Duke and The Missing Tomatoes
If you've been reading about Duke you know that he lives in a house with a big yard and a garden. Dogs and cats love gardens because they provide interesting sights, sounds and smells. But something else they provide is food - a dog's number one best thing in all the world.
Now in our garden we have about 5 tomato plants and if you have seen a tomato plant you will discover that you can get a lot of tomatoes off of just one tomato plant. When our tomatoes first started to ripen we had so many we had to give them away but lately it seems that we were just not getting the tomatoes that we should.
So where did all the tomatoes go?? Did some stranger creep into our garden at night and rob us of all our juicy tomatoes?? Did some squirrel or rabbit sneak in and snatch our red delights?? No, neither of those. In fact we caught a big chocolate lab helping himself to none other than our prize crop.
Duke you see would just walk over to a plant, pull the delectable fruit off its vine and take it to his favorite resting place where he would proceed to devour his treasure. And when he was done, he would simply walk over and grab another one.
Duke you see loves to eat. This is why we have to hide all the food in the house. On those occasions where we have failed to do so Duke simply helps himself.
We have come home to find empty packages and containers which once contained loaves of bread, packages of hot dog buns, six muffins, a large bag of Doritos (never opened,) peach pits, some remains of banana peels (Duke's favorite food is bananas,) and occasionally things that we were certain were not edible.
Duke never leaves a mess since he consumes every crumb and morsel. If it were not for the wrappers, containers, and pits we would never know where are food was going.
And so now we will have to beat Duke to the ripened tomatoes if we hope to have any chance of enjoying them. Fortunately, Duke is not interested in the tomato leaves because they are poisonous to dogs. After all, why eat the leaves when you can have the fruit??
But we have switched Duke's doggie treats to baby carrots and green beans. Both are far lower in calories than those expensive doggie treats you buy at the store and he loves them just as much.
But he still gets a little peanut butter smeared in his kong to keep him entertained during the day. A kong is a hard rubber toy for dogs. Its made to put treats in so dogs will keep busy trying to get the treats out all day. Don't tell anyone but there are people that actually help Duke get the treats out of the kong so he doesn't have to work at it so hard!! Boy does he have some people wrapped around his paw!!
And so if you have a garden and you seem to find your goodies vanishing, check out your dog or the neighborhood dogs for that matter, if they ever get out. You may find them helping themselves to you fruits and veggies.