Plants gardens dogs

[zippyswife]

I’m soon to be a new dog-owner so this is all new to me and I’m trying to get it right.
Just learning that plants can be poisonous to dogs (makes sense!). I have rhododendrons in my garden which appear to be one of the more toxic. Should I be taking them out before I get the puppy? Or puppy proofing an area of the garden without any toxic plants until he is older? I’ve read the list from the dogs plants and it’s pretty exhaustive- surely everyone has toxic plants and they are all around us- how does everyone else manage?

Mine ate stones and ignored the plants when he was a puppy 😆

He doesn't eat the plants. Too busy digging holes in the garden. He's a lab too and eats everything else, if he doesn't eat the plants I don't think it can be a common thing.

Thanks. This is what I needed to hear. I’m prone to worrying so this had been bothering. I’ll keep an eye on him near them but unless he shows a penchant for plant eating I’ll keep them where they are.

Our dog eats dead leaves, stones, snails, loves to digs holes, but doesn't seen to eat the plants 🪴 and he usually eats anything!

The only plants I worried about were ones where even just a tiny taste could be dangerous. Most others actually need to be consumed in some quantity. Supervised closely as a puppy, but she never showed much inclination to eat plants other than my strawberries. Sticks and rocks were far more attractive.

I’m going to go against the grain here… sorry! My 14 week old pup eats plants/grass/moss/weeds. I spent hours digging out all the bluebell bulbs as he particularly liked to chew on those and I read that they’re toxic. My garden now looks quite bare, and he’s eating soil and stones now (plus chunks of bamboo, but apparently that’s ok!). He’s a bitey little monster 😂

@ToxicPoppy nooooooo

I do think mine is particularly bitey though! Don’t remember any previous dogs being quite this bad 😂

I was sooooo worried about this. I'd say it depends on the dog. Yours might go for the plants or might not. Mine picked up a lot of stones in the early days which I stressed so much about but dropped them herself with no prompting.

She does love to eat 'some' of our plants though and bizarrely goes for the toxic ones. She dug up a whole dianthus and nibbles on our hydrangea. I have to watch her like a hawk which does get tiring. When I see her nibble I say a firm no. People will say not to use 'no' but I only use it when she is goes for the plants and she absolutely knows what I am talking about ha ha. I worry less now about the toxicity to be honest as it is usually large amounts that you need to be worried about, but as I say I do watch her constantly. I'm just hoping she grows out of it or decides to be a good girl for me. Ha!

We removed some of the plants as she did keep trying to get them and I was so fed up having to keep distracting her or luring her away etc. a fox dug up our bulbs and she then found them and thought they were little balls and she was biting them and throwing them around! Oh and she ate all the strawberries and raspberries we didn't get a look in last year! She also digs to bury stuff so even now at 15 months she can't be unsupervised in the garden not because there is any hazard out there but because otherwise there would be lots of holes!

We fenced off our patio with ornamental fencing . The first month we had him he dug up a daffodil bulb on the garden and nearly killed himself chewing it so from then he was fenced off . We’ve just redone our main garden and are only planting dog friendly plants as when he is on the grass area after he’s zoomed about a bit he does tend to wander around having a little nibble of everything - he does the same when we are out . To our dog plants are like a buffet !

We've had four puppies and none has been a major plant eater - the odd taste of a leaf and that's been it until eating fresh spring grass when out walking as an adult dog. I tend to supervise my dogs in the garden or they'd trash it, but I have everything out there and they've been fine. There's a small fenced area they can access unsupervised, but there's not much there.

The problem with things like Rhododendrons is that the whole plant is extremely toxic to dogs so even if you fence off part of the garden if a leaf gets blown into the part where the puppy is and they chew on it it could cause illness.

Unfortunately, they are particularly toxic.

I pretty much gave up trying to find plants for my garden after I researched it a number of years ago. So many of them can make a dog ill to some extent. My dog will chew on leaves and likes to dig things up and it just seemed too much of a risk.

I ended up with grass and rose bushes. Boring but safe.

Not suggesting everyone has to do that to be safe but I'm not a gardener and I would have worried about her poisoning herself.

Ours chewed on stuff when a puppy, but we just kept an eye on her and removed it. She's now 2 and pays no attention to the garden whatsoever - apart from occasionally burying a particularly good chew in the border to mature.

I'm glad as I love gardening and was worried I was going to have to rip everything out or fence it off...

My puppy, now six months old, spent the early spring removing buds and flowers from my camellias and is now getting stuck into my peonies. He also nips pieces off my Japanese Acer collection and mumbles the lawn to get at grass roots.