chainspot maintenance

[chef_kergin]

what do you do to keep your dog's chainspot in good shape?

i ask because my gyp runs in near complete circles all day. i mean ALL day. there's hordes of rabbits that live under our shed, by hordes i mean a dozen-plus. they like to taunt her and get about 2 ft from the end of her chain, so she goes back and forth constantly. not to mention all the other critters that come through our yard.

after she killed all the grass in her spot, i put down sand (/rockdust/chipped rock/whatever you call it). took over an actual ton of sand to evenly coat it. her chain is connected to a buried axle.

every morning when i go rake up shit, fill the water and food, check her chain, etc., i take a metal rake and try to even out the sand she drags up to the center. her back and forth all the time drags a large amount around where her chain goes into the ground, so i try to move some of that resistance.

here lies the problem - since she spends no time anywhere on her spot but the outer edge running and in her house or under the shaded lean-to she has nearly half a foot rut carved into the ground. and i'm losing that battle. she sits there and throws dirt when she's worked up, chomps the ground up, and wears it when it's muddy.

do any of you have this problem? if so, do you have any solutions short of trucking in some earth before winter to fill your dog's track? that's what i had to do last year, and it stayed in place until spring came and all the critters came back out.

thank god she's not bored enough to start digging, that's never been a problem yet.

[Dream Pits]

sounds like urs is worse than the one i had but i gave him a raw hide/cow hide in the mornings and a chew toy later is the day. He would lay down and chew rather than go ape-shit on the chain spot all day. Also he would fuck up his dog house so i these things were manditory. what does everyone else do?

[chef_kergin]

this one is more inclined to things with fur. i've tried raw hides and kongs to no avail.

[Dream Pits]

put peanut butter in the kong. my dogs wont chew them either but one i have will sit there for hours tryin to get all the peanut butter out of it. some dogs lose interested tryin to get the peanut butter out but its worth a try

[littleblackdog]

Sounds like a typical bulldog, nothing much you can do there. Sand hold fleas, so that could become a problem. Small gravel is what a lot of guys use.

I use to have a axle buried, attach a short spring to it with a bit of chain and then attached a hide to the end of it. Put it between two chain spots and the spring would work the dogs and when they finally let go it would land in the adjacent chain spot so two dogs worked and they worked it harder and so they had to keep outdoing each other. One benefit of a intelligent animal, they want to be the best, mentally they do.

[spliff]

Sounds like a typical bulldog, nothing much you can do there. Sand hold fleas, so that could become a problem. Small gravel is what a lot of guys use.

x2 get rid of that sand,i just use stone dust and yeah i pretty much need to rake it level everyday.just part of normal yard maintenance.

[chef_kergin]

it's not "sand" per-se, one guy at the quarry called it sand, the other rock dust. it works well, drains easily, and is easy on her pads, keeps her nails ground smooth. imagine crushed pea gravel maybe? probably the same thing as the stone dust you mentioned.....different quarries call it different stuff around here.

as far as fleas/bugs may go, one guy i talk to recommended diatomaceous earth (spelling?). we now use that, and it works great. it gets spread around her spot bi-weekly and rubber on her coat, and in their food daily. best summer i've ever had as far as the dogs staying bug free, no itching, no hot spots, solid shits, it's great.

sounds like i just have to keep up on it seasonally. :p

[littleblackdog]

I tried the pea gravel it is hard to keep it in the spot, been there the one thing that did help on it, I lined the spot with railroad ties.

[pit#5]

May be you could pull some dirt out level out the area and put down cement 1 to 2 inch thick $8 per bag use a PVC pipe to punch some holes through out wet cement area for drainage when cement is dry put soil back he will still dig but only to the predetermined point you have cement If the chain is 8 feet long I guess a circular area relative to the chain.