If you love your pet and you love your yard, things can get
tough. Take my neighbors. They love Phoebe, their lovely black poodle,
but she runs in a ring around the house, so much so that she's created
her own little dirt track. What happens when, like my neighbor's, your
pet's good time turns into bad times for your lawn and garden?
Pets can be rough on yards, but here are a few tips to help you balance
your dog's needs and your yard's needs.
What Matters To You
For starters, identify your goals for
your yard. Do you want a lawn that's the envy of the block, or is a
pretty good lawn fine enough? Do you want a beautiful
rose garden or a
decent looking vegetable patch? Then make a similar list for your pet.
Does Rover love to run free? Will it break your heart to see him in a
dog run on the side of your yard? Once you've got some ideas in place,
you can move on to the next step.
Yard Priorities
There is no single answer to the pet versus
yard question. It's all about what matters to you. To figure it out,
take your lists of goals for your yard and your list of goals for your
pet and assess which are the most important to you. For some folks, the
dog wins out every time: if Phoebe the poodle wants to run around the
house, my neighbors are going to let her.
But if you really
want a fabulous yard, you're going to have to set your limits. Set up a
small fence around the rose garden; build a dog run to save your lawn.
Once you prioritize, acting becomes much easier.
Maintaining
both a happy pet and a beautiful lawn and garden isn't always easy, but
once you know what you can and can't budge on, things become much
easier.
Dawn West B.A. holds a B.A. in English from Harvard University and teaches writing at Oregon State University.
