Gardening Assistance

[BrunoBella]

Poor rocks glad my two don't eat them.

My garden ends up chewed up inside as well

Bruno just dragged his bed outside in the rain and the mud

[jls]

That's one way to do the laundry jls

[wolfgirl]

First there was the Hoya plant I had been growing for 15 years spread across the patio because I was too busy to play (Not happy Jan), great way to get Mum's attention, managed to save half of it and it's now growing nicely up much higher than before.

Pearl likes to eat roses, thorns and all, managed to chew 6 of them down to the ground, so off to Bunnings to buy new ones this time they came with chicken wire and stakes

Roses are growing happily, mum is happier, Pearl stands at new boundary I just know she is going to overcome this but for the moment I have the upper hand for a change.

[Labsmum]

Bella chewed up a corderline palm one night when I left her in the lounge and went out for a while. I propogated all the chewed up branches she left and ended up with 6 more plants. They seem to stop being destructive in the garden by about 6 years old. My old labrador boy Maya even helped me pull out weeds after watching me do it. I was stunned to see this. I had been weeding, he watched and copied....he bit on a weed, pulled it out and threw it on to the pile.

Edited to say I am not kidding, I was truelly stunned. He seemed to love me gardening. He was an exceptional dog with the plants and always walked around the baby ones. I could start up a vegie garden without having to fence it off.

Edited July 24, 2006 by Labsmum

[Bindo]

Lucy loves to help me in the garden (NOT). First of all, she has to kill all the empty pots and eat the gardening gloves:

Then she has to attack that terrible thing, the hose, as it might get us:

But have to say, that apart from 'weeding' the new seedlings in pots, she's not destructive in other areas when left alone.

[Mum 2 Bailey n Chelsea]

Those stories are hilarous!!!

Bailey is quite picky actually! He likes to jump up and strip the leaves off frangipani's but his favorite would have to be my lovely herbs!!! Not just any herbs mind you, he only likes Basil and Mint!! I came home to find my basil and mint eaten down to the root but the chives and parsley were not touched!! Picky boy!!!

We ended up surrounding our plants with lattice but Bailey still managed to get his paw in to claw out all the soil!!

Mel

[Flaves]

Mithci kills the evil gloves, then helps take the weeds away. She carried them off shaking the excess dirt off the roots.

I put lavender adn rosemary in my garden as it is good for dogs and helps reduce the amount of fleas, my old mal would lay on teh lavender so she smelt nice - she also ate it.

Now my two kids Mitchia nd Barker also lay on teh lavender and chew on it.

Other than that, and helping my Oh and mum with our landscaping last week. Mitchi showed BArker how to dig up the newly levelled and ready for turf soil. Mum and oh NOT IMPRESSED, needless to say the kids were sinbinned.

I just hate to think what is going to happen if they dig the turf. They are currently sectioned off from the grass until the turf takes.

ETA they have SANDPIT, why do they have to dig in the garden darn it!!??

Edited July 24, 2006 by Kristie

[BrunoBella]

Digging up fresh turf is much more fun than playing in the sandpit. Turf is softer

My dogs haven't shown a preference for particular plants - herb fetishes are great and a dog that weeds properly would be wonderful

Have to say my electric fence is working wonder :D My garden remains untouched - except the bit they have access to!

Cyclone bruno is learning the rules well now and staying away from other plants much better

And I forgot the damage by Bella who had stopped digging ages ago but rekindled her love of digging when I put a compost bin in the backyard. She tunneled under that from three sides I now have a circle of pavers around the base

[Ella Rainbow]

My puppy Ella loves to pull out all of our Bromeliads and give them a good shake. She shakes them so much that the plants end up in small pieces all over the backyard. She has lots of toys and I play with her throughout the day (work from home) but she still goes for the plants. Ella has an area in the yard where she is allowed to dig holes (I buried some treasures for her to find) and she isn't digging anywhere else - yet.

After reading some of the earlier posts, it does seem that Labs are notoriously gardeners. Ella is a Lab x Border Collie.

Annette :D

[JulesP]

Let me see...My border puppy has demolised an entire fernery, wrecked another flower bed and is slowly destroying a lovely, gravel path. I get him outside for 10 mins with some pot plants and 4 died a sad death.

Not sure were he is getting all the plastic pots from.... He likes to drop them off a raised flower bed and then pounce on them. My older border got a bit cross with this the other day as she was trying to snooze, she got out of bed, growled at pup, grabbed the pot and took it back to bed with her. Was very funny. :D

My other male border was a gardener too. His best effort was an apple tree. It was still pretty skinny but was over 6 feet tall. I came home to a stump in the ground.

[Guest Stevie'sGreat]

Stevie has killed a couple of pots (she just LOVES that popping noise of teeth going into plastic), doesn't worry her whether there might have been a plant in them or not. Otherwise she's been pretty good in garden, except that we have one old camellia bush and she just doesn't think the flowers should be there staring her in the face, she's starting to pull them off the tree! I put a few nice flowers into a birdbath to float, and they were snatched back out in just a few seconds, NOT ALLOWED IN HER BIRDBATH!! She doesn't seem to eat them, just rip them to shreds. Oh well, good mulch I suppose, just that's the only pretty bush we really have that's surviving the drought!

[Guest Tiggy]

Sophie pulled a root out yesterday and pulled up a strip of grass with it.

[TigerJack]

I moved into my house about 6 years ago and got Jack as a little tiny pup about 6 months later. By that stage I had finished fiddling with the inside of the house and was trying to grow a few things out the back. I tried roses, but Jack though they were great to teethe on. I have one climbing rose that I planted as a bare rooted little thing and every month or so, Jack would dig it up just as it was starting to shoot again and I'd come home to find hime chewing it. I replanted that thing about 6 times and it pretty much did nothing for the next three years. About a year ago it suddenly started some real growth and I got the first flowers on it at the end of last year. There used to be alot more roses in my back yard but they all got Jacked! I have given up on roses, they either live or die now.

Jack loved to dig up anything that I had been planting, I think he thought he was helping me. I was obviously doing something that was alot of fun as I spent ages digging little holes and putting plants in them. He felt it was only right that he got to play with the holes and the plants too. He couldn't stand letting any potted trees on his verandah. I put them in giant pots, put stakes around them and chicken wire around that. Jack would still crash tackle the lot and then go in from the top and bite the heads off the baby trees. I have given up on fruit trees in pots.

I had a clay chinese soldier (like the terracotta ones in China) standing in one of my garden beds, he was about 2 foot tall. Jack took a particular dislike to this fellow, even though he lived behind a nice row of chicken wire fencing. Jack would carefully climb over the fencing and then molest the chinaman. He would wrestle him over onto his side and then pummel him mercilessly whilst using him like a rolling pin across the garden bed. That poor chinamans head got knocked off about 4 times before I finally gave up and put him out the front of the house on the verandah. I have given up on garden ornaments.

I was told that you could stop a pup digging holes if you gave them a sandpit to dig in. Tried that, doesn't work. It wasn't as much fun as digging up plants. I was told that if you blow up little balloons and bury them they will pop when dug up and frighten the dog away from the digging. This doesn't work either. Jack thinks that if you find one balloon you must carefully excavate all remaining garden just in case there are more lurking around. At this point I gave up on diversion tactics like this and tried putting chicken wire fencing around all the garden beds.

I have alot of banana trees in my back yard and they even grow fruit. With the price of bananas at the moment I had been looking forward to them ripening. I came home about a month ago (after getting home about 5 hours later than I normally do) to find that my dogs had retaliated to my lateness by pulling down two big trees, complete with unripe fruit. They pull them down by grabbing the drooping flower head at the bottom of the bunch of bananas and pulling it until the trunk of the tree snaps off. The managed to flatten my hills hoist in the process. I rescues the two bunches of fruit (about 120 bananas in total) and have them lying on top of the giant doghouse out of reach. Hopefully they will still ripen. I have almost (but not quite) given up on bananas.

I used to have grass in my yard. I have been here about 6 years and have turfed the yard 4 times. I just get it established and we get water restrictions. The dogs race around and around and around and it ends up looking like a motocross track. All mudholes and speed bumps. I gave up on grass and spent a fortune and now have fake grass (really good decision, no more mud.)

I took great pride in the watering system that I installed myself. I got all the tubing and little spray heads and junction bits and pieces and ran it all around my garden. I could water one bit at a time and it only went where it was needed. I came home one day to find about 40m of tubing had been ripped up and then 'tug-of-warred' into submission and then wrapped around and around the hills hoist. There wasn't a salvageable metre of it left that didn't have teeth holes in it. I never did find all the sprinkler heads. It just as well I gave up on fancy watering systems as we ended up with water restrictions anyway and I wouldn't have been able to keep using it.

I have a little 4 shelf pot stand outside my back door and I used to plant flowers and a few succulents and they looked really nice. I came home day after day to fing jack had pulled the whole thing over, up ended the pots and carefully chewed each plant into shreds. I ended up putting chicken wire round each shelf of the stand. Looks a bit silly but at lteast it's still there. I have otherwise given up on potted plants now.

I have all sorts of 'proper' dog toys bought at great expense but Jack still prefers eating pots and buckets. Runs around with them in his mouth, madly swinging them back and forth bashing into his own head. (I did mention he's an idiot didn't I?) He ate his own water bucket about 5 times. I gave up on plastic buckets and now we have a metal one for the dogs water.

Today's little adventure has us reaching new levels of silly behaviour. I let the dogs out this morning and they all went berserk, barking at the giant camphor laurel tree in my back yard. I look up to see that a possum has taken up residence (probably came for the bananas on the dog house!) This possum moved up about 20 feet and just sat there. Picture, if you will, me in my flannel pyjamas and fluffy slippers holding a long stick, the dogs are circling the tree, madly barking. I'm poking the possum, trying to dislodge it. I've already tried hosing it and that just made it cross. I don't want to hurt it but I don't want the dogs to go nuts all day either (or worse still actually catch it.) Large dog, steps on the back of my slipper, I trip off the retaining wall I'm standing on and take a header into the garden below. Luckily a dead tree broke my fall. The only damage was a large scratch down one arm but my nice long stick broke in two and my slipper is no longer attached to its sole. Went inside to rethink my options and have some breakfast. Left the dogs on possum patrol. Came back out a bit later to find that Jack had decided to climb the tree! There used to be a lovely old staghorn fern on the side of my tree. It must have been very old and it was beautiful with foliage that spread about 5 foot wide. I don't have a staghorn anymore. Jack had worked out he could leap onto the retaining wall then onto the top of the staghorn. Its root system makes a nice platform about a foot by a foot (especially after you knock off all that pesky foliage.) From the staghorn platform he can then reach the fork of the tree. This is a 35 kilo ridgeback cross gsd, ten foot up a tree! Possum moved up a few feet, just out of range. I have given up on the possum! It's now night, I've brought all the dogs inside and I'm hoping the possum has the sense to beat a retreat while it can.

I have come to the conclusion that I am not meant to have an organised garden. I took down all the chicken wire and the dogs can do what they want. The plants that survive are meant to survive and there's no point at all to flowers. The fake grass makes it mainly presentable but otherwise they can do what they want to it.

One day I will grow something without teethmarks in it.

Jo

[jls]

Hi Jo,

I'd still be proud to call that gorgeous garden mine.

You poor thing, with possum chasing antics and the ruined staghorn

We are slowly, trying to establish a garden of our own, inclusive of getting the neighbours to help,finance the fenceline repairs etc. - so we can get a puppy or two.

I was concerned how the landscaping and the natural puppy chewing stage would mix,seems like we'll be in for abit of fun.

jls

Edited July 31, 2006 by jls

[TigerJack]

The possum saw the light and had moved on by next morning (I think Tiger is dissapointed, she keeps checking to be sure.)

[Dogs4Fun]

I used to grow fodder trees for my aviary birds. I had several black wattles growing in a fenced off area. When they were close to 4-5 feet tall, I though they were "safe" and let the fence down.

That night, I came home to two, full, quiet Cairn terriers. In the light of the morning, I found they had dug up one tree, and EATEN it, all except for a knotty but of trunk near where the ground line used to be. Trunk, leaves, brackes and roots all gone. Well at least I found out how well the dog composting system works (not so well ...)

[Guest Stevie'sGreat]

I should have known - since posting that Stevie hasn't been too bad in the garden (see above), she's bare-rooted a weeping cherry tree by digging a huge hole and she's breaking branches off OH's prized frangipani tree by climbing into it (then eating them). We had to do some emergency gardening yesterday when termites were found under the house, so I expect to go home this evening to a complete mess, including taking the cladding off the house. She likes to chew on that, too. So please reassure me again, labs do eventually grow up???

[jls]

oooh,Stevie's great, that's horrible. I hope the termites have been found early,feel for you, as we've been through that. We are still trying to afford the repairs,and replace things as we save.

It's gone through about 4 properties in the neighbourhood. Not happy Jan~!~

Wish you the best.

Dogs4fun,

Your guys sounds like you, have your own canine excavators. I never imagined that they could have achieved that kind of feat,downing a tree,and finishing up the root system, WOW

Makes Bear's bonsai and pot plant redecorations, seem amateurish. Cudos to your guys~!~

Jill

[~Sasha~]

Chloe loves gardening.

Pulling the Camellia flowers of. Pulling out plants. Digging under compost bin. Must be tasty under there. All the plants she has pulled out are my favouites.

She is a very naughty girl.

We may have some hope for the front garden

[BrunoBella]

Have been away visiting K9 for further training..

Good to see the stories continuing ;)

My new electric fence is working beautifully

Have also discovered my best bushes have flat middles from dogs sleeping in them