# Teaching Puppy to Avoid Cactus



## FourIsCompany (Jan 29, 2008)

We have a lot of cactus in our area and next week, Shade will be venturing out into the larger world. He got into a cactus on his second day here, but all the spines came out easily. Now, I'm wondering the best way to teach him about cactus. 

All my other dogs have discovered them on their own, but I wondered if anyone has any pointers on proactively teaching a puppy about cactus...


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## Mary Beth (Apr 17, 2010)

I did find information on how to pull the cactus spines out, but not avoidance training. Most say that the pup or dog will learn after a couple of encounters. This excerpt suggests to start the pup or young dog out in an area that there are only a few cactus:

Dogs and cacti | Hiking with Animals (non-human) | BackcountryForum.com

There were several articles on rattlesnake avoidance training and one did mention that his dog avoided cactus because the training involved a snake by a cactus.


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## FourIsCompany (Jan 29, 2008)

Thanks for the link. My other dogs have learned on their own, I was just hoping Shade could avoid the hard lesson.


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