Backyard Romps Are A Pain

For all of their cuteness, you must remember that Yorkies are TERRIERS! They are spirited little animals, and love to speak their minds.

There is a short section of our border with our neighbor that has a chain link fence with lattice added on my side. The rest is stockade fence. It was that way when we moved in, and I've just never filled in that section with stockade fence. Our pups (they're both 3 years old this year, but they'll always be pups) are moving that stockade fence up on my priority list.

On the other side of the fence is an Australian Shepherd. She is a really sweet dog that hardly ever barks at anything. I wish I could say the same about my Yorkies. They don't usually bark much - mostly when they are playing together - but when they head out the back door, they practically fly to that section of fence that they can see through and start barking like crazy.




They're both in this picture - Meggie is just a little hard to spot on the far side of the bush. If all of their noise weren't so irritating, it would be really funny because I know how they would act if the fence weren't there. When they do meet other dogs (without a fence between them) they are really very timid. Not frightened so much as shy. But put that fence up, and they are holy terrors!
I've tried to teach them not to carry on so, but they are dogs - and dogs do bark. If I stay outside with them, I can tell them "Stop!" when they begin barking and they will stop. For a little while. If I'm not out there to remind them, it sounds like they're vigorously defending our home from the hounds of hell!

There is the point, too, that I almost hate to stop them from barking at the dog next door. When they stop barking, their attention turns to their other passion - digging. THAT is the main reason that I hate to let them out unattended. They love to dig even when there is no particular reason, but now they have a reason. We have a gopher (some gophers, more likely) tunneling under our back yard. Since they don't break out and leave big piles of dirt like moles do, I have taken a pretty lax attitude about them up to now. Not the pups. When not barking at their neighbor, they have taken it as their mission in life to find the gophers. Finding the gophers entails a lot of running around and sniffing and waaaaaaaay too much digging at the tunnels.

Fortunately, most of their digging so far has been at the gopher tunnels that run close to the spot where they stand to bark at their neighbor. I guess they want to keep their activities close together to facilitate multi-tasking. That area doesn't have grass because of the shrubs, but I assume it's only a matter of time until they expand their search out into the lawn. I guess I have TWO high-priority projects now. Extend the stockade fence AND get rid of the gophers.