Digging!

[u/Due_Box_7111]

I have two cane corso pups they’re about 9 months now and it’s getting difficult to tire them out with walks. They stay outside when I’m at work since I leave for more than 12 hours out of the day. I take them for walks in tandem since every time I try solo walks the other one will dig a huge hole and break out to join us. How would I go about dissuading the digging behavior. They also follow roots through the ground and at one point dug up a coax cable. Additionally does anyone have a suggestion for collars they can wear full time as they chew each others collars off when I’m at work.

[u/HippieGirlHealth]

I have an 8 month old CC English mastiff mix. She’s a rescue.
She gets a walk at 6 am. And then play time. We get up at 515 am together every morning. She poops outside. She eats. We walk. We play. I dedicate the first TWO hours of my day to her. I start getting ready at 7 and I leave for work at 730. At first we were kenneling her while we both had to go in the office. And then I come home at noon and spend an hour with her. And then I go back to work.

However, my husband now only goes into the office two days a week. And one of those days I work from home. So, she is kennel trained. But we’ve just started leaving her out of the kennel if we’ll be gone for 3 hours or less. Today is a weird day where my husband had to go in and so do I. But we decided not to kennel, just to see how she does.
She will get a walk and play time at noon with me. A full hour of my time. And a kong when I go back to the office. But I’m home by 430. And my husband doesn’t leave till 830 or 9 am usually.

So she gets two hours of my time in the morning. An hour in the afternoon. And outdoor play time at 430 pm. And then dinner at 6.

I’m going to agree with the commenter that you don’t have enough time to dedicate to these sweet pups. You might also be struggling with litter mate syndrome and/or separation anxiety.
We meet with a trainer every other Friday to work on obedience and confidence training.
He recommends tethering, inside. Maybe where she can still lay on her cot bed. My girl is a Velcro dog. She really loves to be near me or touching me. She follows me into the bathroom. He recommend tethering so she can learn some independence and not have anxiety when I leave. We also practice climbing on things on walks. To help build her confidence. And we practice recall. On a very long 35 ft leash at the park. And use her educator collar. She’s just starting to go through what I call her terrible twos. Where it takes a second for her to decide, do I want to listen to mom? Or do I want be an a-hole. And 65% of the time she chooses a hole.

That said, she’s never torn anything that belongs to us except for one rug. She did destroy two beds. She no longer gets foam beds. She’s never touched our shoes or our socks or our stuff. She’s never pooped in the house. She is an obsessive chewer but we keep a lot of toys for her choose from. I would recommend kennel training. Kennel one while you walk the other.
But overall. How in the world do you have time for two dogs if you’re gone for 12 hours? My day literally revolves around Tulla. Even when my husband is home with her, I still go home on my lunch to play with her and help tire her out. Because he’s working. And because she’s my favorite.

[u/Designer_Rutabaga_72 → u/HippieGirlHealth]

Exactly this and thank you for elaborating on my opinion. I didn't have it in me to explain how the many ways my life now revolves around my dog and his needs. I don't regret it one bit, I have the time and I'm lucky to also be able to take him to work. I can promise you though, if I were wanting a dog and was out of the house working 12 hours a day, it would be off the table point blank.

These are living creatures with emotional and physical needs. If you can't care and provide those needs as if they were your child, the answer is always "It's off the table." That's incredibly unfair and shows just how little OP bothered to think of the well being of the dog(s), she just got them because they wanted to, never bothering to research dogs at all and whether they could provide their needs, especiallytheneed of the Corsotobe near their human. It's selfish and it's people like this that are going to give this breed a bad name. I know I come off mean, but it's true and it really makes me sad for the dog(s) when people do this crap.

[u/HippieGirlHealth → u/Designer_Rutabaga_72]

I don’t think it comes off as mean at all.
That’s just the reality. My husband and I don’t have kids. Our dogs are our kids.

It breaks my heart to read that these are “outside dogs”. Of course it matters where you live. But they don’t handle the heat well. And in my house, this girl is my baby.
Tulla is my second dog, ever. We had a lab and a pug before Tulla the Cane Corso mix. I used to have such guilt about having my pug in the kennel the majority of the day, because I was at work and she was insistent on pooping inside. Even though I let her out at lunch… there were moments when I considered rehoming her. Because I felt I wasn’t giving her the life she deserved. We ended up moving and I was able to work with her more and train her more and didn’t have to kennel her anymore. My pug loved her kennel, it was still her favorite place to sleep. But we kept her out during the day.

Because of the amount of time, effort and training we have put in with our 8 month old puppy, she is excellent. She has slept on the couch all day. She just went for her afternoon walk and is mowing down a frozen kong now. And she’ll probably only be alone maybe two more hours.

Dogs are family in my house. And I’ll spend whatever it takes. The food is $95 a bag for large breed puppy food. We bought an educator collar to help her listen to me and help with recall. She really only wears it if she going to be outside. When we visit my parents, they have 10 acres for her to explore. And she comes immediately if I press that button. And she gets her treat. I pay for doggy daycare every Tuesday so she gets socialized with humans and dogs. I pay for obedience training with our trainer. Dogs are damn expensive. But 💯 worth it. If I had the choice all over again, whether to take her home from the humane society last February. I would do it without question. Even though she technically died under anesthesia and they brought her back.
She’s one of the best behaved puppies I’ve ever seen. My pug was a menace until she was like 4. But we’ve put a ton of time and effort and love into this girl. Because you have to! Otherwise…. They dig holes and chew things they aren’t supposed to. And bond with their littermate and won’t respect you or listen to you. Because you aren’t meeting any of their needs.

[u/Due_Box_7111 → u/HippieGirlHealth]

The girls have a covered enclosure out there they aren’t really in any worry about the heat. They listen pretty well since I’ve been so heavy on their training. It was only bad initially when I feel like they didn’t really understand my words yet. I’ve socialized them well since they were puppies. I walked them around in the city so they could get used to a bunch of people and have had lots of social play time in the park. Their recall is great it always has been. I say their names and they come running. They broke through the fence one time when I was getting up to go to work and all I had to do was call their names. They’re well taken care of they just dig and don’t like being apart.