BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Roses Gardening Safely with A Puppy

My latest article "Gardening Safely with A Puppy," covers ways to keep your puppy safe in your garden. Most of our common garden plants are quite poisonous to our pets. Just a few are hydrangea, English ivy and azaleas. Not to mention any of the nasty chemicals we apply to our roses and other plants.

www.bellaonline.com/articles/art61565.asp

I include tips for rose gardening as well as regular gardening with your new pup.

Happy gardening!

I wanted to share this great link with other pet owners. I've been doing research on what my new puppy can and can't get sick from eating in my backyard. Even with me watching her 24/7 she's quite the wild and crazy plant muncher.

This link to the ASPCA is amazing. It allows you to search their data base of plants by typing in the common name. It covers dogs, cats and horses.

www.aspca.org/pet-care/poison-control/plants/

As a new puppy owner & gardener I'm definitely going to have this site book marked. It was so easy to use that I went through most of my backyard plants in about 10 minutes. Each search turns up poisonous "yes" or "no." It also lists severity of effects and symptoms.

If you have any pets that try to eat your mulch, don't buy the new cocoa mulch. It might make your garden smell like chocolate, but the cocoa in the mulch will kill your pets or make them very ill depending on how much they eat.

Hi everyone, Well, I have a new puppy, too, so I've done a lot of research to keep him safe. And yes, I've definitely had the "glance-out-the-window" syndrome going too! I've found lots of plants disturb my little guy--aloe, elephant ear, some lilies. . . the thing is, some plants just may make his tummy hurt a bit, but then there are plants like brugamansia (angle's trumpets)--which I love to grow in containers b/c they're so beautiful, but which are really toxic, even deadly. So maybe the thing to do is to look at the ASPCA site (recommended before) which does list lots and lots of toxic plants, but really get to know which are deadly toxic. Hope this helps! Virginia www.container-gardening-made-easy.com

Azaleas are the most toxic plants in my yard. Of course my puppy seems to be attracted to them, so I keep her on a leash part of the time and I don't let her outside without me.

I'd pull them all out, but I have a ton of them and they're huge.