It’s which time of year again when most of us go out as well as begin cleaning up a yard, mulching a flowering plant beds, removing a grassed area ready.
My subject is this:
How do we understanding with dogs as well as your garden/landscaping/flower beds etc?
Sometimes we do not consider carrying a great back back yard as well as carrying simpleton labradors is a great mix. we adore dogs as well as we adore to puncture in a dirt.
So, greatfully share your tips as well as your ideas. Inquiring minds would similar to to know!
BTW, a labs aren’t diggers. They have been RUN THROUGH THE FLOWERS AND SHRUBS as well as STOMP EVERYTHING TO MUSH ‘ers. Brat dogs.
I haven’t found the secret to a nice tidy garden and Labs as yet, I have one that’s a digger and the other one that runs like mad through the shrubs, I think they play hide and seek!
We did have a big pond at our old house and when the yellow Lab was a puppy she would hide in the shrubs watching the fish and then jump in, and go fishing. We’d hear a big plop, and there she’d be madly swimming around the pond trying to grab a fish, she was never able to get one, but it didn’t stop her trying.
I was thinking off doing another pond at our new house, but now I’ve got two Labs I think I’II leave it, they egg each other on and with two of them they may be more successful at fishing!
LOL – I don’t know Cindy, but when you figure it out, please let me know! I go CRAZY trying to keep things planted in the backyard (The front is easy and MUCH more elaborate than the back!).
We had a malamute once that was so helpful in the vegetable garden when we planted potatoes that as fast as I put them in the ground, he went behind me and dug them all up! Then he looked to me for praise for the good job he had done. LOL He got the praise, and I ended up planting my potatoes at midnight while he slept from exhaustion from the days activities. We now have two diggers and our yard loods kinda funny. I’m considering not planting a veggie garden this year, but I love flowers and don’t really want to be without them. I’m not sure what we will do about it.
My Akita lives in a small backyard with a roommate who is always gardening. On the other hand, he’s never been much of a digger, and he has plenty of lawn and concrete to do all his playing and messes on. In that way, we just make sure that there are separate areas.
On the other hand, at my mom’s house, there are large grasses and plants, which both my akita and her own dog love to run through and bite off the tops of. She’s fine with it, as the plants were not purposefully put there, but the few plants she does adore, she has planted in very stable wooden planters which adourn the edge of the fence. She also has a few flowers in tall large pots.
For her, the plants that she loves stay in planters, along the edge of the fence where the dog doesn’t go, and for my backyard, we provide an extra area so that the dog doesn’t "need" to go to the garden.
Anyways, try to keep the garden out of your dog’s general path, and be sure to give the dogs plenty of walks so that their minds are occupied. You can leave some sprinklers on to either distract the dogs to another part of your yard, or spook them away from the scary garden area, depending on how your dogs react to sprinklers.
Good luck!
Our situation is a little different from most but some of it still applies. We have a yard next to a creek with large oak trees, so a fully fenced yard is not an option. So our dogs have a large fenced "run" area within the yard where they spend their outside time (unless they are in the yard with us present). We also incorporated a lot of native landscaping instead of formal beds, using sturdy native plants and shrubs that don’t get easily damaged from doggy play. So our yard looks very natural rather than formal. the more formal flower beds are reserved for the front yard, where the dogs don’t spend a lot of time. We also have a fairly small lawn area – just enough for us to sit on or play croquet and the dogs to have a wrestling match, but not a big mowing project each week. The rest of the yard is natural with stone or wood chip paths and natural landscaping. These approaches have made it less prone to doggie damage – and frankly when the dogs are out of their reserved area, they are either wrestling on the lawn or exploring the creek.
By the way, we gave up on vegetable gardening some time ago. One of my dogs thinks tomatoes are red balls that we grow just for her to play with.
A small fence worked as a boundary for my mother. He liked to lay in the freshly planted flowers. But the visual boundary helped him understand what line he wasn’t to cross
LOL That’s what I’ve been doing these past few days! Clean up the yard and flower beds. My older boys know not to get into the flower’s but my pup thinks they are a neat place to get mulch to chew on and try to dig up the flowers coming up! I have resorted to putting up a 2 foot fence around all my flower beds to keep pup out and have some flowers to look at! As far as picking up fallen sticks and other stuff. For evey one I pick up they seem to drag 3 back! lol
I’ll just keep on picking them up and I know they will find more!
My back yard no one can see. It’s a mess and I dont put a lot of time into it! I mean it clean and matained but with 3 dogs you know how hard it is to even grow grass! I love what I have but if that it then that’s it!
It’s not like the Scott’s Lawn Police will come and give me a ticket! LOL
When we had 4 acres- they had a designated area they could be in, the rest was MINE- now that we have a small yard (until my mind meld works and I get the hubby to move me back to the country!)- I’ve given up- any pretty bushes/flowers go in the front yard, dogs in the back. (Behind a wooden privacy fence so others don’t have to look at the ugly landscaping!)
the only problem i have with my dogs and the garden is…that my mastiff eats stuff off the trees and out of the garden !!! she eats fruit off the bushes and trees { blueberry, blackberry, cherry, apple, apricot, plum, nectarine, tomato’s , peppers , anything else she find tasty..} . the plus….both the mastiff and rhodesian STALK AND KILL MOLES !!! such good girls !!! i guess i am lucky, they do not dig holes, or dig up plants. good luck keeping the lab busy enough to stay out of trouble. have you built a ..sandbox { good area to dig in } ??? that might help…..
You could do what they do in Arizona and plant rocks!!! Then you just to worry about your dogs eating them. No biggy!
when you go outside with your dog and he/she run through the flowers get them and make a short ssst sound but make sure you stay calm and if he wont listen at first then teach him sst means no and he will learn or you could get a long rope and tie it around something stable enough to keep him there and he wont run through your flowers
I have many flower beds and a vegetable garden. Add in our lovable mutt (lab/rottie mix) and a Siberian and you have quite a mess! The way I deal with it is that there’s always next year to hope for better looking plants. Someday, my furry boys will be gone and I will long for them to be running over and digging out those plants!
It’s kinda silly, but about the time I find myself upset over the latest hole (or lovingly dug up and brought to me on the deck plant), I remind myself how boring it would be to garden without them! It gives me a different outloook then.
There’s an old training trick to teach your dog to stay out of a room that involved putting a piece of white line up. That’s all I ever bothered to teach my dog because there were no rooms I wanted her to stay out of, so I started using the white line for gardens and other small areas. If there’s a while rope around the area, don’t go there.
Without the rope it’s "Oh what’s this? *sniff* oh! *runs over to next plant trampling the one just sniffed*" fun for her I suppose, not so much so for me.
I don’t know…I have an Aussie/Pyranees mix….. and I can’t even keep my rock garden alive!!!!! (not to mention getting stuck up the rear by bones I find buried in the sofa!)
Well Kye would not be a Sibe if he didn’t dig and he digs.
We have got him a sandbox A few months ago and he normally digs in there but of course curiosity gets the better of him and he will dog in the flower beds , the grass etc.
My garden right now , has a shed in the back , and grass , a few flower beds and one big apple tree. We have moved in and so the garden is not yet fixed but we still do not let Kye dig even if the garden is hmm How can I put it " a big muddy mess".
Add* My mother is a gardening freak , she loves her flowers , plants and her garden so unless we want her to freak out we keep Kyes digging in the sandbox but she knows that those nice flower beds are too tempting for Kye.
My parents used to run a fairly large vegetable garden, so Dad would string up a couple lines of electric fence to keep their doggies from "trotting through the turnips"!
No fantastic tips from me… I used to say "I raise kids and dogs, not grass!" .. now its just dogs. I’m used to my yard looking like a lunar landscape. If I had my way we’d live in the woods and NEVER mow the lawn. The front yard has the big flowering bushes… and if I want a garden… it doesn’t go in the dog yard- the people yard (for bbq’s etc) is separate from the dog yard.
Solutions:
Holes- I’ve never found a dog that would dig through clipped grass dumped in the dog hole and then watered. It begins to compost and after a while will fill the hole.
Track paths- bark mulch or straw to cover the mud. Paving it just creates a new path just off the pavement.
Cindy now you now you wanted to teach your dogs to weed the garden for you, and now you want to keep them out, poor little babies……
I have a little white fence 4 ft tall, and unless they are invited in with me they sit at the gate even with it open, now mind you Little Mean Demon will wait till my back is kinda turned, and then here he comes ,he will scoot right past me and over the tomatoes and okra and right back out, and sits right in between Koda and Bo, like to say, ha ha, come get me, I have protection….
I only put out tomatoes, okra and pickles, I put up alot of green pickled tomato relish and sweet pickles, the okra is for frying only, yum, yum, I don’t put out but about 8 rows total….so the fenced in area did have to be big…….
I guess there is no sure fire way, other than fencing, or planting while they sleep like one person on here said, but you may not want to stay up till midnight, I thought was a great answer.
good luck, and if you find a better way, please let me.
everyone have a great weekend…
I never understood that one eithers. Dogs + Flowerbeds = Trouble!