If I were you, I would build an enclosure or get a different hobby or different pets.

John

Here is a link that might be useful: Johns Journal

That is one beautiful dog!!
I suspect that in time they will realize that it upsets you when they play in your dirt. Then they will retreat to playing elsewhere thinking you're mighty selfish.
Maybe you could try putting weed cloth on top of the beds for the next couple of days? That might convince them you've taken away the dirt.

John, bite your tongue! There is NOTHING more important to a dog lover than their dogs (except family and stuff like that there). My garden comes second, my pups come first. It's my job to see that the pups don't wreck the garden. Ribbit just needs a bit of fencing. Cheap metal posts and wire fencing work just fine, and if you get the green colored wire and paint the white tops of the posts green, it's almost invisible.

Ribbit, that is the most gorgeous dog I've ever seen! Mine are "cute", yours is beautiful.

We just had a friend visit today and he doesn't like dogs. Annie and Otter annoyed him to no end *grin*. It was funny seeing him sitting in the rocking chair with his arm straight up in the air because Otter was trying to lick it!!!

Granny

Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden

John, I agree with you. I've got a 15 cent solution to my problem, but we're within the city limits. :) Ok, so we're not, but you get my drift.

I'm going to have to look into some fencing or something until the plants get large enough. I found him this afternoon in the boxes again. He gets stuck between them and the stupid dog doesn't know how to turn around. We have this problem inside the house as well, but I never thought we'd have to deal with that outside! Neither of them bothered the fall cole crops, so I'm hopeful that once there's something in the boxes at least this trouble maker will leave things alone.

CarolynP, he's not beautiful...trust me. He's allergic to dog food (don't even get me started) so his whole hind quarters are bare where the infection localized the first time. He's crafty. He's ridiculously stelthy and sly for a dog his size. He'll take something right out of your hand without you even realizing he was near. The other one, the great dane, is a follower and so stupid that he won't even come into a room if the ceiling fan is on. God help him if there's a baloon anywhere in the house. He stayed in the basement for three days this last time.

*sigh* John, with the two half-wit dogs and two kids under five, do you now see why I NEED this hobby!! :)

On a side note, the man just got finished building me our version of EG's seed starting thingamabob. It's not too shabby. I don't think he's going to admit it, but the gardening bug may be contageous.

ok, that's not bad, plus, the dogs, are good alarms aren't they?? i Abslolutely love them dogs!! they are just cute!! ~Medo

Here is a link that might be useful: Barehanded Totally Nutso Gardener!! **Big Grinn**

This is a good point, if you're outside the city, dogs rule! It's funny how we love our pets even when they make us nuts.

Granny, we have our own little terror, his name is Butch. :o)
John
{{gwi:1260683}}

Here is a link that might be useful: Johns Journal

ribbit,
I'm sorry, I had to chuckle a little bit at your story. That's exactly what would happen to mine if they were inside the back fence with the dogs, but mine would probably wait until it was planted. I'm going to take my chances with some other plantings in the back, but my veggie garden is much safer outside the fence, even with wild bunnies roaming the neighborhood, than in back with my 2 chuckleheads.

I also have one with issues... She's a 6 year old lab/hound/shephard mix. She broke her right leg just above the knee as a puppy. We got a preview of her crappy hips in the x-ray from the break... She nearly died when she was 2 from a severe crash caused by Addison's disease. After a tough year or so, she does pretty well with that now. She caught her foot this summer getting into the truck, and hurt her knee, which still isn't right. Because she favored it so much, she has lost a lot of muscle in that leg and hip. Good thing she has strong shoulders, as she compensates a lot for the hind end problems. She has been through multiple glandular infections (you don't want details on that one, trust me), and takes meds for urinary incontinece. The latest diagnosis is Discoid Lupus (auto-immune disorder destroying the skin around her eyes and nose) for which we now have to try to work in some prednisone every couple days. I'm trying to find the happy medium - enough to help treat her face without the bad side effects. Only good thing is I don't have to give the pred in step-up and down doses because of her Addison's... For being such a mess, she really is a pretty happy dog though...

Leave some good food on the counter though, and gimpy-girl will jump up and snatch it with NO problems...

We pick on our other dog a bit, he's not exactly the "shiny pebble in the path", but I've got to say, he knows how to turn around and he's not afraid of the ceiling fan... :-) There was a carved bear statue that scared the heck out of him on our trip this summer - he thought EVERYTHING was after him (gas station vacuum, mom's propane tank, chiming clocks, etc) our first day in VT. {{gwi:1229299}}From 08 Aug 08

This photo was taken the day after we returned from our road trip this summer. I can't believe they still wanted to be in the car so soon after that trip... (problem child is the one sitting up - before the skin problem kicked in. Now that shiny black nose looks a bit pink and raw)

They are such handsome dogs, Greenbean! Girl dog is lucky to have a loving owner like you.

It makes my old heart feel good when I hear stories like hers...too many of our furbabies are abused or abandoned the moment they have a health problem. We have a neighbor down here in AZ that has no compassion for her animals at all. She brought two little kittens down from Oregon this winter, and one got sick so she just drowned it. She said it wasn't worth spending money for a vet! It just made me sick to hear that, the woman shouldn't own animals if she's not willing to properly care for them. I can't even bring myself to talk to her any more.

Granny

Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden

My dog would run through my garden with little regard for what was growing in it. I know he doesn't know any better, but holy crap it made me mad! My boyfriend told me if the plants can't survive the dog then they shouldn't be in the yard....YEAH RIGHT! Dutifully, he helped me put up a 3 ft fence around my 75x25 foot garden.

Here is a link that might be useful: How my garden grows!

When my older decrepit girl was young, I had a garden in the back yard. We adopted her (Veronica) and her sister (Valerie) when they were 4 mo old, and very very rowdy. The first week we had them, she dug up and ate all the carrots that were almost ready to harvest. We may not have had a fence at that point (our previous dog wasn't much of a terror) but I know we had one later. They'd still get in there sometimes, but not too bad. When I'd go out to work in the garden, Veronica (the gimpy girl) would wander in and have herself a snack. She'd chew off half a bean and move on to the next plant. I could always tell when she'd been in the garden... Val was a digger too, and liked her veggies, but somehow it seems Veronica was more likely my garden destroying culprit. (Sadly, Val is no longer with us. Wilson is her companion in the picture)

Granny, I agree, some people just should not get pets. I would have a really hard time even looking at that neighbor of yours. I think Veronica's past has kept my college student stepson from getting a dog while he's at school (which is a good thing right now). His roommates last year wanted a puppy from a neighbor, and he wanted to know WHO would be paying the vet bills if the dog got sick??? He wasn't living with us when she was first sick, but he saw enough later to get a good dose of what can happen...

I'm SURE that little Annie and Otter are AT LEAST as spoiled as my two...

(PS, I know I do ramble on about my dogs - they are my kids, and sometimes I just can't help it)

Greenbean, I never spoil Annie and Otter. And if you believe that, I have some ocean front property here in AZ to sell you! I really get a teasing from the people I play cards with every evening. They all want to come over and eat dinner with my dogs!

I got the cutest video of Otter trying to bury a rawhide bone in my bed today. Unfortunately, I had CNN on in the background and you can hear a very loud commercial for Cialis throughout the entire clip :-( I can't get the audio off of it!

Granny

Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden

Y'all's puppies are cute!!! I'm glad there are people who take such care of your animals as y'all do. We've had to stop taking Vladimir (the malemute) out for walks because people look at his almost bare backside and think we abuse him.

Whereas I may joke they will die of lead poisoning before the season is over (hence my 15 cent solution), I do love them when they're not trampling through my garden, or eatting steaks off the counter, or eating drywall, or trying to herd the children......

My "puppy" makes me nuts too. She is a gorgeous shar-pei lab mix we adopted from a family who rescued her from a campground.
I think during gardening season she really wants to be a rug though. Last year I reinforced my little fences with stakes and thick wire. She sleeps on my Iris's digs everywhere, marks territory directly in my garden and plows through all my freshly dug plants. Last year I put in a lot of new beds along my little yard and she buried a racoon in one of them.
Sigh, I can't afford that much fence. I can't give her up. It's a conundrum.
I have a toddler too, so far he likes helping mom in the garden. We'll see what he gets up to this summer.

I have heard that putting some kind of metal grid down stops digging. Like chicken wire over your seedlings or even cheap 1' decorative fence laid over the hosta's before they come up. They don't like it when their toe nails hit the metal.

Last summer, I picked up a few rolls of chicken wire through freecycle. When I prep my planting areas in the back yard, I'm going to lay the wire over the top. Veronica especially will eat the amendments I think. She hopped up into the trailer full of steaming HM (or HS as Granny prefers...) to have herself a snack (we had gone inside for a minute). The neighbor witnessed it. She always seems to find something disgusting to eat. Never anything as big as a raccoon though. The biggest thing she's ever caught was a young rabbit. I don't think she's fast enough anymore, but she does try...

It would be nice if they'd leave the steaks alone, wouldn't it? She tried for a 16 lb turkey last week, but DH caught her. She might have gotten a lick in, but it wasn't cooked yet.

ribbit, will his hair ever grow back? I don't think that many abusers take the dog out for a nice walk too often. Do people ask you about it, or do they just give you funny looks? When Veronica was young, our vet once told me if he didn't know me better, he'd think I was doing something to her. Of course, I told him that if I was causing her ails, I don't think I'd be taking her to him all the time!

No, the hair won't grow back. The infection destroyed the skin back there. He mostly has to walk in the neighborhood or the back yard because we don't so often get questions of his bald tuchus as we get accusations that we're parading around a wolf.

Otter got a bald spot on his side when he was little...something about a weak immune system. It looked so pink next to his dark fur so I covered it with a brown Sharpie pen! Of course, it was about the size of a dime. It would take a lot of sharpies to cover an entire rear end. ;-)

Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden

I bet it'd be really easy to train them that the raised beds are a bad place for digging. Just an invisible fencing wire stapled to the perimeter of the beds and a shock collar big enough for a dog that size and you're set. Nice dog by the way.

ribbit, I'd bet it's lots harder to convince someone that he's not a wolf than it is to convince them you don't beat your dog... (based on the attitudes of people, more than the looks of the dog...)