Puppies and Babies

As some of you may know we recently fostered some adorable little golden retriever mix puppies here at the Ramsey home. I have found puppies and gardens do not go together. Specifically, my little garden. It may never be the same.

Generally I love wild things in my garden, the birds, cats and the dogs. Puppies ARE dogs, are they not? Turns out, no. Puppies are babies; which are VERY different from dogs in my opinion.

Jimmy and I brought them home on Monday night. Even though my backyard is fully fenced, I was still nervous the little ones would find a crack and wiggle out or get lost in the backyard. Since my vegetable garden is almost completely fenced with rabbit fencing, I decided to block off the three gates and safely place the pups in the vegetable garden. Turns out that was not such a great idea for the garlic (the entire yard smelled of garlic and let's just say no vampires will bite these pups). The garlic will be fine. I am not worried about it or the perennials (though I would still rather they not eat them all). It was when they got to the woody ornamentals that I really, really became worried. Talking to the babies, uh hum, puppies, wasn't working.

I had two very nice vines in my vegetable garden growing up a large arbor. One was a sweet autumn clematis, and the other a double Carolina gessamine. I say had, but honestly I think they are still there-somewhere. When spring comes we will see. I decided the vegetable garden was not a good place for these little pups, out they came.

Maybe the whole garden would be better? More distractions and less of a chance for any one woody ornamental to take the full brunt of the puppies teething assault. Nope. Not a good idea either. Whenever one puppy attacks a shrub (something I have a lot of), ALL six pups join in. Uh oh. What to do now? Well, I tried to do what anyone would do with babies when they want to change the baby's point of focus-distract them! This worked for awhile. I would try to persuade the little ones to attack my tons of plastic plant pots, which are not important and might even feel good on the puppies teeth. That worked, for about five minutes. Oh yeah, babies don't have long attention spans either, do they? On to the plants then and all those gardens. Oh dear, what next?

After about an hour of playing in the garden I finally decided the what next was a playpen, in the form of a huge doggie crate in the middle of my small living room. Getting all six in without losing one or two into the house was not an easy feat. Especially since early on Jimmy and I had to carry all six up the deck stairs. It never fails to amaze me how when a baby, or in this case, a puppy is able to do what he or she wants to do, but not when we want him or her to do it. These puppies can climb stairs when they want to come in the house and to their playpen, but when we call them and we want them to come, they of course can't climb. Isn't that how it always works?

The above picture is of only four, but there are a total of six. They are from left to right, Dade (my very favorite), Lamar, Bruiser and CJ. Jimmy named three and I named three. The other two are Baby and Mia.

Oh yeah, no sleeping through the night tonight.

in the garden....