The Dog in the Garden

The dog in the garden (Photo caption: Looks innocent, doesn't he?)

A garden is a place of many potential joys for your dog. Here are some of the many ways our dog Bob enjoys his garden experience…

1. Figuring out how to slip through the fence or jump it in such a way as to avoid getting stuck in the raspberry brambles.
2. Applying Eau de Compost- go to the compost pit, enjoy first the joyous sniffing, then…the compost roll! Though why a bath seems to directly follow this experience…..???
3. The joy of tugging on landscape fabric - it pulls! It tears! It riiiiips!

4. A similar pleasure of gnawing at a rubber mulch tree ring...and scattering chunks of it around for the lawn mower blade to catch on!
5. Finding an unopened bag of mulch and deciding where to spread it…all over the tiny, vulnerable lettuce seedlings, for example.
6. Digging voles and moles- long narrow trenches dug right through the asparagus bed. The epicurean delight of eating them! The pleasure of throwing them back up! On the living room rug!
7. Chasing rabbits! Catching them! Leaving their disemboweled carcasses right by the swing set for kids to find!
8. The pleasure of “fertilizing” the garden.
9. The joy of the day Judy fertilizes with liquid fish emulsion (do not believe the label that says “odorless” -pah!). I love to lick it right off the soil! And get my head stuck in the watering can, trying to get down to those last drops!
11. Play “collect the burrs!” Run away from Judy when she tries to take them out of my tail! Hide under the deck until nightfall, when it is too scary to be outside. Submit to burr picking.
12. Tree squirrels! Bark at them to the annoyance of neighbors! (But it does keep them away from Judy’s fruit!)
13. Dig up newly planted beds- soil so soft, so fun!
14. Lastly, track all of it into the house!

Happy gardening with your dog!