[Dailydrool] Bassets and gardens

[Karen Cannon]

Just joining the talk about bassets co-existing with gardens - especially vegetable ones. Mostly they don't, but the DH and I are still learning about that.  You would think that 40 years and 4 basset hounds later, we would have learned, but hey, we're slow or rather, the bassets can beat us every time.

Basset #1 - we got him as a pup as we had just moved into our house with our baby boy.  Come spring, we planted a first garden - bantam corn was one of the crops.  As we didn't have a fence, we put HP (ATB) (for Hush Puppy) out on the clothes line with a long lead so he could move around and we went in for dinner.  After dinner, the DH discovered HP had eaten the corn off 8 of the 9 ears of corn.

Basset #2 - still planting the veggie garden.  The snow peas came up on their netting. By then we had a fence around the yard, but not around the garden.  Roscoe (ATB) went out to do his business.  As time went by, we could hear whining and went to check only to find Roscoe's dog tags were caught in the netting when he had been stealing peas.  He could also help himself to the lower raspberries on the canes, picking them off gently.

Basset #3 - after Roscoe, a fence around the garden went up.  But, not a very sturdy one, so it came down one spring.  By this time, we had Winston(ATB) who had not been in the veggie garden before.  DH planted pole beans. 25 poles, with 4 bean seeds each which sprouted.  Winston was out one day doing his thing, came in with dirt on his face and mouth.  Yes, you guessed it - he had eaten 99 of the sprouted beans.
So a very sturdy fence with gate went up.

Basset #4 - Lucie, who is now 3 years old.  We have scaled back the big garden and now plant in raised beds.
Lucie can spring into the raised beds like a deer and has dug holes in the beds etc.  The raised beds now have 12" high lawn fencing.

Hope all of you with bassets and gardens have good strong fences separating them.
Healing drool for all the sick houndies and their peeples.  

Karen & Lucie (I like green beans the best)
 
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