stray dogs and lily ponds

Last summer a couple of stray dogs showed up, dumped I suppose by those who, instead of giving their pets up to a shelter, drive them out to the country and abandon them. I'd say the pets are better off without those owners except they aren't. They were pretty harmless until about the first of the year. The two moved into the far end of the Wild Space by the road that my street dead ends into and have had a litter of puppies, four of them.

Now they are running at and barking at people who walk past there on the road and they hang out in my absentee neighbor's yard driving Minnie nuts. She does her job, barking like mad and chasing after them to run them off.

Recently, though, they have discovered my water lily pond which is outside the fence around the Little Backyard. I can see it from where I sit if the back door is open and the other day I looked up to see the big black dog frolicking IN the pond. I chased it off and looked to see what damage and the pot of horsetail was knocked over as well as the two pots of water lilies. I righted all the pots and for the next few days kept finding the pots knocked over and the water level decreasing.

Earlier this week, I repotted a few cuttings into bigger pots and set the pink Turk's Cap on the ground next to the water lily pond where it would get more sun. The next morning, the pot was knocked over and emptied of all the dirt and the little plant was no where to be found and the horsetail was once again knocked off the little shelf and into the deeper part of the pond.

Yesterday, after spending a fun morning in the shop with my new friend and fellow artist Kathleen playing around with making molds out of silicone caulk, I walked around the back to find that those dogs had not only knocked over all the water plants again but had gotten into the natural filter for the pond which is sort of like a miniature pond where another pretty little flowering water plant grows and torn them to shreds and dug around in it.

Well, I needed to clean that out but it wasn't how I had planned to spend the rest of my day. The plants will recover once I get them planted in there again as they are almost like weeds but I had to completely empty the filter, rinse it all out and off, and relayer the volcanic rocks and pebbles.

I'm really pissed off now so when I had finished doing that and dredging all the leaves and crap out of the pond, I got some hardware cloth and chickenwire out of the barn and covered both the pond and the filter, leaving the pot of horsetail on the little shelf at the narrow end. This morning, I checked it out to see if they had tried to get in it again (the chickenwire and hardware cloth were still in place) and the pot of horsetail was missing. 

not so pretty now

I looked around to see the now empty pot about 30 feet from the pond in my neighbor's yard and not one sign of the horsetail.

Vindictive little bastards.

I don't know what to do about the dogs as they are getting braver (though they still run from me when I yell at them) and when those puppies grow up it's going to be a 6 member feral pack and that's if the female doesn't have another litter. There is no county dog catcher, they will tell you to catch the dogs for pick up. There was a feral dog pack here when we first moved here but my neighbor Jimmy, who is a deputy with the sheriff's department and who lives across the road, 'took care of them'. By that I mean I think he shot them though I neither witnessed it nor heard it but one day they were here and the next they weren't.

Wish I had some firecrackers. It's what I used the last time to keep them out of my yard.