Monday, December 8, 2014

Garden Friendly Dogs

 
 
When our daughter, Katherine, was five years old we got a beagle puppy.  She named her puppy Popcorn.  I have no idea why, it was just what she wanted.  (Many years later when she went to Madagascar, Popcorn was our code word for a true life threatening emergency.  Thank goodness we never had to use it.)

When Popcorn had been part of our family for about a month, a neighbor's cat had kittens and Katherine put in for one of those too.  We thought, 'why not?',  and took the double-pet plunge.  She named her kitten Sugar. Other than the food theme, we have never understood the choice of either name.  Sugar was a calico cat and therefore colored just like Popcorn, the tri-colored beagle.  Soon they were sleeping curled up together so that you couldn't tell where one started and the other stopped. 

Except for the mallard ducks we hatched from eggs we got at the Monroe City Zoo, Popcorn and Sugar were our only pets. They were with us for fifteen years and were great additions to our family.

James and I always said we wanted dogs in our old age, and that would mean taking the puppy plunge once again. Enter Fred and Ethel!


  Being retired is going to make this puppy owning round much easier.  I have gotten a great book on raising puppies and almost have them house trained already.  There's just one problem, a BIG problem......

Dogs and gardening don't mix!!!!!

But I am determined to be a gardener with well-behaved, garden friendly dogs!!  If Fred and Ethel dig holes, they will be so well trained that they will drag a five gallon azalea into the hole and fill in all the soil. Seriously!! I'm hell bent!!

I am going to start a series of blog posts about this topic, because it is bound to get funny. The little logo picture for these posts, with puppies eating flowers, will probably hit pretty close to home.

 Here's what I'm working with....

All my dogs have been scamps and thieves and troublemakers and I've adored them all.
Helen Hayes
 
                                       Love ya'll, Shelli

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