garden

The Pup or the Garden

This is quite the conundrum. Give up the puppy…or give up my garden. What to do, what to do…

I love both of those things, you see. I’ve ALWAYS wanted a dog, and now I finally have one, and Gem is the sweetest little thing. She’s a rescue puppy, so a bit of a terror and not at all trained, but we’re getting along just fine.

Or…we WERE. Until I finally let Gem into the garden for the first time whilst not on her lead, and the first thing she did was start chewing on my blue moon roses, AKA my pride and joy. I absolutely LOVE blue roses, and it’s been a dream of mine to grow some since they can be notoriously difficult in certain climates and times of year. They’ve finally grown big and tall, but it only takes Gem six seconds to wolf down one bulb and start chewing on another. None of the plant care instructions or puppy guidance manuals tell you what to do when your greatest love starts chewing on your *other* greatest love. Naturally I just had to drag Gem away, make her spit out the petals and tell her firmly that it wasn’t an okay thing to do.

She did her business, we went back inside, and four hours later I took her out again. This time she went straight for the mixed ranunculi, AKA my main source of colour variety. I only just managed to grab her as she was tearing out one of them by the roots. So…this is a problem. I can discipline Gem every time she tries to destroy my garden, but it seems less effective than every other time I’ve done it. I’m fairly sure this is a jealousy thing. Gem sees my garden as a threat since I spend a lot of time out there. She’s just a spoilt puppy who wants all the attention, so the garden has to go. My only choice is to make them be friends, by force if necessary. Or slather all my plants in cod liver oil, one or the other.