The Shame of Dogs Who Garden

We have four dogs, and all of them play their own part in our garden. That is in the back of the house, they don't have access to the front yard, or the rest of our property, just the backyard, and the dog run running off the backyard.

It's a reasonable area the dogs have access to, you'd think it would be enough. They also have free access to the inside of the house, until we all go to bed at night. Then they're locked up, either in the main bedroom, or in our son's room, or the spare room. 

Locking them up at night means they don't bark, and they don't damage things. They can't get access to paper, or plates, or electronic equipment, and they don't set get into any strife. Everybody in the house goes to sleep, canine and human. The youngest human goes to sleep last, but that's because of his age, and his wishes. He's allegedly an adult now ...

Anyway, that's not actually relevant to this discussion. Our dogs gardening is mostly in the realm of nutrients, and pruning, with the occasional heavy duty hole digging stint. The title for the book this blogsite was set up for, "Dig It!"relates to these hole digging duties. The dog who was the inspiration for the title has moved on to whatever comes next, now, but his skills in this regard were passed on to his son.

If you were to go into our backyard,and then further into the dog run, you would be impressed at the obvious seriousness of the efforts in this hole digging activity. Digging holes can be done in many different ways. This is what it says in the book about the subject:

"Aerating the lawn simply means putting holes everywhere to improve the drainage. Someone once told me the holes are meant to be really small, and humans do it with a pitchfork  or something similar, but us dogs all know the great big holes are better.

If you make the hole big enough, it serves a dual purpose in that it lets the water get deeper into the lawn, and also the holes are lovely and cool to lie in on a hot day.

If you make enough holes you can move around the yard as the sun moves, so you always have a shady hole to lie in!"

So there you have it, a dog's view on the finer points of hole digging, compliments of Lah Dee, hole digger extraordinaire! Lah Dee doesn't just dig a hole, he digs up and chases the dirt he digs up. He, and two of our other dogs are Pharaoh Hounds, and this breed of dog loves to chase things. 

Often after Lah Dee digs up a big enough clump of dirt, he'll take it to a nice bit of lawn and hunker down and eat that clump, gnawing away at it like it's a choice piece of meat. Or that's what it looks like anyway. I'm not a dog, I don't understand everything about how his mind may go on these issues...

Ridding Garden of Pest Creatures

This picture shows our Pharaoh Hounds hard at work in the garden. Keeping the garden free of unwanted creatures is something they do often. Sadly they are not always terribly humane, and it is up to us humans to attempt to assist these pests finding humane ends to their timer in our backyard.

I don't mind the birds in the garden, if fact I love the birds who visit us. Fortunately, most of the birds are able to avoid becoming a meal to our hounds. It's a bit of a trade off - the pharaoh hound is an imported creature to our land, and the reptiles are all native to our land.

The snakes are one species I don't shed tears over, if they lose their life here. When our dogs capture a lizard though, whether it's a bearded dragon, blue tongue lizard or sleepy lizard, that pains me. I don't like it when the dogs find one of these wanderers... I just wish they would wander further, and stay in the places the dogs can't get to.

Our schnauzer is now an older lady, and she's not of the same nature as the pharaoh hounds, so these creatures, and the birds as well, are all safe from her. I just wish the dogs would all focus on the mice who invade our kitchen every now and then ...