My Trees.

Shade Trees and other problematic issues.

I sat on my deck, drinking tea and looking out over the dog kennels and beamed with a good deal of personal pride. It was a beautiful sight, the line of trees all along the south side of the dog runs. In fact the trees were getting out of hand and had been trimmed back, and four had been cut down, what a different problem from when I first moved here ten years ago. At that time there were a few trees way out on the west line and a couple more on the north line of the 3 acres. But here, in the middle of my domain, there were no trees. I had assumed I could acquire trees with just the ease of visiting a nursery/greenhouse and buying whatever I wanted. And of course that part of my assumption was true - I came home with maples, apples, and even a ginkgo tree, however, putting them in the ground was another matter.

My little acreage had previously been a junk yard and again I assumed when I moved the junk, the area was cleared and could be planted. It did not take long to realize that compacted dirt, that had been driven over with big heavy machinery for the past 50 years, was almost as solid as cement. But, it could be penetrated with sledge hammer, pick ax, and many sore muscles. I got the job accomplished, and faithfully watered my little trees. They sprouted leaves and began to grow. The next spring they leafed out, but looked very pale and soon dropped their leaves and died. I planted new ones and got the same results and finally noticed the dogs were watering their trees as often as I was.

I had three dogs at that time, and I had built kennel runs with solid roofs, so they did have shade. The doors to their individual runs were left open, so they had access to the yard almost all of the time, but there was no shade in the yard. And one warm (83* degrees) day, I lost a year old puppy girl to heat stroke. I was devastated. A few days later I had to go on a trip that lasted about 3 weeks, and my 2 dogs went along. When we returned ,I turned my dogs out into their yard that had turned into a jungle of weeds. It was late in the afternoon and I was tired from a long drive and had to unpack the trailer and left the dogs in their yard with their weeds.

About an hour before sunset, I called the dogs to come in the house. They did not respond. When I entered the dog yard and stepped into the weeds, where some of the weeds were 15 feet high, I noticed a dramatic drop in temperature. With the thermometer breaking 90+ it felt deliciously cool and the oxygen , well it felt like the ozone after a good rain storm, it was a pleasure to stand there and breath deep. Soon I saw some beady black eyes peering at me through a nearby bush, I laughed and then I had two dogs jumping about me and chasing each other through the greenery. When I left, the dogs did not want to come with me, and truly, I did not want to leave either. For the next week we had 100 degree heat and I suffered, but the dogs stayed cool and happy in their new dog yard.

At first, I planned to chop and mow their yard - soon as the heat broke. But when it finally dropped back into the 80s, I thought of my pup that had died of heat stroke and decided I might as well wait a while, it isn’t hurting anything. So I finally did the job the middle of September, and a week later the fall rains started and the whole yard became one big knee deep ozzy mud puddle. It hadn’t been that way last fall, I was puzzled about what had changed and caused this very bad turn of events.

When I did chores out in the dog yard, I wore knee high rubber overshoes. One day while trying to walk on top of the few tufts of grass that had not been cut by the lawn mower, I realized that the fallen over, long grass that I was trying to stay on, held me up and I did not sink into the black abyss. And then the light bulb - last fall, I had not mowed the kennel yard as the grass was all laying over and brown when I put the kennel up. So the next summer was an interesting horticultural experiment. I let the grass grow. No mowing. I let weeds that sprung up in the right location grow and hand scythed others off that were in the wrong place. Like doorways. I encouraged wild grapes to grow on the kennel fence line. I assumed that the dogs would kill off some, but hopefully not all.

Everything grew - except my trees. The dogs were happily shaded, and ate a lot of assorted greens throughout the summer. They ate the wild grape vines. Leaves, then vines and last - the roots. I was glad the vines sprang up to take the place of the consumed ones almost immediately. The burdock grew to about 3-4 ft tall and the leaves, round like a rhubarb, spread 3-4 feet bush size. The dogs loved to lay under them during hot weather or a rainy day. I watched a dog eat on one of the leaves. She didn’t get sick or have diarrhea the next day. I know people harvest the burdock root as a diuretic. When they produced their notorious cockleburs, I went out with a pruning shears and cut them all out. In late fall I chopped the whole plant down. Several of the dogs (I had 5 now) ate leaves of the ragweed plant. In the fall, after the leaves would fall, the stalk would stand all winter and the next spring I watched as a pregnant bitch pulled one of those stalks over and ate the whole root. I had a garden just north of the dog kennel yard and one vine of my pumpkin plant wondered over into the dog yard and produced three pumpkins. I thought I would leave them until frost, however my dogs decided they were ready soon as they turned orange. Dandelion flowers were a real treat and they even tried the white dandelion, but didn’t seem to like that. When they were running outside their yard, while we went for walks, they would eat tomatoes right off the vine and browse under the apple tree.

By this time I had my back yard fence up and put my dogs out there, alternating them. There was a big patch of raspberry bushes and gooseberry bushes out there, but because they have such wicked spines, I didn’t think the dogs would bother them. But in a months time the raspberry bushes were all gone (roots also). They did not touch the gooseberry bushes. They did eat on the white oak tree that was dead, but did not eat the new leaves that sprouted from the roots.

From all the greens that they ate, I’m assuming that dogs ( or wolves) do not live on meat alone. I suppose most people do not see this activity because they do not have the ‘greens’ available, and do not have a controlled environment to measure this activity or even watch them. I have an acquaintance that was feeding his dogs meat only. I had one of his studs here for a visit and was surprised when the dog begged for dry dog food and refused the beautifully cut and frozen meat that came with him. The dog gobbled the dry food down like he was starving and in fact he was very fat. I’m assuming ( gee I do this a lot) he was deficient in some nutrient. Yes, I think my dogs were/are deficient in nutrients also, and I’m assuming the complete and balanced dog food should be questioned. When the fall rains drenched the landscape, my dog yard had a layer of foot long grass that was laying over like a carpet and covered the whole yard and kept me and the dogs high and dry above the very soft mud. It stayed there through the winter and when the spring rains came it slowly dissolved and was gone when the new grass sprouted.

The next spring I did not plant a garden, and many white oaks sprouted in the soft garden area. Ah -- I easily dug up 2 dozen new little trees and decided to plant them all along the south kennel fence line. Maybe they would live if they were just outside the dog area. Of course I had to bring out the pick ax and sledge hammer to put them in. But, they grew and now I am cutting them down because they are too close to the high line. Gee, what a wonderful problem.

A before and after picture

Using weeds in a kennel might be a little unusual. I think it is inventive and ingenious and good for my dogs. They certainly need shade and the trees were a failure. And it delights me to go against the norm .

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I always laugh at city folk (my relatives) who run outside to mow their yard just as soon as the neighbor mows his. Its futile to point out that his grass does not need mowing.

Trying to change one persons opinion can be challenging, but tackling public opinion is next to impossible. Very often I find myself frustrated with public opinion. Take the case of breeders: They must not bad mouth other breeders. But on the other hand, when I signed the breeders code of ethics, I was then part of the group that monitors ourselves to keep us ethical. Since I could not say anything about the others, I could not effectively monitor at all. It became apparent this was not working and some breeders were taking advantage big time. And just try to change public opinion.

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While watching TV a while back, an ad came on stating do not feed dogs table scraps. It insinuated all sort of bad things, but only said the dog would get fat. Lately there has been an ad on TV that is selling dog food with vegetables and potatoes added. One of the canned dog food ads added gravy too. Gee it looks a lot like my table scraps - but I suppose the dry dog food with multi colored dog bites are much better. At least they say so.

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I sold a puppy to a lady out East last year. We talked on the phone several times and she wanted to know all about the dog. Then she told of her dog experiences and it seems she had 5 different dogs - different breeds and breeders and they had all died early from assorted auto immune problems. She had fed different dog foods, but similar in having a whole bunch of good stuff added and expensive. She was sure the breeders were all a bunch of charlatans, and rejected my idea to feed a dog food with only a few ingredients, and didn’t seem to hear when I said I had never had an auto immune problem in my 40 years of dog breeding. She bought the puppy and received the vets health and rabies certificate, and my health record with all his shots and worming all up to date. She emailed that the pup had arrived and had been given all his shots( she listed about 10 and rabies too) and wormed, but I was right that he was house broke. I’m pretty sure I have been added to the list of charlatan breeders, and I mourn for the fate of my pup. She wouldn’t ever consider she might be doing something wrong.

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Something else I get upset about is health care. I just got an invitation in the mail to send in for supplement insurance plans A,B,C,D. or F. I wish they would add another option G - Government funded and run health care. I would sign up for that. I would love to kick those HMOs out and let their CEOs draw unemployment insurance.

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And car manufacturers. I drove a 94 geo metro and got 50mpg. Now they want to sell hybrids for $30,000 that get 36 mpg. I can’t believe they can sell any car - period.

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I got a little off the subject - back to trees.

Here is a picture of the front gate with Carley watching, and back in the center of the yard is a tree with withered up brown leaves and growing around the tree are weeds that will produce shade that the tree will not do.

Here is a dead tree in Rose’s kennel run with weeds growing around the base.

And below is a dead tree with grape vines covering it, and doing a fair job of producing shade.

June 23, 2009