Shocking. Electrifying. No f****ing fair. We put up an electric fence in our back yard this weekend. “Why?” you ask? Because our dogs eat trees. And roses. And Yucca. And rocks. And pretty much anything they can get their mouths around (we’ve already discussed the dog turds, so no reason to bring that up again, right?). When we moved in, this house had a beautiful back yard: The lawn was perfectly manicured, the edges bordered with Arborvitae and roses. Horribly annoying red lava rocks were strewn ornamentally. We had privacy for naked swim night. We had somewhere relaxing to spend a warm evening.

That lasted less than a year. Lava rocks are sentient, or at least mobile and evil. They wake in the night and crawl onto walkways in small groups. They hide in the grass, waiting for the mower. They spill over onto the driveway and creep into the garage. Also mobile and evil? Our shrubbery-loving dogs. We started with one, old and slow and not much into destruction. Thanks to kind hearts and little common sense, we now have five, of which three love destruction. Duke, the Golden Retarded, will strip an Arborvitae of branches in an afternoon. Hiro and Bailey, lab and schnoodle respectively, fill in by shredding yuccas and anything non-tree. Our once-beautiful yard is now a rock-strewn, stick-filled wasteland. The lawn, where it isn’t filled with holes or questionably squishy, is infested with fairy-rings. Our shrubbery looks like we’ve been hit by acid rain. Or perverse beavers. No more, though. Judging by the decreasing frequency of yelps, it sounds like the dogs are learning. Soon our trees and plants should be able to grow again. We can re-plant our grapes and red yucca. Maybe even put the rocks back out by the pond. Today is a good day to be a tree in our yard.

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