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So I've got this dog, and I'm trying to decide- how much do I love baby spinach and fresh tomatoes?

Tucker doesn't get walked enough. I admit that. I'm sure Caesar Milan would say to just walk him (and myself) 7 or 8 miles a day and all my problems would be moot. Hah! I get him out for 20 minute walk or so (depending on weather) and frankly, beyond that, that's what I have a yard for! He runs the fence-line when dogs go past, we play fetch and he just wanders and sniffs. That was enough for Boomer.

If an idle brain is the devil's playground, a smart dog is surely demon-possessed, and Tucker proves that nearly every day. He's still technically a puppy and so of course he digs- actually mostly he scrapes little trenches and drops his tennis balls in them, which is not big deal to me. It's just dirt and can be scraped back in. I just have to be careful not to twist an ankle when walking across the yard.

He loves to chew plastic recyclables and will steal them from the bin when the door is open and dash outside with them and tear them up under his favorite tree. Socks from an unwatched laundry basket and unattended shoes will also be spirited away with great glee.

Friday I walked out on the deck and thought, Wait- what's wrong with this picture?… The large plastic pot that I plant basil in every year (the bunnies eat it if it's down in the yard) was gone. Tucker had dragged it- full- off the deck, then dumped it out a few feet away, then tore the pot into pieces. Yum!  (Bear in mind, the house and yard are full of dog toys, which apparently are inferior to the human variety.) 

OK, how much do I want fresh basil all summer?( A lot)  I could buy a new pot and put it up on the picnic table. It would look a little odd but we don't all sit at the table very often. I worry, though- will it just provide him with the incentive to learn how to climb on the chairs to get to it? Or maybe he'll just chew the chairs- they are heavy plastic, after all.

He also likes to chew sticks (perhaps he's part beaver) and will drag apart firewood stacks and brush piles left from pruning. Last week, among the sticks scattered here and there I found one of the bamboo poles from my vegetable garden that I used to let the beans climb. I had taken them down for the winter and laid them right by the fence, so I thought he had probably teased one out through the fence.

So,when I turned the soil in the bed the other day, I moved the poles away from the fence to protect them from him. 2 days ago I found 2 more poles out in the yard, and a distinct bowing to one part of the fence proved he had just jumped over and dragged them out.
Try to keep my toys away from me, will ya, lady? Ha!

Well crap. My fencing is only three feet high, to make it easy for me to step in and out, but the corner posts are taller, so Ted suggested I tie string around the garden just above the top of the fence and string empty coke cans all along it, which will clatter and clank if he hits them. He's kind of skittish of weird noises, so I thought this might do the trick.

My first clue that this problem would not be solved so cheaply or easily came yesterday when I was attaching the twine and Tucker was chewing happily the little tag bits trailing from the knots on the corner poles. He watched with great fascination as I strung the cans, so I wacked them with a stick so they'd make a noise and told him to "leave it". Then I got the bottle of bitter Lime spray and doused the cans (and the knots) with it, just to be safe.

This morning I looked out and sure enough- the cans have already been chewed down and dragged around the yard like lovely, musical toys. Apparently bitter Lime does not taste as bad as twine tastes good. Score canine 1, human 0.

I can go buy new, taller fencing and spend probably an entire day replacing what I have (while Tucker  jumps in and out to see what I"m doing and steals a few tools to see what they taste like, no doubt) but then I have to either fashion some sort of gate or do the pole-vault with my hoe to get in the garden myself. And I'm just not as limber as I used to be. Hmmm… how much do I want my veggies this year?

I could just abandon the garden until next year, when hopefully Tucker will be a better doggy citizen and stick to only jumping in the strawberry bed and eating all my berries, as Boomer used to do. What do you think the odds are of that, though?

Yeah, I should probably just go by 4-foot fencing. Or maybe 5…