, as the urge to explore everything wears down with experience. However, trusting a dog alone to do everything is a bit silly; prevention can go a long way towards helping a pet stay out of trouble long before it thinks about getting into the risk in the first place.

Backyard Containment

The simple and probably most obvious go to with a backyard containment is to either use a very high fence or a rope or chain on the collar of the animal. What most people don’t know is that a medium to larger-sized dog can jump as much as six feet and get over a fence once they have a grip on the top. So a fence alone doesn’t work. In fact, smaller dogs are diggers, and they are very likely to remove enough dirt to get underneath the fence and out as well.

Ropes and chains don’t work well either. Ropes can be chewed through by a bored animal. A chain puts extra weight on the dog’s neck and back, which can cause strain over time. Worse, both types of restraint can get caught on things and choke the animal or hurt it with entanglement.

The most effective way to contain a dog in the backyard is to place the containment on a hardscape which can’t be dug through, and to use barriers that can’t be leaped over as well. Ample-spaced dog pens are the best approach in this regard, allowing free movement, space, and avoiding entanglement injuries entirely.

Household Containment

The first place homeowners usually go towards keeping their pets in a home if they don’t want the dog chewing on things or making a mess is restriction to a given room or placing the dog in the garage.

The garage is probably the most dangerous place and shouldn’t be used if not pet-proofed. It has lots of poisonous chemicals in it, there are other products that a dog could eat that could be harmful, and the room is far more exposed to the elements. Garages heat up to unhealthy levels in the summer, and the cement can be extremely cold in winter. Unless the area is renovated for an animal, it’s not a good choice for a number of reasons.

Containment to a given room still allows the animal to move around in that room. And dogs are very good jumpers when motivated to find things. When a human is not present for an extended period, a bored dog will start to get very curious about its surroundings, especially at a younger age.

Instead, the use of a clear-view dog pen allows the animal to relax, see where it is relative to the rest of the room, but not cross out of its allowable area. Because the dog can’t process a clear-view barrier as a way around, it will instead not try to jump it or climb it. It looks invisible, but there’s something sold blocking the animal. This confusion keeps it at bay.

Learn From Examples, Tweak for Specifics

No category of dog containment works for every animal. For a pet owner dealing with a new pet, the smart approach is to learn from examples already available about what usually works, and then tweak that approach for the specific animal involved. Remember, dog intelligence varies from one canine to another just as much as it does between humans. So, depending on the individual pet, some methods may not work as well as examples on the Internet.  

Also, animals change over time. As they age, they become less anxious and energetic, which also cuts down on their Houdini runs to escape. Be willing to adjust and remove constraints when they are no longer needed. This will increase the animal’s comfort as well as trust of its owner. 

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