Must start at the end of the row furthest from the path.  Plants closest to the path belong to the dog.  LOL.

How about your pooch?  Any other garden scavengers out there?

My herb garden has been decimated...I now have to grow my herbs in window boxes, placed very high above doggie heads!! My suspicion was aroused when I came home from work one day and received a big sloppy doggie kiss which smelt strongly of coriander. Next it was the mint plant and the parsley and so it went on....the only one he left was the sage which he musn't like the taste of. He didn't eat the chives either but dug them up and scattered them all over the garden for me.

This years crop of broad beans was doing quite well until an enthusiastic game of chase was routed straight through the middle :)

Really, really must fence of the veggie patch....

Mine love parsley.

Dogs naturally seek out herbs that their bodies need. I plant herbs i know are safe for dogs and let them nibble at will.They only go for a couple :)

The figs grow slowly.  I see one, day by day, beginning to ripen and I think, "Soon, it will be ready."  The moment approaches and then I see the terrier, burping gently beneath the tree and no fig in sight.

I don't like 'em that much anyway.  (Figs, I mean, not terriers! :-))

My Sungold tomatos got decimated last year, stawberries and raspberries have been victims of doggy browsing too...

We lost our alpine strawberries too...before they got a chance to ripen to the point where we would like to eat them, Shay would pick them, take a bite, decide he didn't like it and discard....with every single bloomin' strawberry :rolleyes:

We stupidly put a cherry tomato on our deck one year and all that summer had a mostly white dog with a green stained, tomato smelling head.  She had so much fun rooting in that plant we couldn't bear to take it away from her.

Last summer, the fig dog also spent a whole weekend lying under the pear tree, looking up hopefully and being randomly rewarded by one dropping.  She quickly learnt to roll them with her paw to check for wasps before consuming!

Ah, pears.  Our springer actually climbed part way up our trees to pick apples.  She also ate the ones lying on the ground, even though we diligently picked them up as fast as we could.  And, we gave her an apple as a treat after her walks.  I didn't think she was getting too many, really, but she got cyanide poisoning from the seeds.  I guess it accumulates in the body.  The symptoms are uncontrollable urination and defecation.  We switched to carrots for treats.

We put a fence around the veg plot :D :D :D

That way, no "accidental" balls in there that just HAD to be dug out - no peeing on the salad stuffs (thank you, Thor, we prefer to water the plants ourselves ;) ) and NO pinching the beans, squashing the courgettes or playing hide & seek in between the sweetcorn!

Margot

LOL yes the raspberries have gone 'cos I never got a look in. The tomatoes are in a hanging basket. we pick our walks very carefully to avoid a pear tree that over hangs the path at harvest time. Most embarassing is when we go out beating or picking up early in the season and my dog dissappears in to a clump of bramble - all you can hear is the lip smacking and when he has checked every inch for ripe fruit he reappears looking puzzled that he would have been sent in for anything else :O

I'm always amazed at how they can zero in on the ripe ones.  My Lab (and previous Springer too) loves blackberries and can go directly for the ripe ones.  I wonder how they tell they're ripe, since dogs are colour blind.  Jet will ignore bunches and bunches of red berries but actually do a sort of double-take to pick off a ripe blackberry.  It must be the smell of them.

Im sure that they do it my smell, since theirs is so much better than ours they can presumably tell when there is a certain amount of sugar in a fruit and hence it is ripe.

>I wonder how they tell they're ripe, since dogs are colour blind.

Dogs aren't colour blind. They will be able to tell which are the ripest by using their noses. Have you ever smelt the difference between ripe and unripe fruit? If it is obvious to us it must be as clear as anything to them.

Yes, late August walks slow down to snail's pace as the dogs hunt through the hedgerow for ripe blackberries - they are definitely sniffing them out.

My lot used to love eating cherries :)

They also are partial to strawberries and tomatoes :)

They also like flip flops and have consumed three pairs so far this year :rolleyes: :D

Lucy
xx

Did they sniff out the ripe ones? :-D