Keeping a Yard with Wild Boxers

[Lisieux]

No grass no shrubs

I used to have a wonderful garden wth shrubs, lawn and roses growing up the house walls. Spring bulbs and birds nesting in the thick shrubs and flowers.

Boxes (I have two a boy who is three and a girl who is two) have pruned every shrub down to the ground. Pulled the climbing roses off the house and destroyed the lawn. (High speed burns and digging).

This has been a very wet winter and the house was getting so muddy that I bought 20 sheep hurdles, they are metal fencing panels 6ft long and 4 ft high with bars going across that do not allow the dogs through, they push into the ground and hook over each other.

I have placed these all around the patio (took 10 minutes to erect and they are easy to move) and hard standing areas and kept the dogs completely off the lawn.

The dogs have not tried to jump the hurdles, I have no mud in the house, as they are not solid we can still see the garden.

It has made clearing up poo easier, the grass is going to returfed in the Spring and I will then move them around so that each part of the lawn has a limited exposure to the destroyers!

 

[MKAD]

I looked into fake grass a couple of weeks ago. Being in Columbus OH, I can only find one dealer. He is quoting me a price of $12,000-$15,000- which I can not afford. That would be my first choice because it appears to be maintenance free.
I am not expecting to have a great backyard- but I have very little grass and huge dirt areas. It looks terrible and I think Sally & Sam would appreciate some grass to roll around & play on.

 

[Moon]

Here is one thing that has helped my back yard. TN gets a ton of rain during the winter. I knew this spelled trouble for my backyard so when I winterized everything else I bought two bales of straw. I scattered it in areas that I knew would get muddy. I also scattered it on the path to and from the back door because I knew it would get torn up the worst. It has really helped. Granted, it doesn't look like a picture from Better Homes & Gardens but it doesnt look like a mud pit either
So my grass has survived but my 6 month old Gus has dug up every shrub I own in the back yard. We really wanted to have a small garden this summer. Any suggestions to deter "Gus the destroyer" would be great.

 

[WAT]

There is really nothing you can do. We had no yard when Minx and Blaze were younger and wild and then as they got older and calmed down our yard came back. Now that Minx and Blaze have left us and we have the puppies we are starting all over again. I spent a lot of time and money last spring putting in butterfly gardens and ordering a couple of specialty trees that the local nurseries did not have, well they are now just sticks popping up out of the ground and they have pruned back (a little too close to the ground for my taste) many of my other flowers and shrubs. We also have a dirt "track" going around the yard. I believe Torque and Cam-mee were going for the figure eight dirt track complete with burms. And what the dogs did not destroy the freeze took care of. I don't even like looking out at my backyard anymore. And it really burns my husband up, as he is a manager of a lawn care company - grrrr! They even have managed to destroy our river rock and pavers, they love to get at the weed mat we have down under the rocks and shred it. And don't get me started on the mulch that is scattered throughout the yard, we put that down to get them to stop digging in the flower beds - ha-ha! I have given up.