Best Natural Dog Repellents

In this article we will discuss the best natural dog repellents. Having a beloved pet dog and a beautiful garden are not necessarily incomparable ideas, once you follow some advice for using the best natural dog repellents. Keeping dogs from digging in and chewing on plants will keep your garden beautiful, but it will also protect your dog from potentially hurtful activity, such as chewing or stepping on thorny plants, or digesting garden plants that could make your pets sick.

Sprinkling your garden plants with something bad-tasting to dogs is the best way to keep them from chewing and nosing around in your garden. Start with common kitchen ingredients, like chili pepper. Chili pepper is often found in commercial dog repelling products. Sprinkle it on and around the plants, and dogs will avoid area once they discover the irritating effect of the chili pepper. Chili pepper will also deter other garden pests like rabbits and deer.

Another kitchen ingredient that works well to repel dogs is vinegar. Its strong odor will act as a repellent to dogs. Vinegar can be sprays onto and around plants with a spray bottle, or dabbed onto plants with a cotton ball. Too much vinegar on the ground, though, will be harmful to plants. Ammonia is similar to vinegar. The strong scent will deter dogs, but like vinegar, pouring it into the ground where it will be absorbed by the roots of your plants is likely to harm the plants. Ammonia should be sprayed or dabbed onto the plant leaves. The same advice works well with rubbing alcohol.

Dogs normally dislike citrus smells, and slicing citrus fruit and putting around your garden, or using citrus oil may also work. Like humans, all dogs have different tastes, so experimenting with what works best with your dog may take some time.

Commercial products, such as Bitter Apple, can be bought in pet stores, to spray on plants and other items that dogs may chew on. Products with bittering agents can be absorbed by plants, and if you are growing plants for food, a bittering agent can change the taste of the fruit or vegetable, so it is best used on ornamental plants.

And underground training wire is another option that will keep dogs away from a garden. Depending on the layout of a garden, these can be purchased and buried. An attachment to your pets collar is needed to complete the product, so this solution will not work for a homeowner trying to deter a neighbor’s dog or stray dogs. However, these can be natural and effective methods to train your own pet to keep out of your garden. And unlike the above methods, an underground systems requires less maintenance, whereas spray on repellents must be reapplied after rain and watering.

The best natural dog repellents, therefore, depend on the dogs’ tastes, as well as whether the dogs you’d like to repel are your own, or outsiders.