If life gives you a bad dog, make lentil stew
I've
tried to explain no-till
gardening to our
dog, but I just don't thinks she gets it. Last week, she tore up
a dozen beds in the mule garden, even breaking into the quick
hoops to continue
her vole hunt. She wreaked havoc on our young
onion beds, broke
the flats containing the extra transplants, but at least left me enough
living seedlings to replace her casualties.
People
always say that the hardest folks to convert are your own family, so I
guess it's no surprise Lucy won't practice what I preach. At
least I found the uprooted turnips while most of them were still edible
enough to toss into a pot of lentil stew.
And, heck, now I know
that I don't need a pig if I ever want colonizer
livestock. I
can just turn Lucy into the paddock with a few rodents and watch the
dirt fly.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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When I was a kid all the dogs were trained to "git" or "dig" and "stop" The county would pay a dollar or two (1980s) for the hind legs of gophers. You'd find a gopher mound and have the dog dig into their hole, set the trap, stake the trap and then move on to the next mound.
"mock" training the dog when you needed some digging the garden was common with us kids. I live in the city now and am amazed at how much of a problem gophers and moles are complained about and everyone talks chemicals, chemicals, chemicals.
I feel old now.
Ugh, I feel your pain. Dogs can be so destructive! They're only doing what dogs are supposed to do, but when it clashes with our own projects and aspirations, it can be very frustrating. Maybe some new chew toys would help redirect her energy.
~ Mitsy