I have a tomato obsessed golden retriever named Tess. Tess has been going into the garden and pillaging from my few tomato plants. She plucks the fruit off the plant and eats them with a great big slurp. She doesn't care if they are ripe or not.
I've been guarding the plants as much as possible but so far this summer she has had more tomatoes than I have. I tried surrounding them with chicken wire but she was obsessed and managed to jump the wire to get the tomatoes.
On the weekend I thought I got very crafty...I took my x-pen (collapsable dog cage with no tops or bottoms and very tall sides) and carefully surrounded the tomatoes with the dog cage. I thought I'd been successful in stopping her but I was wrong. I was so proud of myself that I even posted a facebook status about how I'd outsmarted the dog.
Later that same night I found three green tomatoes in the middle of the yard. They had been picked and partially eaten. I readjusted the x-pen and tried again. We managed two entire days with Tess standing on the opposite side of the fence staring longingly at the tomatoes that were taunting her from their protected haven.
HA! Success! I outsmarted the dog!
WRONG!
Tonight I let the dogs out in the yard. A few minutes later I called them in but Tess didn't come. I put my shoes on and went out to investigate. Lo and behold what do I find??? Why Tess of course, trapped inside my tomato barracade and having a feast....I couldn't resist, I left her in there for a sec and ran for the camera. Here she is in her "busted" shot!
What can I say but she outsmarted me again! I have no idea how she got in there - there were no gaps or spaces for her to slip through. Guess she deserves to eat the darn things, I give up, she can have them all! Sigh....
notice the cluster of green tomatoes just behind her head...those are the only ones left now.
ReplyDeleteThat is really, really funny. I've never known a dog to even like tomatoes, let alone LOVE them enough to go to such effort to get them! Maybe she will get sick of them and leave one for you? :)
ReplyDeleteShe's 13 and this is not a new behaviour so I doubt she'll get sick of them and leave them for me. She is a true opportunistic eater, if the opportunity arises she will go for it!
ReplyDeleteShe gets plenty of food so it is not like she is starving! She picks raspberries right from the cane, mulberries off the bush. I have a black walnut tree and she is known to crunch open the shells to eat the nuts. I no longer have a garden plot because my trees have grown up and I don't get enough sun but when I did I saw her dig up carrots and beets!
Tomatoes are clearly a favourite, though and since I only have a couple of plants she has made me crazy this year by eating them all! Actually if I was to slice a tomato in the kitchen she'd come running. Same with cracking open a banana peel!
Haha, that is great. My parents used to have a dog that loved fruits, nuts, and vegetables... so much so that my mum even took to cooking her some mixed vegetables with her dinner every night. My dog is an opportunistic eater as well -- but she's more like a goat in that she'll eat whatever is lying around. Plastic, soda cans, food, you name it. At least Tess is being intelligent about it. :) She's quite the forrager it sounds like!
ReplyDeleteThat is very good Melissa because if ever she runs away for a few days, you'll know that she wont be getting hungry - she'll know how to feed herself in other peoples yards. lol
ReplyDeleteMy goodness, she could have hurt herself jumping over that thing.
ReplyDeletelol
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if she jumped it or found a way to squeeze through at the gap.
ReplyDelete