Natural Dog Repellent
Everything You Need to Know When Choosing a Natural Dog Repellent
You probably love your dog, but you’ll need a natural dog repellent to keep him from doing damage in your garden. You may even need a natural dog repellent to keep the neighbor’s dog out of your front yard. Whatever the reason you need to keep a dog out, the idea behind a natural dog repellent is that it convinces dogs not to go somewhere without hurting them.
One common natural dog repellent is chili pepper. You can find many varieties of this type of dog repellent in the organic dog repellent section of your garden store. You can even try chili pepper to see if it works by using some from your kitchen cabinet. Most dogs won’t go anywhere near a plant that’s sprinkled with chili pepper.
The only bad thing about chili pepper is that it is a little harsh, which may also be why it works so well. However, you may want to start with a gentler approach if you’re trying to keep your own dog out of your garden. The gentlest kind of natural dog repellent is made from citrus fruits. Try cutting up some lemons or oranges and placing them around the outside of your garden. Dogs usually hate citrus smells, so it’s very likely it will work.
Vinegar also makes a great natural dog repellent. We all know how potent the smell of vinegar is to us, so just imagine that smell on the level of the dog’s highly developed sniffer. Try sprinkling some vinegar around your plants. If it works well, you may want to consider cutting some biodegradable coffee filters into small pieces and soaking them in vinegar. You can then place the vinegar-laced pieces of coffee filters around the plants you want to keep safe.
Dogs also can’t stand the smell of ammonia. Much like vinegar, the smell is overpowering to a dog’s nose. Try soaking cotton balls in ammonia and placing them around your garden to keep dogs out. You can also try rubbing alcohol with the same method.
If you want to go a bit more high tech, you might try an electronic method to keep dogs out of your garden. If the dog in question is your own pet, you can purchase an electronic fence. This requires you to lay wires in the ground and hook them up to an electrical outlet. You can then place a collar on your dog which will warn him when he’s too close to the wires. If he continues to get too close to the wires, the collar delivers a small shock. This might sound dreadful, but your dog will learn very quickly where he’s allowed to go. It probably won’t take more than one or two shocks before your dog realizes that the audio warning he hears is meant to keep him from crossing a certain line in your yard.
There are also a number of ultrasonic dog repellent devices that emit a high frequency sound that only dogs can hear. The sound is not harmful, but it’s good for delivering the message that your garden is off limits.