Diggity-Dog Groundhogs

[govgirl75]

I am sitting here, hot, sweating, and tired. Once again, a miserable groundhog has dug under our chain link fence and one of our chihuahuas has escaped through the hole. We spent 15 minutes trying to recover the dog. Once he is out, he forgets all his training and just runs and runs and refuses to come back. Our property backs up to a park, so he has lots of room to roam and I am getting too old to run after him. There are large, unleashed dogs and coyotes, as well as cars and strangers, so it is not a good place for him. I digress
Does anyone have any suggestions to foil the groundhogs digging into the yard? We have a chain link fence around most of the yard. As a solution to the problem, we laid patio blocks (8"x16"x2" weighing 17 lb. each) on the ground along the bottom of the fence. This has been mostly successful in that the hogs have tried digging in but come up under the stone and give up. However, one of them managed to continue to dig and came up in the yard.
Has anyone else had this problem? If so, what did you do? I have read some suggestions online, but most of them involve burying the fence bottom 12" below soil level flanged outwards. Our fence is already up, so that is not practical. I thought maybe some of those 12 inch garden marker stakes (they look like tall staples) pounded through the bottom of the fence every 4 to 6 inches might work, but we would need hundreds of them. I do not want to use predator urine or ammonia as a deterrent because I don't want to attract fox or coyotes to our yard. We have our Have a heart trap set, but have been unsuccessful in capturing the interloper. He has refused apples, grapes, tomatoes, and strawberries in favor of the leaves off my broccoli plants.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Gloria

[Ginger]

Uggg! I can only imagine the damage a ground hog can do Since they burrow so far under the ground, I have no idea how you could keep them out of your yard...maybe getting a really big dog Since they seem to love your brocolli leaves, maybe you should use those in your trap?
Good luck!

BTW: I know what it is like to chase a fast moving dog Occassionally Little Man (my tiny Rat Terrier)escapes and does the same thing but since I am in the country, I just let him run and he always comes back in a few minutes. If I try to catch him he just runs faster... he thinks it is a game... so when I don't chase he looses interest and comes home

Ginger

[isadora]

We have an infestation of the darn critters. Try baiting the trap with watermelon, they love that. We've caught a few with it.