All the neighborhood cats and squirrels love freshly turned, raked soil. They leave me "presents" and gouge out craters that make rows of seedlings look like they were hit by mortars.
I've tried chipped chili peppers (but not gorund cayenne pepper).
I've tried dead briar branches.
What worked for me was to cover the seedbed with chicken wire and weight it down with a few bricks.
But I have no dogs, and usually very little compost in the soil. All my compost is in a pile off to one side. Oddly, no pest has ever bothered my compost heaps that I could detect. And the compost heap has kitchen scraps, including occasional small meat scraps! Maybe they are deterred by the outer layer, which is usually dry and filled with small twigs or stiff brown stems.
If you do compost your scraps in a heap, you could cover the heap with chicken wire that might discourage the dogs somewhat. Or, figure that they would do some of your compost-turning for you!
But I'm not sure that "tossing it all over the yard" really counts as "turning the compost heap".
