Onyx’s Advice for Backyard Harmony

You: Backyard planting, trimming, adding cool furniture and features.
Your dog:  Planning a home-alone assault on your backyard improvements.

You share your back yard with your dog. You may resist this notion, train her to stay out of your heirloom tomatoes and place “scat mats” on that extravagant chaise lounge that you had to have.
The fact is, your dog has nothing to do except break your resistance. And you will break. You will re-think your yard design. As my Doberman said when I delivered her peanut butter treats during a stay-out-of-the-tomatoes training session, “You all crumble, eventually.”

My dog Onyx’s advice (and I have come to agree) is to plan your back yard around your dog. Like yours, dogs’ backyard preferences come from genetics, personality, age, fitness level, and early life experiences.
Most dogs achieve greatness in basic backyard sports —the nap, the popular “poop and roll,” and the “watch the world go by.”
Some dogs excel at guarding (against the dangerous flying crows and jays), hunting (the irresistibly flapping, scurrying and slithering flies, mice, and garter snakes), excavating (a tunnel to the cute female dog down the street), collecting (sticks and stones), and gardening (a.k.a. destroying prized foliage by shredding and trampling).

Whatever your dog’s natural choices, don’t fight if you want to cling to your sanity. If your dog is a digger, give him a place to dig. If he collects sticks and stones, give him things to collect. If he’s a shredder, give him something he’s encouraged to shred as an alternative to specimen roses or the drapes around your gazebo.
If your mother-in-law expects to see the Victorian garden globe on her next visit, build an enclosure and secure the globe inside. Unsupervised dogs violate their training, as surely as we cheat on our diets. Dogs are better than people, but not that much better.

For dogs that dig, design a dig pit. Use sand which gives your dog a visual cue about where you allow digging and where you don’t. Try a half-barrel planter as dig spot for a small dog. For larger dogs, try logs, cinder blocks, or stock fencing lined with tarpaulin as your “pit architecture.”
As to location, get a jump on your dog’s thinking. Locate dig pits in the shade, since your dog will try to dig a cool place to lie in summer.

Dogs favor different elevations in the back yard. Dogs love to lounge atop a picnic table or chaise lounge, a pile or rocks, or a berm, and watch the neighborhood from a different vantage point.
Some backyard athletes prefer swimming, or at least splashing as cross training. A kiddy pool could provide hours of summer entertainment.

Remember, dogs want to be with us and most dogs don’t exercise themselves. Twenty minutes of play with your dog, fetch or playing keep away, provides more exercise than most dogs get in the yard alone. Play also builds your bond with your dog. When you have a dog, it’s about compromise. When you have a dog, you need to give the dog time, not always in the form that you want.

My dog said, “You all cave, eventually.” I call it compromise. Look how well I’ve done. Berm: check. Dig pit:  check. Stick pile: check. Kid pool:  check. Oops, look at the time. If I don’t show up for playtime as agreed, Onyx is into my heirloom tomatoes.

If you have a backyard story you’d like to share, please do make a post.  Share the wealth of ideas (and dog humor).