Dog Solutions Pest Control

06/03/2026

Well, what a fun week that was! If you want to learn more about what to expect with goose control services, check out the blog post for the full run down.

https://dogsolutionspestcontrol.com/blog/what-to-expect-when-hiring-a-goose-control-team

06/02/2026

The molting season is another unexpected thing for goose control.

Bird feathers become damaged overtime. To be sure they can continue to fly, they must regrow their feathers every year. Canadian geese do this by losing most of their feathers at one time, called molting, and this leaves them unable to fly. Molting feathers takes around 30 days.

In Tennessee, the molting season typically happens in July. The geese all tend to molt at the same time (ask me why, I know, I know!), though the exact time depends on the individual bird. It happens right as the goslings are getting big enough to grow in their own first flight feathers.

Molting geese without goslings aren’t typically aggressive, but if they lose their flight feathers while on your property, they can be forced to stay there for the month. Because of this, many clients still want our services in July to be sure that any visiting geese don’t become residents that make a poopy and feathery mess during their stay.

Not getting a goose off the property during this time can happen fast. One day they can fly off, the next they can’t (this is obvious when we attempt to chase them off, and it is apparent they are grounded).

As with goslings, we try to pressure them to leave if other properties with ponds are nearby, but if there aren’t any, we leave them alone aside from enforcing no go zones. Once molting geese and goslings are present, the name of the game is stressing them out as little as possible so they can grow feathers or up quickly and get off the property sooner.

05/29/2026

We're talking the ins and outs of goose control this week.

We try our best with goose control, but still show up on a property to the surprise of a pair of geese with a gaggle of goslings in tow. We know they didn’t hatch on the property we were hired to control, but now they are there anyway.

In these cases, we let the property owner know the goslings are there and then start gently harassing the geese. In some cases we set up “no go zones” on the property. Typically we “no go zone” the most active parts of the property. Near doors, parking lots, etc. If the parents and goslings are caught on those parts of the property, we’ll let the dogs chase them enough to cause panic (but no one gets hurt) until they reach an area the geese are okayed to stay. Once there, the dogs are called off and the geese can breath a sigh of relief.

The geese must eat to survive. For geese that is grass. Part of a successful no go zone is making sure the geese have enough food available to eat. While it might be desired to give them a small section to stay on the property, that just isn’t realistic for the growing babies. We can stop them from feeding on the small strips of grass near doors and in parking medians, but if we make too large of an area unavailable, they’ll ignore the lesson completely because they must eat.

When the babies are young, they can’t walk very far. The parents will be hesitant to go far from water where their goslings can escape by diving underwater when they believe a predator is too close. When the goslings are this young, we will often throw a toy for our dogs to fetch in the water, near but not directly at the geese. The geese will honk in fright and swim away, but won’t be panicked. And then we leave.

These moments can look like just playing with our dogs, but I promise the dogs are actually training the geese. To the geese, it looks like a close call, and our immediately leaving gives the geese a chance to make a run for it to a different property. Similar to training the geese, this often takes a few visits before the geese realize they should leave, but we’ve had great success getting families hatched elsewhere to return to elsewhere.

Sometimes despite all this, the goose families don’t leave.

This often happens when there really isn’t anywhere else for the geese to go. For instance, they nested on a property without a pond and your property is the only one with a pond in the area. When this happens, we often work the whole baby raising season to make sure the geese respect the no go areas and also keep any extra geese away.

A few geese often attracts more geese. Because the family group means there are always geese present, it increases geese showing up. We stop the problem from getting worse.

05/28/2026

After hiring us, there are other things that occur in the course of goose control that property owners don't always expect. One of those is nest removals.

During the training and maintenance phase, geese might successfully build a nest on the property. If that happens, it rarely matters how much the dogs chase them, the geese will come right back to sit on their nest again. In some cases, the geese will outright attack the dogs and refuse to be chased off.

When nests appear on the property, we always recommend removing the nest which can be done with an easy to get federal permit. We’ll take you through the steps to get it, and then take care of removing the nest for you.

Why do we recommend removing nests? Because we want to completely break the cycle of geese nesting on your property. If we chase off most of the geese, but allow a few geese to raise young there, not only do those geese that raised their young want to come back year after year, but the babies they raised will also want to come back year after year. What started out as 2 or 4 geese having babies can quickly be in the teens in just one year.

Goose control can be a slow process. The first year you’ll see dramatic results, but it often takes several years to completely break the cycle by continuously preventing geese from nesting on the site.

Another negative to allowing geese to nest is that once babies hatch, the dogs and I cannot chase them off. The babies can’t fly so the geese will be stuck on the property for a two month period as they grow up. In that time frame, the growing babies and parents will make a mess of the property, and the parent geese will often be aggressive to humans to keep people away from their babies.

05/27/2026

This week, we're talking goose control in depth, and what to expect when you're considering hiring us.

1. A demonstration and quote for prices.

Each site is different so we can’t provide a price quote over the phone. We come out, get a history of what all has been tried, make sure the area is safe to run our dogs, and then provide a free demonstration of the dogs in action. We’ll give an estimate for how much each visit will cost, and then, once back in our office, provide a detailed breakdown of the price quote.

The demonstration will take longer than expected. The geese are used to calling your property home and are not going to easily leave because some dogs ran at them from the shore or swam after them one time. It often takes over an hour to chase every goose that can fly off the property.

2. You hire us, and the training phase begins.

The training phase is what we call the first two weeks of being on a job site. In rare cases, where the geese are particularly stubborn, this phrase may last longer.

During the training phase, for two weeks straight we come out for three visits every single day. This includes weekends. Why do we do this? Because the geese need to learn that coming to your property is no longer an option. If we don’t train the birds, the dogs will chase them off, and an hour or two later the same geese will come back. Then they will sit on your property all day. When the dogs return, the geese leave and know if they just wait an hour, they can come back and hang out all day.

We don’t want that.

We want these geese to give up and find a new place to call home.

So we come every day, three times a day, all during day light hours. Sometimes we come at sunrise, noon, and sunset. Other days we come at 10 am, 3 pm, and 5 pm. The geese never know when to expect us and if they’ll be able to relax when they return or instantly have to leave again. Soon they decide it’s best to just stay gone.

This time period also ensures that all the geese calling your property home actually get trained. Sometimes geese leave to hangout elsewhere for a few days. If we shorten the training phase, we might miss training some of these geese.

By the end of this two week period, there should be a noticeable reduction in geese. The geese will leave as soon as the dogs chase them rather than flying to the pond and needing swum after.

The good news about the training phase that it should only need done the first year we are hired. In future years, when hired as soon as geese become a problem again, the geese remember us and know the routine.

3. We reduce visits and begin the maintenance phase.

This is when we drop to once a day visits. The maintenance phase lasts until we go one week without seeing any geese on the property (which can be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months). These once a day visits will vary in time, just like when we were coming more frequently.

This phase is when we encourage clients to contact us when they see geese on the property. Sometimes we are going to miss the birds on the property, but by letting us know when you see them out there, we can adjust our schedule to better chase the birds off.

Why do we need to keep coming if the geese are trained? Because geese aren’t dumb. Occasionally a few geese will try to return. If we don’t chase them off, they’ll hang out, and geese flying over will come in and land as well. As any hunter knows, geese attract more geese.

We work on the opposite principle. We continue to chase those few geese off so that the birds don’t become a major problem again.

05/26/2026

Goose control does not guarantee no geese on your property. It promises a significant reduction in geese and that the few present will not be attacking customers or making frequent messes in high traffic areas.

Thinking about hiring us for your goose control needs? We're going to do a full breakdown about what to expect in the coming days, but here's the condensed list:

1. A free demonstration and quote of prices.
2. You hire us and the training phase begins.
3. We reduce number of visits and the maintenance phase begins.

Things that may occur during goose control services include:
*Nests needing removed.
*Babies hatch on someone else's property and then walk over to yours.
*Sometimes despite best efforts we can't get the goose family to leave.
*The molting season
*We stopped services and came back.

05/19/2026

Failure is never fun, but I thought it might be worth talking about anyway. Social media is full of the perfect success stories, but life never follows a perfect trajectory.

Sometimes we all fail.

This was a recent one of mine.

Recently I had a failure. Well, actually, it was two failures at the exact same location. The second failure left me incredibly proud of my dogs and myself, but frustrated. The first one? Just frustrated. The first time we went out to this location, I'll admit I was ill prepared and my dogs' trainin...

05/17/2026

Hope is the first dog I've brought home since we got backyard chickens.

My normal training technique for a goose control dog is to encourage chasing smaller birds (like ducks) first and then once their confidence is up, encouraging chasing geese.

I'm in a bind because the dogs are NOT allowed to chase the chickens even if they chase geese for a living. My first impulse was to stop her. But she's young and I don't want to quash her drive. After a few days of thinking about it, I decided, for now, it will be easier to reign her back in later.

The chickens aren't thrilled about it, but she enjoys chasing them when she gets particularly riled up. The chickens probably needed a little exercise anyway.

05/16/2026

Say hello to Hope!

So named because she gave me hope for the future of my business after feeling stuck for quite a while.

We brought her home at 8 weeks old. She is to be a future goose control and bed bug detection dog. She's 12.5 weeks old now and growing like an absolute w**d. I'm very excited for her future. She's a handful, which is exactly what I wanted.

P.S. The photos of her at at 9, 10, and 11 weeks old.

03/27/2026

The dogs and I were recently hired at a new facility that had had major issues with geese at a past location.

They were wise to hire us to make sure the geese didn't get into the habit of nesting on their new property. This pair of geese weren't quite sure what to make of the dogs choosing to launch a sea based attack on them and wisely chose to leave.

In less than two weeks the amount of geese visiting was reduced from over 60 geese making a mess all over the property, to averaging less than 2 a day. And when 2 land they choose to stay near the ponds and out of the way of customers and employees until the dogs and I return to remind them this location is off limits. We'll continue services throughout the nesting season until we go a week straight without seeing any geese (for most properties that seems to be the magic amount of time to be sure the geese have truly moved on for the season).

With these geese now trained, it just takes the fun out of it for the dogs. They're looking for their next challenge. If your business is having issues with geese, the dogs would love to solve your problem too.

Many people are convinced they have to live with Canadian Geese attacking people and making messes of their properties. I promise, you don't.