For the love of a hound (or 2 or 3 or 4)

Honestly, I adore my canine babies. Can not live without them. But I’ve spent my entire adult life cordoning off parts of my life from the dogs. A single dog, not so bad. A pack, who love to chase each other? Or frolic in the manure pile? Ugh. I’ve been through untold puppy gates in the house over the years. I’ve rerouted our invisible fence line rather creatively to eliminate dog traffic from the more delicate parts of the garden. Sofas of leather and performance fabric because they are definitely couch potatoes when not out marauding. Several years ago, I thought about writing a book about living and gardening with dogs. The things you do to co-exist with the beasties you love. I dog-proof. Like a lot.

So when we constructed the first of the beds for the cut flower garden up went the fencing. Just a basic split rail fence. Not high enough for deer, big gaps on the bottom where the bunnies come and go. No worries, I don’t grow much in there that they want to eat (surprisingly there’s quite a few cut flowers that these menaces tend to avoid, but that’s a topic for another post!) So what’s the fence for? To keep the dog pack from plowing through the flowers when they play chase! And also to keep them from munching on things like organic fertilizer, which is comprised of goodies like fish meal that are highly odiferous and definitely appealing to a dog’s palette. The hounds also like to sample (and roll in) manure and sometimes just good old red clay. The other day my smallest, Penny, squeezed herself into my compost bin and helped herself to slightly rotting brussel sprouts. It didn’t go well for her (or me) later. Never a dull moment with this pack!